garments wet in the rain.

Reid could not have anything to do with it in any event, Joan or
somebody else, for Reid was horseless upon the range. But if Joan, he
was at entire loss to imagine upon what business she could be riding
the country that hour of the night. Joan had no fear of either night
or the range. She had cared for her sheep through storm and dark,
penetrating all the terrors that night could present, and she knew the
range too well to be led astray. It must have been a voice that Mary
had heard in a dream.

Mackenzie felt easier for these reflections, but did not check his
pace, holding on toward Carlson's house in as straight a line as he
could draw. He recalled curiously, with a prickling of renewed
anxiety, that he always expected to be called to Carlson's house for
the last act in the sheeplands tragedy. Why, he did not know.
Perhaps he had not expected it; maybe it was only a psychological
lightning-play of the moment, reflecting an unformed emotion. That
likely was the way of it, he reasoned. Surely he never could have
thought of being called to Carlson's ranch.

In that fever of contradiction he pushed on, knees gripping his horse
in the tensity of his desire to hasten, thinking to hold the animal up
from stumbling as an anxious rider in the night will do. Now he
believed it could not have been Joan, and felt a momentary ease; now
he was convinced that Mary could not have mistaken her sister's voice,
and the sweat of fear for her burst on his forehead and streamed down
into his eyes.

From the side that he approached Carlson's house his way lay through a
valley at the end, bringing him up a slight rise as he drew near the
trees that stood thickly about the place. Here he dismounted and went
on, leading his horse. A little way from the house he hitched his
animal among the trees, and went forward in caution, wary of a dog
that might be keeping watch beside the door.

There was no moon. The soft glow of a few misty, somnolent stars gave
no light among the trees, no light shone from the house. Mackenzie
recalled the night he had first approached that door and come suddenly
around the corner into the pale beam of Hertha Carlson's lantern. Now
the kitchen door might be shut, and there was no window on that side.

Mackenzie stopped to listen, his senses as keen as a savage's under
his strain. One who has not approached danger and uncertainty,
listening and straining in the night, cannot conceive