With a sudden influx of gladness she ran forward, a thankful heart beating color back into her dimpled face. She looked at Lem, dazed, nonplussed. Then she gazed at McGill and at a rattlesnake, whose bloody head hung to its neck by a slender ligature of skin as it lashed the rocks with its dying tail. Not once did McGill look in Belle-Ann's direction; nor indeed did he meet Lem's truculent gaze. He stood abject, with downcast eyes, and the dull apathy of a sick ox. On his depraved features was a lettering of criminal sullenness; on his twitching lips the curse of cowardice. Beneath this avenging stroke of Fate his big, sinister hulk lopped down, and he stood stupidly licking his cracked lips like a spiritless dog. Belle-Ann still stood awed, nearby, trying to solve this strange phenomenon. McGill's guilty heart plainly dreaded this fair girl's presence. He did not look up, nor did he essay to utter a word of defense. His shallow eyes only roved at his feet. He presented the picture of the crestfallen criminal cornered on the premises of his last losing stand. "Pears like yo' hain't a carin' t' say much--eh?" taunted Lem, as with a sudden rising fury he stooped down and grabbed up McGill's shotgun from the ground, and with a series of terrific blows upon a nearby boulder he reduced the weapon to a broken, twisted wreck in no time. Flinging what was left of it out into the rhododendrons, he advanced and stood before his erstwhile dangerous enemy. "Sap," he began, "how did yo'-all ever git out o' hell in th' first place--eh? 'Cause I know thet Gawd'll Moughty never made sich as yo' to be born--I don't 'low yo' wus ever born, an' I believe yo' wus too mean and pesky and treacherous t' live in hell--I 'low th' devil drove yo' out." He aimed a finger within an inch of McGill's nose. "Looky heah--yo' owe yore dirty life t' Belle-Ann thah--not t' Lem Lutts--'cause ef she hadn't come, yo'd be powerful daid against now--hit's a shame t' take thet pore snake's life away t' save sich as yores--now git away from heah--git out'n my sight 'fore I do kill yo'. Git out o' heah--an' ef I ever lay an eye on yo' agin on thes side o' Hellsfork--Belle-Ann and Gawd'll Moughty together won't keep me from killin' yo' on sight--yo' heer? Go, skunk--hit's ole Cap Lutts' boy a talkin' t' yo'--Lem Lutts." In the tenseness and absorbing excitement of the moment, they had not heard the hurried clatter of hoofs, like the tattoo of a cavalcade coming up the trail. They did not see Buddy ride up on Belle-Ann's charging blood-bay--nor the other three horsemen that crowded along close behind him. 'Twas only when the three men rushed in upon them and arrested and shackled McGill that they fully realized what had really taken place. The officer removed his hat and bowed in respectful admiration to Belle-Ann, with a smiling light of recognition in his eyes. He was the deputy sheriff who had spent a night at the Lutts cabin before Belle-Ann went away to school.