In an instant Randerson was inside the cabin. Ruth lay prone, where she had fallen. Randerson, pale, grim-lipped, leaned over her. "Fainted!" he decided. He stepped to the man and turned him over roughly. "Chavis," he ejaculated, his lips hardening. "Bored a-plenty!" he added, with vindictive satisfaction. He saw Ruth's weapon, noted the gash in Chavis' forehead, and smiled. "I reckon she fit like a tiger, all right!" he commented admiringly. And now he stood erect and looked down at Ruth compassionately. "She's killed him, but she'll die a-mournin' over it!" Swift resolution made his eyes flash. He looked again at Ruth, saw that she was still in a state of deep unconsciousness. Running out of the cabin, he drew one of his six-shooters. When he had gone about twenty-five feet from the edge of the porch, he wheeled, threw the gun to a quick level, and aimed at the interior of the cabin. At the report he ran toward the cabin again, to meet Hagar, just riding up, wide-eyed and wondering. "What is goin' on?" she demanded. "What you doin'?" "Killin' a man," he told her grimly. He seized her by the shoulders. "Understand," he said sternly; "_I_ killed him, no matter what happens. I'd just got here." With Hagar at his heels he entered the cabin again. While the girl worked with Ruth, he went to the rear wall of the cabin and examined it. When shooting from the outside he had aimed at the wall near a small mirror that was affixed there, and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction when, embedded in one of the logs that formed the wall, he found the bullet. Five minutes later he and Hagar led Ruth out on the porch. The girl was shaking and cringing, but trying hard to bear up under the recollection of her terrible experience. She had looked, once, at Chavis, on the floor of the cabin, when she had recovered, and her knees had sagged. But Randerson had gone to her assistance. She had looked at him, too, in mute agony of spirit, filled with a dull wonder over his presence, but gaining nothing from his face, sternly sympathetic. Outside, in the brilliant sunshine, a sense of time, place, and events came back to her, and for the first time since her recovery she thought of Abe Catherson's note, which Hagar had read. "Oh," she said, looking at Randerson with luminous eyes, joy flashing in them, "he didn't shoot you!" "I reckon not, ma'am," he grinned. "I'm still able to keep on range bossin' for the Flyin' W." "Yes, yes!" she affirmed with a gulp of delight. And she leaned her head a little toward him, so that it almost touched his arm. And he noted, with a pulse of pleasure, that the grip of her hand on the arm tightened. But her joy was brief; she had only put the tragedy out of her mind for an instant. It returned, and her lips quavered.