Bud looked around furtively, then he leaned over and with infinite caution parted the laurel. He recoiled, stung with amazement. Sap McGill lay close up against the log, with an empty whiskey flask in his relaxed palm! The boy drew back and his brain began to work with great rapidity. The last time he had seen Sap he was tumbled in the road by a bullet at Junction City. McGill was now in ambush; hidden here, bent upon a killing, and had involuntarily fallen into a drunken slumber, overcome by liquor, as evidenced by the empty bottle. Then suddenly Buddy deducted a hypothesis that decided him irrevocably. McGill could be in waiting for no one other person than his (Buddy's) brother. McGill was hidden here waiting for Lem to come down the trail, when he would rise up and send two loads of buckshot into the back of Lem's head. Buddy's lips tightened fiercely. With a quick, deft movement he reached over and, taking the shotgun by the muzzle, drew it noiselessly out to him. Swiftly he broke the gun, extracted the two shells and placed them in his pocket. He then carefully replaced the gun in the position he had found it, and stealthily secreted himself behind a boulder less than thirty feet distant. Here he lay down on his stomach with his rifle trained through a crevice, over the spot where McGill lay. To Buddy's tense nerves the minutes seemed like long hours. He lay so long in this one position, not daring to move to another shelter, that a dull aching began to traverse his arm, which he feared would jeopardize his aim. This was the only position he could command here, where he could see the log held by McGill and at the same time hold a direct aim. From where Bud lay he could see the open trail through the gap for a distance of fifty yards without stirring. But for McGill to get a glimpse of the path it was necessary for him to thrust his head far out from his place of concealment. Just at a time when Bud thought that he must surely risk a change in his position, a half-dozen razorbacks trotted up from behind. When they saw Bud lying on the ground in plain view, they uttered a series of affrighted grunts, and dashed ahead, two of them swerved and jumped over the very log that hid McGill, and must have come perilously near to jumping squarely upon him. The next instant McGill's head was thrust stealthfully out of the laurel, his eyes fixed intently on the scrub cedars that jutted out into the trail leading down from the Lutts cabin. As McGill waited to waylay Lem, his life in these minutes hinged upon a seemingly irrelevant and insignificant act. The moment that McGill broke his gun and discovered that it had been tampered with, he would naturally replace the shells. And the instant that he replaced the shells, Buddy Lutts meant to send a rifle ball into his brain.