rses,
hopelessly maimed and crippled, struggled to rise, and failing, groaned
anew.

It seemed Ben's fate this night to be just too late for service. Before
he reached the exit there sounded, spattering and intermittent, like the
first popping kernels of corn in a pan, a succession of pistol-shots
from the ranch-house. There was no answer, and as he stepped out into
the air the sound ceased. As he did so, the kitchen of the house sprang
alight from a lamp within. There was a moment of apparent inactivity,
and then, the door swinging open, fair against the lighted background,
shading his eyes to look into the outer darkness, stood Rankin.
Instantly a wave of premonition flooded the watching Benjamin.

"Go back!" he shouted. "Go back! Back, quick!" and careless of personal
danger, he started running for the ranch-house as before he had raced
for the barn.

The warning might as well have been ungiven. Almost before the last
words were spoken there came from the darkness at Ben's right the sound
he had been expecting--a single vicious rifle report; and as though a
mighty invisible weight were crushing him down, Rankin sank to the
floor.

Then for the first time in his history Ben Blair lost self-control.
Quick as thought he changed his course from the house to the direction
from which the shot had come. The great veins of his throat swelled
until it seemed he could scarcely breathe. Curses, horrible, blighting
curses, combinations of malediction which had never even in thought
entered his mind before, rolled from his lips. His brain seemed afire.
But one idea possessed him--to lay hands upon this intruding being who
had in cold blood done that fiendish deed in the barn, and now had shot
his best friend on earth. The rage of primitive man who knew not steel
or gunpowder was his; the ferocity of the great monkey, the aborigine's
predecessor, whose means of offence were teeth and nails. Straight ahead
the man rushed, seeming not to run, but fairly to bound, turned suddenly
the angle at the corner of the machinery shed, stumbled over a
snow-plough drawn up carelessly by one of the men, fell, regained his
feet, and heard in his ears the thundering hoof-beats of a horse urged
away at full speed.

For a moment Ben Blair stood as he had risen, gazing westward where the
other had departed, but seeing nothing, not even a shadow. Clouds had
formed over the sky, and the night was of intense darkness. To attempt
to follow a trail