There were no signs. Lawler's face might have been an expressionless mask. Not a muscle of his body moved. The offense was a monstrous one in the ethics of the country, and the fence cutter had a right to expect Lawler to exhibit passion of some kind. "Gary Warden, eh?" Lawler laughed quietly. "If you're lying----" The man protested that he was telling the truth. At this point the tall man sneered. "Hell," he said; "quit your damn blabbin'!" "Yes," grinned Lawler, speaking to the small man. "You're quitting your talk. From now on your friend is going to do it. I'm asking questions a heap rapid, and the answers are going to jump right onto the tails of the questions. If they don't, I'm going to see how near I can come to boring a hole in the place where he has his brains cached." The man glared malignantly at Lawler; but when the first question came it was answered instantly: "How much did Warden pay you?" "A hundred dollars." "When were you to cut the fence?" "When the norther struck." "You saw us cache grub in the cabin?" The man nodded. "What if you had found a couple of line riders here? What were you told to do if you found line riders here? I'm wanting the truth--all of it!" The man hesitated. Lawler's pistol roared, the concussion rocking the air of the cabin. The man staggered back, clapping a hand to his head, where, it seemed to him, the bullet from the pistol had been aimed. The man brought up against the rear wall of the cabin, beside the fireplace; and he leaned against it, his face ghastly with fright, his lips working soundlessly. The little man cowered, plainly expecting Lawler would shoot him, too. And Lawler's gun did swing up again, but the voice of the tall man came, blurtingly: "Warden told us to knife any men we found here." Lawler's lips straightened, and his eyes glowed with a passion so intense that the men shrank, gibbering, in the grip of a mighty paralysis. Lawler walked to the table and sat beside it, placing the gun near his right hand. The men watched him, fascinated; noting his swift movements as he plunged a hand into a pocket and drew out a small pad of paper and a pencil. He wrote rapidly upon a leaf of the pad; then got up, stepped back and ordered the tall man to approach the table. "Write your name below what I have written--and date it." When both men had signed the paper, Lawler folded it, stuck it between some leaves of the pad, and replaced pad and pencil in his pocket. "That's all," he said. "You'll hang out here until the norther blows itself out; then you'll hit the trail to town and tell your story to the sheriff. I'll be doing the honors." He sheathed his gun and flung open the door, stepping back as a white avalanche rushed in; grinning broadly as he saw the men shrink from it. He divined that the men thought he was going to force them out into the storm immediately, and he grinned coldly.