The tiny flame sputtered and flickered, filling the room with dancing shadows. Bruce looked about him. It was the same long, white-walled room that Dave and Simon had conversed in, after Elmira had first dispatched her message by Barney Wegan. Bruce knew that he faced the Turner clan at last. Simon sat beside the fireplace, the lamp at his elbow. As the wick caught, the light brightened and steadied, and Bruce could see plainly. On each side of him, in chairs about the walls, sat Simon's brothers and his blood relations that shared the estate with him. They were huge, gaunt men, most of them dark-bearded and sallow-skinned, and all of them regarded him with the same gaze of speculative interest. Bruce did not flinch before their gaze. He stood erect as he could, instinctively defiant. "Our guest is rather early," Simon began. "Dave hasn't come yet, and Dave is the principal witness." A bearded man across the room answered him. "But I guess we ain't goin' to let the prisoner go for lack of evidence." The circle laughed then,--a harsh sound that was not greatly different from the laughter of the coyotes on the sagebrush hills. But they sobered when they saw that Simon hadn't laughed. His dark eyes were glowing. "You, by no chance, met him on the way home, did you?" he asked. "I wish I had," Bruce replied. "But I didn't." "I don't understand your eagerness. You didn't seem overly eager to meet us." Bruce smiled wanly. These wilderness men regarded him with fresh interest. Somehow, they hadn't counted on his smiling. It was almost as if he were of the wilderness breed himself, instead of the son of cities. "I'm here, am I not?" he said. "It isn't as if you came to my house first." He regarded the clansmen again. He _had_ missed Dave's crafty face in the circle. "Yes, you're here," Simon confirmed. "And I'm wondering if you remember what I told you just as you left Martin's store that day--that I gave no man two warnings." "I remember that," Bruce replied. "I saw no reason for listening to you. I don't see any reason now, and I wouldn't if it wasn't for that row of guns." Simon studied his pale face. "Perhaps you'll be sorry you didn't listen, before this night is over. And there are many hours yet in it. Bruce--you came up here to these mountains to open old wounds." "Simon, I came up here to right wrongs--and you know it. If old wounds are opened, I can't help it." "And to-night," Simon went on as if he had not been answered, "you have come unbidden into our house. It would be all the evidence the courts would need, Bruce--that you crept into our house in the dead of night. If anything happened to you here, no word could be raised against us. You were a brave man, Bruce." "So I can suppose you left the note?" The circle laughed again, but Simon silenced them with a gesture. "You're very keen," he said. "Then where is Linda?" Bruce's eyes hardened. "I am more interested in her whereabouts than in this talk with you."