She waited long for a repetition of the sounds. But she did not hear them again. Tremblingly she returned to the cabin and resumed her chair at the table, fighting against a growing presentiment that something had gone wrong with Ben. But she could not have told from what direction the sounds had come, and so it would have been folly for her to ride out to investigate. And so for an hour she sat at the table, cringing away from the silence, starting at intervals, when her imagination tricked her into the belief that sound had begun. And then presently she became aware that there was sound. In the vast silence beyond the cabin door something had moved. She was on her feet instantly, her senses alert. Her fear had left her. Her face was pale, but her lips closed grimly as she went to the rack behind the door and took down a rifle that Ben always kept there. Then she turned the lamp low and cautiously stepped to the door. A pony whinnied, standing with ears erect at the edge of the porch. In a crumpled heap on the ground lay a man. She caught her breath sharply, but in the next instant was out and bending over him. With a strength that seemed almost beyond her shy dragged the limp form to the door where the light from the lamp shone upon it. "Ben!" she said sharply. "What has happened?" She shook him slightly, calling again to him. Aroused, he opened his eyes, recognized her, and raised himself painfully upon one elbow, smiling weakly. "It ain't anything, sis," he said. "Creased in the back of the head. Knocked me cold. Mebbe my shoulder too--I ain't been able to lift my arm." He smiled again--grimly, though wearily. "From the back too. The damned sneak!" Her eyes filled vengefully, and she leaned closer to him, her voice tense. "Who, Ben? Who did it?" "Ferguson," he said sharply. And again, as his eyes closed: "The damned sneak." She swayed dizzily and came very near dropping him to the porch floor. But no sound came from her, and presently when the dizziness had passed, she dragged him to the door, propped it open with a chair, and then dragged him on through the opening to the kitchen, and from there to one of the adjoining rooms. Then with pale face and determined lips she set about the work of taking care of Ben's wounds. The spot on the back of the head, she found, was a mere abrasion, as he had said. But his shoulder had been shattered, the bullet, she discovered, having passed clear through the fleshy part of the shoulder, after breaking one of the smaller bones.