At present he couldn’t forget the ludicrous look of bewilderment with which Dan the herder had received the rifle shot. It was only a thing to laugh at, to tell as a good joke when he sat with his employer, yet he found no pleasure in thinking of it now. The herder had simply looked amazed,—not afraid, not awed by the Gates of Darkness that had rushed up to him, nothing at all but deeply bewildered and unbelieving. He hadn’t seemed to realize that José had shot him, that even as the blank expression of astonishment had come upon his face the lead ball had forced a passage through his breast. Perhaps he died too quickly for any sort of realization. And José could not forget the queer swaying and staggering with which he fell back upon his tree-bough pallet,—just as if he were drunk and falling into bed. The pictures came in a series, one after another. First this falling, then the glimpse of the still form on the fir boughs. The black shepherd dog had come bounding toward him, and José had drawn his pistol for this work. It was just as good at close range. And he remembered with amazing clearness how the light had died, slowly and unmistakably, in the dog’s eyes. He had watched the sheep for the last time. Even now José didn’t understand how he had missed the other, larger shepherd dog. He had shot, the animal had rocked down, he had looked back once to the dead herder in the tent (perhaps to see how _he_ was taking this slaughter of his pets) and when he had turned his eyes again, the animal had risen and was fleeing from him about the flank of the flock. The cur was wounded, anyway: perhaps the injury was severe enough to end his life before the morning. His watch of the sheep was surely done. And Landy Fargo—the man who even now waited for his report—would find the whole matter to his satisfaction. A few minutes later José came to the thicket where he had left his horse; then he headed on down the trail. Through the night hours he rode. Not in one chance out of a thousand would the murder be discovered before Alice Crowson returned, three days later, but he didn’t care to take that thousandth chance. It might be embarrassing—considering his past record—to explain his presence near the murder. “If you can’t buy him over and things _do_ get to the shooting stage,” Landy Fargo had said, “no one will find the stiff for three days. You’ll be miles away by then, the flock’ll be torn to pieces, and we’ll be settin’ pretty. It’s the safest deal you were ever in.” The destruction of the flock, José considered, was not his business. His work was done and the sooner he got out of the immediate vicinity the better it would be for him. He spurred the horse into a slow, easy gallop.