The shadow of a head shot along the rafters and over the fireplace. It was a madman clutching the butt of the pistol now, and as his eye caught the glinting sight and his heart thumped, there stepped into the square light of the window--a child! It was a boy with yellow tumbled hair, and he had a puppy in his arms. In front of the fire the little fellow dropped the dog, and they began to play. "Yap! yap! yap!" Buck could hear the shrill barking of the fat little dog, and the joyous shrieks of the child as he made his playfellow chase his tail round and round or tumbled him head over heels on the floor. It was the first child Buck had seen for three years; it was _his_ child and _hers_; and, in the apple-tree, Buck watched fixedly. They were down on the floor now, rolling over and over together; and he watched them until the child grew tired and turned his face to the fire and lay still--looking into it. Buck could see his eyes close presently, and then the puppy crept closer, put his head on his playmate's chest, and the two lay thus asleep. And still Buck looked--his clasp loosening on his pistol and his lips loosening under his stiff mustache--and kept looking until the door opened again and the woman crossed the floor. A flood of light flashed suddenly on the snow, barely touching the snow-hung tips of the apple-tree, and he saw her in the doorway--saw her look anxiously into the darkness--look and listen a long while. Buck dropped noiselessly to the snow when she closed the door. He wondered what they would think when they saw his tracks in the snow next morning; and then he realized that they would be covered before morning. As he started up the ravine where his horse was he heard the clink of metal down the road and the splash of a horse's hoofs in the soft mud, and he sank down behind a holly-bush. Again the light from the cabin flashed out on the snow. "That you, Jim?" "Yep!" And then the child's voice: "Has oo dot thum tandy?" "Yep!" The cheery answer rang out almost at Buck's ear, and Jim passed death waiting for him behind the bush which his left foot brushed, shaking the snow from the red berries down on the crouching figure beneath. Once only, far down the dark jungled way, with the underlying streak of yellow that was leading him whither, God only knew--once only Buck looked back. There was the red light gleaming faintly through the moonlit flakes of snow. Once more he thought of the Star, and once more the chaplain's voice came back to him. "Mine!" saith the Lord. Just how, Buck could not see with himself in the snow and _him_ back there for life with her and the child, but some strange impulse made him bare his head. "Yourn," said Buck grimly. But nobody on Lonesome--not even Buck--knew that it was Christmas Eve. THE ARMY OF THE CALLAHAN I