"If talking to you was all I had to do, I might monkey around here all summer," he said. "I've give you about eight hours to think this thing over, and that's plenty long enough. I don't like to get into any gun argument with you, because I know that somebody will get hurt. Why in hell don't you surrender decently? I'm a friend of yours and you hadn't ought to want to make any trouble for me. And them's good boys that I've got over there and I wouldn't want to see any of them perforated. And I'd hate like blazes to have to put you out of business. Why don't you act decent and come out like a man?" "Go and look at the corpse," insisted Dakota. "There'll be plenty of time to look at the corpse after you're took." There was no answer. Allen sighed regretfully. "Well," he said presently, "I've done what I could. From now on, I'm looking for you." "Just a minute, Allen," came Dakota's voice. To Allen's surprise he heard a fumbling at the fastenings of the door, and an instant later it swung open and Dakota stood in the opening, one of his six-shooters in hand. "I reckon I know you well enough to be tolerably sure that you'll get me before you leave here," he said, as Allen wheeled and faced him, his arms folded over his chest as a declaration of his present peaceful intentions. "But I want you to get this business straight before anything is started. And then you'll be responsible. I'm giving it to you straight. Somebody's framed up on me. I didn't shoot Doubler. When I left him he was cleaning his rifle. After I left him I heard shooting. I thought it was him trying his rifle, or I would have gone back. "Then I met Sheila Langford on the river trail, near the cabin. She'd heard the shooting, too. She thinks I did it. You think I did it, and Duncan says he saw me do it. Doubler isn't dead. At least he wasn't dead when I left the doctor with him at sundown. But he wasn't far from it, and if he dies without coming to it's likely that things will look bad for me. But because I knew he wasn't dead I took a chance on staying here. I am not allowing that I'm going to let anyone hang me for a thing I didn't do, and so if you're determined to get me without making sure that Doubler's going to have mourners immediately, it's a dead sure thing that some one's going to get hurt. I reckon that's all. I've given you fair warning, and after you get back to the edge of the clearing our friendship don't count any more." He stepped back and closed the door. Allen walked slowly toward the clearing, thinking seriously. He said nothing to Langford or his men concerning his conversation with Dakota, and though he covertly questioned the former he could discover nothing more than that which the Double R owner had already told him. Several times during the morning he was on the point of planning an attack on the cabin, but Dakota's voice had a ring of truth in it and he delayed action, waiting for some more favorable turn of events.