Big-eyed, half fearing what she would find, Roxie was fumbling around among her confused thoughts trying to account for her presence here. Bud Childers--he had come to the bungalow for her. She had gone with him. Then Allston--the night--the dawn--the crack of a rifle! Weakly she sank back, throwing her arm over her eyes as though to shut out some terrible sight. For a moment she almost fell back into a pit of darkness. Allston had fallen. She had seen him fall. She had started to his side, and then--and then-- She scrambled to her knees staring in terror at the man before her. “Whar’s Mister Allston?” she panted. Bud’s face grew dark. “Over thar,” he answered grimly with a nod back of his head down the mountain. “You--you shot him! You--you killed him!” she cried. “Well?” he drawled vaguely. Still on her knees she began to crawl away from the man. “You--you devil!” she choked. “He come up thar and no one axed him,” he said. “And you killed him--a-hidin’ behin’ the spring-house like a yaller dawg, you killed a _man_!” There was the cut of a knife in every word she spoke. He winced, but his lips grew thin and hard. And all the blue vanished from the gray eyes. “’Pears like yo’re takin’ et kinder hard--him a furriner.” As he spoke his eyes narrowed until his bushy brows almost met. “Him a furriner,” he repeated in a voice that was like the low growl of a mountain cat. “Him a _man_!” burst out Roxie. “It was him er me,” said Bud. “An’ I didn’ go atter him. He come up hyar.” “He come up hyar,” nodded Roxie with a quick, gasping intake of breath. “He come up hyar. You wanter know how he come to come up hyar, Bud Childers? It was ’cause he keered more ’bout me than he keered ’bout hisself. Thet’s the truth, Bud Childers, ef yuh want the truth. Thet’s the kind o’ man he was.” “An’ you--you keered ’bout him?” She lifted her face at that--lifted it and met Bud eye to eye: “Keered?” she choked. “Keered? Oh, my Gawd!” With that her head began to sink, her lips to quiver, and though she fought hard she could no longer control the tears. Her hands before her face she bowed low, racked by sobs that shook her to the depths. With his rifle across his knees Bud sat down and watched her. He removed his old black hat and ran his hand across his perspiring forehead--slowly as though in bewilderment. CHAPTER XXV A man may look dead, and yet by no means be dead; a man may be very close to the borderland of death, and yet, if he has not actually crossed, may be dragged back by the strong hands of love. Bud Childers’s bullet had not found Allston’s heart. The shot had gone high and a little wild. Striking to the right of his head, it had cut a gash across his temple--a gash which had been covered as he fell. But the impact of the bullet against his skull had stunned him and dropped him in his tracks. That was his good fortune, for otherwise a second shot, better directed, would most certainly have followed.