Joel listened. Except for an occasional bleat or stir in the nearby fold, no sound broke the awesome stillness of the early spring night. The collie stood statuelike above his dead mate, his sorrowful dark eyes fixed on Joel in dumb appeal. “We can’t bring her back, Trevy,” said Fenno, gently, caressing the bowed silken head with rough tenderness. “Only the good Gawd c’d do that. An’ in His wisdom, He don’t ever do it no more--nowadays.... _He_ knows why. _I_ don’t. We ain’t so lucky as them folks in Bible times.... But maybe we c’n git the swine that killed her, Trevy!” There was a fiery thread of menace in the old voice, a note that made the collie lift his drooping head and turn toward the rancher. Just then, blurred and from far off, came a scent and a sound. They were indistinguishable to gross human senses. But Treve read them aright. The sound was of three cautiously-ridden horses. The scent was of men;--one of them the man who had loitered beside the fence and flung the meat that had killed Treve’s mate. The dog stiffened. His teeth bared. Deep down in his throat a growl was born. He remembered; and now he understood. This was the man who had somehow done Nellie to death. It was directly after he stopped there, on the far side of the fence, that she had died. Red rage flamed in the dog’s heart and eyes. “Quiet, Trevy!” breathed Joel, at the sound of the low growl. “Hear suthin’, do you? Quiet, then, an’ wait!... Huh! Royce Mack called you a fool, did he? Called _you_ a fool! In the mornin’--” He fell silent. To his own straining ears now came the faint beat of muffle-hoofed horses. Nearer they came and nearer. Joel gripped his shotgun and peered through the high fence palings. Presently, in the dim light, he was aware of three mounted men and two more men on foot, coming toward him from the direction of the coulée. At the same moment one of the three riders spurred forward from the rest. Drawing his horse alongside the high fence, he vaulted lightly from the saddle, coming to earth on the inner side of the palings. As his feet touched ground, something hairy and terrible whizzed at him through the darkness; awful in its murderous silence. Before Greaser Todd could get his hand to his knife or shove back his mysterious assailant, Treve’s mighty jaws had found their goal in his unshaven throat. The rustler crashed to earth, the mutely homicidal collie atop him; the curved white eyeteeth grinding toward the jugular. “What’s the matter, Greaser?” queried the rider behind him, hearing his leader stumble and fall. “Bootsoles too slippery?” As he spoke, he, too, vaulted the palings and dropped to his feet in the yard. One of the unmounted men was climbing the fence in more leisurely fashion, his head appearing now over the top. As calmly as though he were shooting quail, Fenno went into action.