Among these lawless men there were two who stood in the way of Milt's liberty, the others were negative save as their own personal safety was concerned, and of these two active enemies, the captain was by far the most dangerous. With his evil influence removed, Steve would no longer be an enemy to the prisoner. Yet how could that influence be taken away in time to be of benefit to Milt? A sudden thought came to the girl that startled and terrified her with its meaning. There was a solution to the problem. The means for removing this baneful influence was close at hand--within her very grasp. But could she do this deed? Had she the courage to attempt it? She resolutely nerved herself to the effort. Slowly drawing the pistol from her belt, and noiselessly sinking on one knee, that she might the better rest her arm and take a more accurate aim, the girl carefully sighted the captain's dark form, while her finger trembled nervously on the hammer of the weapon. Just a slight pressure--the mere movement of a finger--and a soul would be sent quickly into eternity. Yet what an evil soul it was and to what lasting punishment! As she thought of it, in all its terrible import, her own soul turned faint, and her fingers grew limp and purposeless. Oh! it was a fearful thing to do, to shoot one down like a wild beast, and far worse to hurry one so deeply charged with wickedness into eternity, without a moment's time in which to cry out for forgiveness for his evil life. Were she to commit this deed, would not its terror abide with her for all time--a hideous ever-present spectre, that would follow her through life? She recalled to mind a sermon she had once heard in Alder Creek glen, in which had been pictured in powerful intensity the wrong of taking human life, and the murderer's unrest and troubled conscience forever after. Must she be a taker of human life? Then would her own soul be stained with crime, her own hand prove the fatal instrument for sending a lost soul to a judgment in which there could be no hope, from which there was no appeal. The word of God himself was against such an act, for in letters of flame the sentence seemed to flash into her brain--"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay." No! no! she must not blot her soul with this awful act, there was surely some other means to employ, some method less dreadful by which she could save the one in peril. She would wait a little longer, hoping without hope as it were. Her arm rested idly on her knee, her finger fell away from the trigger she had come so near to pressing, while a half exultant joy leaped in her soul that she had not obeyed the first savage impulse to which her troubled mind gave birth. Not yet had she usurped God's prerogative. "Am I to be shot down like a dog?" cried the prisoner sharply.