“Naw,” came the answer in a drawl. “I reckon it is bound fer kingdom come this trip sure. Leader will take a look at it when he comes in fer a round-up of the gang. They’ll all be late to-night, on ’count of some dirty business over at Hitch It. If you want to go to bed, that’s the best bed in the lean-to out there we keep for over-nights. Better git settled and outen the way ’fore the gang gits here. They’re ’most too rough fer calico like you to stay around, and there’ll be a big fight on ’fore it’s over. Leader is snorting rough over that knifing at Hitch It, and somebody’ll be cut down with power by him ’fore he’s done with it. The woman is too upsot with the kid to see to you; but bedding is all you need, now dark has come. Better git to cover right away.” [Illustration: Drawn by F. R. Gruger. Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. Davidson “THEN, AS I FALTERED AND FELT THAT I MUST STOP AND SINK ON THE FLOOR, A WHILE A SHOULDER BRACED ITSELF AGAINST STRONG, WARM, BARE ARM CAME AROUND ME, AND UNDER MY ARM AROUND THE BABY, MINE, AS GABRIEL SWUNG INTO STEP WITH ME”] As he was speaking, he took the candle and led the way into a little shed-room, while I followed with trembling knees, and the jelly of fear quivering all over my body. Every moonshine murder about which I had ever read in the papers trod in martial array before my mental eyes, and my breath was just a flutter between my chattering teeth. It really is a triumph of the survival of the life force in the human body that I am alive to tell the tale to you to-day. “They’s light enough from the window for you to roll in,” the man said as he pointed to a low bed, built of logs and boughs along the wall next to the front room. “Better git to cover and stay there, a calico like you, with the boys as rough as they be; you mightn’t like ’em. I reckon they better not know you’re here, on ’count of the row that’s coming over that knifing; so lay close.” And even before he had time to depart with his candle, I made a dive beneath the patched quilt, only grasping my hat in my hand instead of keeping it on my head. Then, as still as my trembling limbs would let me, I lay close to the rough, thin, pine planks that separated me from what seemed the only other human being in the world. And for hours it seemed I lay there and panted and groveled in spirit with terror and helplessness, waiting, waiting, for something dreadful to happen, and almost wishing it would come and be over. Across the mountain-tops there began to be distant mutterings of thunder, and in the flashes of lightning I could see restless, dark birds wing by the small window. And save for the thunderings, there was a stillness that must have been on the waters before the first dawn reigned. I could hear my heart beat like a muffled motor, and only the uncanny wail broke the silence now and again, while once I thought I heard a woman’s stifled moan that sent a shudder to the very core of my body.