Once behind the border of burned and blackened laurels that stood along the edge of the basin's bottom, he noted that the slow rain had ceased, and halted and looked back. He could see the long, strong arm of the law, in the shape of the doughty Deputy Sheriff Howard Cartwright and a posse, coming by way of Devil's Gate! Wolfe ran toward the other end of the basin, keeping always behind the border of blackened laurel. Before he had covered half a mile, he met Alex Singleton and his son, Fightin' Lon. Both the Singletons wore thick bandages over their palms. They questioned Wolfe anxiously, and he told them all there was to tell. "You shorely can't slip out o' the basin now," declared old Alex. "That man Cartwright, I knows him. He used to be a revenuer. He's got eyes like forty hawks; they say he never fails to bring in his man. Better stay hid in the basin untel tomorrow night, anyhow, Little Buck. I'll hide ye in the apple-hole onder my cabin floor, and they cain't never find ye thar! Come on wi' me--quick." The fugitive was hidden among bushels and bushels of green and yellow pippins. The boards were put back into place above him, and a crude table was dragged over the spot. Lying down there under the floor, he heard Alex Singleton and his son take chairs to the front doorway and sit down noisily. He heard stout Mrs. Singleton whistling one of her old-fashioned hymns in the lean-to. [Illustration] A long hour afterward, there came to his sensitive ears sounds made by the tramping of dozens of human feet and ironshod hoofs. Cartwright accosted the Singleton leader sharply. "Seen any o' the Wolfes?" "Seed 'em all last night at the fire," quite readily, "and I seed Little Buck a-runnin' toward the Lost Trail from his pap's new house somethin' like a hour and a half ago." The deputy then demanded pointedly, "Are any of them here?" It had become, after a fashion, a battle of wits. Alex Singleton rose in the doorway. "Howard Cartwright," he almost roared, "d'ye thing fo' a minute 'at I'd have little enough sense to hide anybody from the law? I hain't a-hankerin' atter the penitenchy sence I've seed the inside of it, and le' me tell ye that. But ef you think I'm a-lyin', s'arch my house and satisfy yoreself!" It was adroit. The posse had already surrounded the cabin. Cartwright entered and looked carefully in the loft, under the beds, in the two big chimneys of stone--everywhere but in the apple-hole. He apologized after he had finished searching the premises. They told him that it was entirely and absolutely all right. Mrs. Singleton even stopped her everlasting whistling long enough to tell him that it was all right. XIX