“What was the use? I saw her fall, Gordon. She stood with me to the end. She was a brave little girl. She never once faltered. Dick,” he said, his voice changing suddenly, and laying hot, feverish hands on the young man’s shoulders, “we’ll hang them—you and I—we’ll hang them every one,—the devils who look like men, but who strike at women. We’ll hang them, I say—you and I. I’ve got the evidence.” “Is it possible they didn’t tell you?” cried Gordon, aghast at the amazing cruelty of it. “Tell me anything? Not they. She was such a good girl, Dick. There never was a better. She never complained. She never got her screens, poor girl. I wish she could have had her screens before they murdered her. Where did you lay her, Dick?” “Mr. Williston,” said Dick, taking firm hold of the man’s burning hands and speaking with soothing calmness, “forgive me for not telling you at once. I thought you knew. I never dreamed that you might have been thinking all the while that Mary was dead. She is alive and well and with friends. She only fainted that night. Come, brace up! Why, man alive, aren’t you glad? Well, then, don’t go to pieces like a child. Come, brace up, I tell you!” “You—you—wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Dick?” “As God is my witness, Mary is alive and in Kemah this minute—unless an earthquake has swallowed the hotel during my absence. I saw her less than two hours ago.” “Give me a minute, my dear fellow, will you? I—I—” He walked blindly away a few steps and sat down once more on the ruins of his homestead. Gordon waited. The man sat still—his head buried in his hands. Gordon approached, leading his mare, and sat down beside him. “Now tell me,” he said, with simple directness. An hour later, the two men separated at the door of the Whites’ claim shanty. “Lie low here until I send for you,” was Gordon’s parting word. CHAPTER XVIII FIRE! The wind arose along toward midnight—the wind that many a hardened inhabitant would have foretold hours before had he been master of his time and thoughts. As a rule, no signal service was needed in the cow country. Men who practically lived in the open had a natural right to claim some close acquaintance with the portents of approaching changes. But it would have been well had some storm flag waved over the little town that day. For the wind that came slipping up in the night, first in little sighing whiffs and skirmishes, gradually growing more impatient, more domineering, more utterly contemptuous, haughty, and hungry, sweeping down from its northwest camping grounds, carried a deadly menace in its yet warm breath to the helpless and unprotected cattle huddled together in startled terror or already beginning their migration by intuition, running with the wind.