And if Fargo had only remained silent, Hugh would have been willing to have welcomed him at his fire. The loneliness of the wild places was already upon him, and any stranger that walked those darkened hills might have found shelter in his own tent. And this was the man who—a few days before—had been inwardly proud that he never made chance acquaintances, that he never accepted another for friendship or discourse except through the channels of his own social plane. It wasn’t being done by the men he knew: to arrive at any comradeship without first a correct introduction and then a certain amount of preliminary. How great had been the change! Yet in this case the man was obviously unfriendly; and Hugh slowly stiffened beneath his angry gaze. “What do you mean by it?” the man demanded. “Hollerin’ out?” “Why, I meant——” Hugh replied, in a perfectly casual tone, “exactly what I said. That I’d shoot if you didn’t reveal yourself. I’m against coyotes, wild or human. And what are you doing here?” Fargo noted with some amazement that the tables had been—as if by a magician’s magic—instantly turned about; and that he himself was no longer the inquisitor. He bristled, furious that this lowly herder should not instantly yield to his own superiority. Yet he suddenly remembered certain little facts that tended to restrain him. The man was in his rights: and perhaps it was best to have some explanation for his presence on the night following a murder. “Don’t go making any inferences you’ll regret later,” he warned. “I’m bear huntin’—got a pack of dogs out there somewhere, and they got away from me.” He stepped one pace nearer. “And I want you to know I’m not expectin’ any back talk from such as you. All I’d have to do was to say the word, and old Crowson would fire you in a minute.” “You’re one of his friends, are you?” Hugh asked easily. “He’ll do what I say—don’t you mind about that.” “Then perhaps”—Hugh struggled an instant and caught at a name that Alice had spoken—“you’re José Mertos.” Fargo started—hardly perceptibly—and caught himself at once. “Do I look like a Mexican?” he demanded. “Just a bit stout for a Mexican,” Hugh went on appraisingly. He didn’t know why, but a slow anger had begun to take hold of him. “Then maybe you’re—Fargo.” “And what if I am?” The eyes of the two men met, and Hugh saw the bulldog lips drawing back over the strong teeth. The lids half-dropped over his own eyes, and he stood as if deep in thought. He had been a little afraid, at first. Even now he was not blind to the evident strength of the formidable body, the huge fists, the brutal jaws. Yet—he suddenly knew to his vast amazement—these things no longer mattered. Instinctively he knew that he was face to face with a mortal foe; but he felt a miraculous trust in his own strength. “I know something about Landy Fargo,” Hugh answered quietly. “He’s not the man I let sit by my fire. And the sooner you get away I think the better it will be.”