Landy Fargo tried to approach the sheep camp with some caution. It was an instinctive effort: he had not the slightest idea that the lone human occupant of the little meadow could waken from his deep sleep to hear him. Nevertheless, Fargo didn’t believe in taking unnecessary chances. He rode slowly, trying to avoid the whip of dry brush against the horse’s body. Yet it was to be noticed that the coyotes, lingering hungrily at the flanks of the flock, slipped from the trail when he was still two hundred yards distant. The thickets were unusually dry: they cracked and popped as the horse passed through. Miniature explosions of popping twig and crackling brush followed every step of the horse. Still there was no one to hear him. The forest was breathless. And all at once, through a rift in the underbrush, he saw the gleam of Hugh’s camp fire. For an instant Fargo’s human faculties simply and utterly deserted him; and he stood gaping like a beast at the guttering flame. A strange little shiver of cold and fear crept over him. He had expected only moonlight and silence, perhaps the bedded sheep unwatched and a heap of gray ashes, but a herder’s well-mended fire had not had a place in his calculations at all. Twenty-four hours had passed since the murder, and yet the flame still flickered like a soul that could not pass. Was it a ghost fire: was the shapeless shadow that he thought he could make out beside it the specter of one who had risen from Death to watch the sheep? The sight went straight home to his dark superstitions. Just for a moment he sat motionless in the saddle; then he started to turn back. His eyes bulged ever so slightly. And then a great cold seemed to come down, stab, and transfix him. For a voice spoke from the camp. It came clear and strong into the darkness where he waited. “Who’s there?” some one asked. Except for his sudden gusty breathing, Fargo made no sound in reply. He started to turn his horse. “If you don’t answer, I’ll think it’s a coyote and shoot,” the voice came again. “I give you till I count three——” Fargo had won his point by _bluffing_ many times, he had known how to call the bluffs of other men; but he had no delusions about the hard, quiet voice that came out to him from the fireside. Very plainly the man meant what he said. But at least it wasn’t Dan the herder who had risen and spoken. The tones and words were not the melodious utterances of the Italian laborer who had been Hugh’s predecessor. The only other explanation that occurred to Fargo was that the murder had been discovered, and the man who had called him was an officer of the law who had been put on guard.