“G’ap, Toby; we’ve got to hustle. Dog-gone it, quit your balkin’! I feed an’ pamper you too much, that’s what. Git now! Ain’t to be fooled with.” After short argument the sad Toby walked into the jack pines, bound for the desert. Leaving his horse to find the way, Bud relapsed to that reverie which years of solitude had acquainted him. Nor did he raise his head until the last dwarf pine was passed, and he stood against the gloom of the open land. It was near nine o’clock. The moon displayed a thin, lifeless rind in the sky; the countless stars blinked down without dispelling the shadows. Across the open ground winked two lights, one from Jim Hunter’s kitchen and the other from the girl’s house, both cheerfully beckoning. Bud clucked his tongue and struck across the open, passed Hunter’s place at a good distance, and, on arriving within a few hundred yards of the Hazen house, dismounted. “Now, you goldurned animal,” he whispered, “stay put. When I come back it’ll be a-foggin’.” He took the revolver from the holster and, under the impulse of an unusual kind of excitement, drew the hammer part way back and turned the cylinder with a thumb. Ten feet away Tony dissolved into an indistinguishable blur. Bud took a mental line from his horse to both lights. “Got to place that dog-goned critter,” he murmured, advancing. A heavy boot toe struck a projecting rock and he balanced wildly, failed to right himself, and fell to the ground. The impact seemed to shake him loose in a dozen vital spots. An immense grunt escaped him. Seemed as if it exploded in the air, but that was only imagination. He crawled painfully to his feet and went on until the light from the girl’s kitchen window was quite clear. He could see inside the small room, but failed to locate her. “Gosh, I got to see where she is afore I shoot.” He angled aside to get a better sweep of the room. It occurred to him then that he was more or less in the position of a Peeping Tom, and a rod of ice smote his back. “Fer a nickel I’d quit this fool stunt,” he said to himself. Then the light was eclipsed for a moment as the girl moved to the front of the room. “That’d be the corner the stove’s in. She’s safe.” He raised the revolver and aimed at the window.