"Shut up!" Barr whirled furiously on his cousin who had started to speak. He said, more to himself than to anyone else, "Blazer's guns _was_ found in his cabin." Jeff laughed tauntingly. "You hillbillies are brave men! Now all you have to do is admit that whoever shot Johnny was hiding in the brush." Still furious, Barr regarded him steadily. "How do ya know that?" "All I had to do was look." "What'd ya look at?" Jeff answered contemptuously, "I wouldn't expect any of you to think that far, but the bullet went clear through Johnny. There are enough trees and shrubs around so that it had to nick one of them. It's easy to figure the angle it came from." Jeff held his breath. He himself had not thought of this until now, but it had to be right. Johnny Blazer was a woodsman. If whoever shot him had been in the open, Johnny would have seen him. Because he was unarmed, he probably would have died anyhow. But he would have died in the brush for he would at least have tried to escape. Slow-thinking Dabb digested Jeff's statement and spoke solemnly. "Hit's right, Barr. None among us thought to look." Barr was momentarily bewildered. "None saw the need." "But need there might be." "Go look, Dabb." "I'll gao, too," Pete offered. "Dabb's goin'." Rifle in the crook of his arm, Dabb left the cabin. Jeff waited uneasily. Dabb's education might be a bit short in the conjugation of verbs and the more complex forms of mathematics, but it had taught him all about ballistics. When he came back he would know whether or not Johnny had been shot from ambush. If he hadn't been--Jeff looked at Barr's stormy eyes and shuddered. Twenty minutes later, Dabb returned. He came slowly, and somewhat shrunkenly, as though he had been both derided and belittled. He stood in the doorway, not looking at the rest, and when he spoke his voice was muffled and reluctant. "Hit's true, Barr. Hit's true enough. Whosoever shot Blazer was crouchin' in a little patch of evergreens a hunnert an' fifty steps from the road." He said, as though that was vastly important, "With my own eyes I saw his crouch. He broke some twigs the better to see." Something came into the cabin with him, an unseen but heavy and mournful something that seemed, within itself, to rob everyone of the power of speech. The Whitneys looked sidewise at each other and Barr spoke slowly, "Thus ye saw?" "Thus I saw." "Whar did the lead strike?" "The tree," Dabb answered dully. "Hit's buried in the tree." There was silence which Barr broke with a soul-desolated cry, "This day I know shame!" They were weighted as though by heavy burdens, and Jeff understood why they scourged themselves. By the cowardly action of one of their number, something they could never get back had been taken from all of them. They must hang their heads because among them walked a man who was not a man. Jeff rubbed salt into their wounds. "You can all be proud of yourselves."