At last she sat down on the pine needles. Her weariness, the weariness of long hours of tramping without food, of long vigils on mountain tops, forced her to rest. What a game of hide-and-seek it had been! Half a dozen times she had been almost upon him. His way of eluding her was both uncanny and maddening. He had really seemed to be enjoying it! Again the owl cried out; again the nighthawk shrieked; again the panther screamed. And again did Tot Singleton pay no attention to the gruesome trinity. Some time later, she saw on the side of the other mountain a tiny point of light. It brought a cold but triumphant smile to her lips. How sure of himself he was! She rose, and began to move swiftly and noiselessly down through the scrubby laurel and ivy, going as straight toward the point of light as the slopes of the valley would allow. [Illustration] After nearly an hour, she divided a wall of rank green undergrowth and stepped into a little, round patch of huckleberry bushes, in the center of which was a small brushwood fire--and beyond the fire, eating berries, his rifle lying across his knees, sat Cat-Eye Mayfield, who also was pale and haggard. He looked up. His jaws stopped their movement as though they had been that moment paralyzed. He stared at her half-defiantly and half-reproachfully. She went closer to him, the big revolver ready in her hand, her gaze riveted on his. "You're onder arrest fo' tryin' to kill Little Buck Wolfe," she said in a low voice that carried the ring of ice. With the forefinger of her left hand she pointed to the officer's shield that she wore over her heart like a target and a dare. "Ye don't say!" he sneered. "But I do say!" she replied. "Depity-Sheriff Tot Singleton!" grinned Mayfield. "C'rect, sir!" boldly. "It's jest what I am. I'll haf to ax ye to pass that 'ar rifle acrost to me, Mister Cat-Eye." "Humph!" scornfully. "Pass me that 'ar rifle, butt fust--pass it, quick!" Mayfield saw, or imagined he saw, her finger tighten on the trigger. He gave her the gun, butt first, reluctantly. She lifted it in her left hand and brought it down hard on a stone, disabling the mechanism of the breech. Mayfield muttered an oath and leaped to his feet, but the revolver's muzzle held him off. "You better hadn't!" she warned, her finger now so hard on the trigger that the cylinder trembled. "I've got the whole United States ahind o' me now, and I shore hain't afeared to shoot. Ef you think I am, try me and see!" The other prepared to play his last card. He had some faith in it. He tucked his thumbs under his homemade suspenders, and cocked his bullet-shaped head to one side. "We've had a fine time a-playin' whoopy-hide, hain't we?" He tried to laugh, and failed. "But it's all come to a show-down now, I reckon. You've sp'iled it all; the fun's all over. Tot Singleton, you won't want me to go to jail when I've told ye what I've got to tell ye!" "Tell it!" impatiently.