they had mangled, and were locked open.
Then, Brant turned the body over, and gazed curiously, with strong
repulsion, into the ugly, distorted dead face.

"Providence picked out somebody who could be spared," he mused
grimly.

There came another cry from Stone. In it were wonder, incredulity,
relief.

Brant regarded the marshal in amazement. The man was transformed. The
motionless figure of desolation was become one of wild, quivering
excitement. The face was suffused with blood, the eyes shining
fiercely.

"What the devil!" Brant demanded, aghast.

Stone looked toward his questioner gravely, and nodded with great
emphasis. His voice was low, tense with emotion.

"It is the devil!" he answered solemnly. He paused, clearing his
throat, and stared again at the dead man. Then, his eyes went back to
Brant, as he added:

"It's Hodges."

There was a little silence. Brant could not understand, could not
believe this startling assertion flung in his face.

"But Hodges was thrown over the precipice," he said, at last.

The marshal shook his head. There was defiance now in his
aspect--defiance, and a mighty joy.

"It doesn't make any difference about that," he announced. "This is
Hodges!"

Then, his exultation burst in words:

"Hodges caught in his own traps! His neck broken, as it should have
been broken by the rope for the murders he's done! It was my
carelessness did it, yes. But I don't care now, so long as it's Hodges
who's got caught. Hodges set those traps, and--there he is!... I read
about something like that once in a story. They called it 'poetic
justice.'"

"He don't look like a poem," Brant remarked. He turned from the gory
corpse with a shudder of disgust.

"Thank God, it was Hodges!" the marshal said, reverently. "Anybody
else would have haunted me for life. But Hodges! Why, I'm glad!"

* * * * *

The affair was easily explicable in the light of what Plutina had to
tell. Hodges, undoubtedly, had knowledge of some secret, hazardous
path down the face of the precipice past the Devil's Cauldron, and on
to the valley. He had meant to flee by it with Plutina, thus to escape
the hound. By it, he had fled alone. Perhaps, he had had a
hiding-place for money somewhere about the raided still. Or, perhaps,
he had merely chosen this route along Thunder Branch on his way to an
asylum beyond Bull Head Mountain. What was certain was that he had
blundered into his o