ver of the bank a frightened cottontail sprang
forth and started running. Instantly there was the report of a big
revolver, and Tom jumped as though he felt the bullet in his back. Again
the report sounded, and this time the rabbit rolled over and over in the
snow.

Without stopping, Ben picked up the still struggling game and slipped a
couple of fresh cartridges into the empty revolver chambers. The banks
were lined with burrows and tracks, and within five minutes a second
cottontail met the fate of the first.

"Come back!" called Ben to the man ahead.

Again Tom obeyed. He would have gone barefoot in the snow without a
question now.

"Can you make a fire?"

"Yes."

"Do it, then. I left the matches in your pocket."

On opposite sides of the fire, from long forked sticks of green ash,
they broiled strips of the meat which Ben dressed and cut. Likewise
fronting each other, they ate in silence. Darkness was falling, and the
glow from the embers lit their faces like those of two friends camping
after a day's hunt. Had it not all been such deadly earnest, the scene
would have been farce-comedy. Suddenly Tom Blair raised his eyes.

"What are you going to do with me?" he asked directly.

Ben said nothing.

The question was not repeated, but another trembled on the speaker's
lips. At last it found words.

"When you had me down I--I thought you had done for me. Why did you--let
me up?"

A pause followed. Then Ben's blue eyes raised and met the other's.

"You'd really like to know?"

"Yes."

Another moment of hesitation, but the youth's eyes did not move. "Very
well, I'll tell you." More to himself than to the other he was speaking.
His voice softened unconsciously. "A girl saved you that time, Tom
Blair, a girl you never saw. You haven't any idea what it means, but I
love that girl, and I could never look her in the face again with blood
on my hands, even such blood as yours. That's the reason."

For a moment Tom Blair was silent; then into his brain there flashed a
suggestion, and he grasped at it as a drowning man at a straw.

"Wouldn't it be blood on your hands just the same if you take me back
where we're headed, back to Mick Kennedy and--"

With a single motion, swift as though raised by a spring, Ben was upon
his feet.

"Pick up your blanket!"

"But--"

"Silence!" The big square jaw shot forward like the piston of an engine.
"Not another word of that, now or ever. Not another word!"

For a s