It was like a breathless moan, do you understand? That was the inhuman part of it; it was breathless--there was no break--a sort of sobbing monotone. It came from behind him. Lee shivered as he listened, and then his heart began to pound as though it would burst. He was afraid--_afraid_. Premonition, perhaps; I don’t know. He rolled himself over on his side, and he saw---- How can I tell it! A figure was crouched against the side of the car in a half-sitting posture, the face was red--red with the blood that was flowing from the forehead. Lee shrieked aloud in terror. “Perley! Perley!” Then he grew sick with the horror that was on him. Worse than murder the half-breed had threatened--and he had kept his word. Perley had been scalped! Lee’s cry must have reached the poor wretch’s consciousness, for he staggered to his feet, sweeping his eyes clear with both hands. Lee, sick to the depths of his soul, the sweat breaking out in great, cold drops upon his forehead, fought like a maniac with his bonds. Perley never spoke, never paid any attention to Lee--he was past all that--but his brain, at least, was still capable of coherent impression. It must have been--to account for what he did. Right in front of him, as he hung there tottering and swaying, was a broken bit of mirror tacked up on the side of the car. He was staring into it. His moaning stopped. The shock of his own awful horror must have revolted, shaken his very being. His hand groped weakly, subconsciously perhaps, for his pocket--his revolver--the end. Again Lee shrieked as he struggled to free himself, and then, as Perley fired, he burst out into a peal of wild, discordant laughter. His mind was giving way. He began to gibber like a madman--that’s the way they found him--with Perley’s body pitched full across his chest. Don’t ask me. I told you Perley was a little, undersized, sawed-off man. I don’t know, do I? The halfbreed, physically, could have handled him like a baby, once he caught him unawares. That’s all I know. They buried Perley down at Big Cloud; and they buried Clancy where the posse dropped him, drilled full of holes. That’s the story. Lee? Charlie Lee? Why, he doesn’t count, does he? He had nothing to do with it. Well, if you’re interested in him I’ll tell you. His college diploma never did him any good. Once he got better and out of the hospital, he took to drinking periodically--_hard_. Between times straight as a string, you understand, for six weeks say, then off again. That was fifteen years ago, and he’s done it ever since. The doctors said that blow on the head unsettled him, skull splinter, or something like that; but medicine’s not an exact science. The doctors were wrong. The trouble was deeper than the skull--it was in his soul. Lee drank to save himself from the madhouse--I told you, didn’t I, that some men drink because they have to?