There was no time to ponder upon these things. The dogs passed over the trampled ground in front of the building, sniffed at the door, circled the building, sniffed at the windows, passed slowly into the empty room when the door was opened for them. Then they drew apart again, and, wailing once more solemnly, headed back along a path which presently brought all into the plain road to the railway station. The procession moved more rapidly now, and presently it had crossed the railway track and turned into the lane which led up to the Big House, the dogs threading without hesitation the maze of footprints which covered all the ground thereabout. They came on with heads down and tails slowly moving, now and again giving utterance to their long and mournful note, until presently they and those who followed them were met at the yard gate by Colonel Blount, who came down to greet the sheriff of the county, whom he knew very well. "Jim," said he, "I know you and your dogs, and I know what you're doing. It's all right, but I want to warn you to be mighty careful about my own dogs. They won't run with any other pack, and they'll kill a strange dog just as sure as they can get to him." The sheriff looked at him and shook his head, as if to say that justice must have its course. Blount made no further objection, and the three trailing dogs, entering the gate, now crossed the lawn and passed around the corner of the house toward the quarters of the servants, beyond which lay the kennels of the fighting Big House pack. The baying of these dogs, penned up, had been incessant. They could tolerate no thought of intelligence other than their own at this work. They were born and trained to fight, and knew no kinship with their species. It had been better for Jim Peters, sheriff of Tullahoma, had he taken the advice of the master of the Big House; for as he turned into the yard at the rear of the house, the prediction of the latter came true, and so swiftly that none saw how it chanced. Who loosed the gate no one ever knew; but certainly it was opened, and the fighting bear-pack came boiling out, eager for any foe. There was ineffectual shouting over a mass of writhing, snarling creatures of many colors. In a moment the solemn-faced emissaries of justice lay dead and mangled on an unfinished trail. Blount caught the sheriff's hand as it moved toward his revolver. "It's no use shooting the dogs, Jim," said he. "You've run the trail fair to here, and you know I'll help you run it to the end. I don't know what to say. Hell's broke loose in the Delta." CHAPTER XVI THE TRAVELING-BAG The sheriff turned upon Blount his grave face, and for a time made no answer. "You're right, Cal," said he, at length. "Things are bad down here. It's no nigger planned this thing. But if it wasn't, then who did?"