He shook up his horse. The pack animal came up on a slack rope. A hundred yards straight ahead Crepe shied and snorted violently. “Now, what the dickens!” Charlie exclaimed testily. “You darned fool! What’s eatin’ you?” He was tired. These coltish antics from a staid old cow horse annoyed him. He spoke this annoyance aloud. He jabbed Crepe chastisingly with his spurs. Leather creaked. The bit chains and spur rowels clanked. The black horse’s hoofs thudded sharply on the hard ground, as he plunged under the prick of the rowels. Charlie swore. * * * * * In that still air a man’s voice carried a long way. There was nothing he could see to scare the horse. But the last of his harsh, reproving words was still in his mouth when something occurred to justify, in a measure, Crepe’s strange behavior, although it explained nothing. A rose-and-orange flower bloomed suddenly in the blackness on his left. A sharp _pow!_ as a gun spoke in the abrupt, staccato manner of guns when they speak. Something whined, _wh-e-e-e!_ away off. For a second Charlie hesitated, reins taut, wondering. A signal--somebody lost? Or---- His perceptions were exceedingly rapid and logical. The sluggish-minded did not usually function long in the range country. Nor was he a nervous or timorous man. He did not jump to the conclusion that he had been shot at, because he knew of no reason why any one should shoot at him. Nor was he apt to be nervous under fire, having had that unpleasant experience once or twice. At the same time he wanted to know just what _was_ afoot. He felt reasonably safe in the shrouding cover of the dark, if he were intruding on anything or any one. So he lifted up his voice in a lusty bellow. “Hey, there! What you shootin’ at?” He got his answer at once. The gaudy flower of the Winchester gardens bloomed its momentary brilliance in the night--once, twice, a third time. Charlie did not pause to investigate. He gave Crepe his head and departed thence. Two more shots followed upon the hurried beat of the hoofs. The whine of bullets overhead told Charlie that whoever fired back, there in the darkness, was firing at him, sight unseen. “Visitors ain’t popular here,” he muttered. “Far be it from me to disturb anybody’s privacy. _I_ don’t need no second hint, you darned fool. Save your powder.” Half a mile at headlong gallop, and he pulled up to listen. No sound of pursuit. No breath of air stirred. Nothing. He might have been a solitary soul in a darkened void. That silence could be felt. He rode on at the same jog trot. “Now, what was all that about, back there, I wonder?” he said to himself.