Dawn comes slowly down in these dark, deep, wooded canons of the Sierras. Morning seems to be battling with the night. Night is entrenched in the woods, and retreats only by inches--the Battle of the Wilderness. In the steel-gray dawn, cold and sharp, Limber Tim heard a cry that knocked him loose from the fence. He picked himself together, and again twisted himself into the pickets; but all the time he kept seeing Bunker Hill pushing back her sleeve, holding up her arm in the ghostly light of the pine-log fire, and saying, "Blood it is! Will you believe me now?" "Blood," mused the man. "Somebody's hurt. Somebody's hurt awful bad, too, or they wouldn't keep a feller a-standin' agin a fence the whole blessed night." The man's teeth began to chatter. The thought of blood and the bleak cold morning kept them smiting together as if he had had an ague. A man in great gum boots came screeching by the cabin; his nose was pointed straight for the Howling Wilderness, but backing against Limber Tim as he hung up against the fence, stopped, and asked timidly and very respectfully of the Widow. Limber held his head thoughtfully to one side, as if he was trying to balance the important facts in his mind, and reveal only just so much of the condition of the Widow, or Sandy, or Bunker Hill, or whoever it was that was hurt, as was best, and no more, but for a time was silent. A thought struck him, and he mused: Sandy's cut his foot, or p'raps it's Bunker Hill shot herself with that darned pistol she allers packs in her breeches' pocket. "Well, an' 'ow's the Widder?" The man was getting impatient for his drink. "It ain't the Widder at all. It's Sandy. Sandy's cut his foot--cut his foot last night a cuttin' wood in the dark. That's what's the matter." Limber Tim pecked his head, pursed up his mouth, and for the first time in his life, perhaps, felt that he was really a man of some consequence. "By the holy poker! thought it was the Widder." "Not much. It's Sandy. Cut his foot, I tell yer. Blood clean up to his elbows. Blood all over the house. Bunker Hill all over blood. Hell's a poppin', I tell yer." And poor Limber Tim so excited himself by this recital, that he broke loose from the fence, and chattered his teeth together like a chipmunk with a hazel-nut. Then the man passed on down the trail, and Limber Tim again grew on to the fence, and chattered his teeth together, and waited developments, not at all certain that he had not lied. "'Ow's the Widder, Limber?" Limber unloosed himself from the fence, and tried to stand straight up and tell the truth and nothing but the truth. "Better, thank yer. That is, the blood is stopped, or most of it, you know--the most of it. Bunker Hill is hurt some too, you know. Blood all over her arm. Poor girl, poor girl! but she didn't whimper. Not she. Nary a sniff." "Both of 'em hurt?" "Yes, same bullet, you know--same shot--same pistol--same--"