After a period Black Tom rose, making ready to leave, and now Turner Stacy had need to hasten. The point at which he wished to await Kinnard's second in command was the outer end of a narrow defile which served as a sort of gateway to the place. Centuries of trickling water-tongues had licked it out of the rock walls and it was so narrow that two men could not pass through it abreast. But Carmichael paused for further converse on the edge of his departure, and Turner wailed for some minutes, shivering because he had taken off his coat, before his ears told him of the approach of a single pair of heavy feet. The scudding raggedness of the clouds had been swept into wider tatters now and the moon was steadier though still not brightly clear. Bear Cat stooped, like a crouching panther, just outside the elbow of the rock wall, holding his coat as a _matador_ holds the flag in the course of a charging bull. Then a bulky figure emerged and there followed a sweep of heavy cloth; an attempted outcry which ended in a stifled gurgle, and Carmichael went down, borne under the impact of an unexpected onslaught, with his breath smothered in an enmeshing tangle. For a moment Bear Cat knelt on the prostrate figure which had been stunned by its heavy fall, twisting the coat about the face and throat; then, experimentally, he eased the suffocation--and there was no hint of attempted outcry. A few minutes later Black Tom opened his eyes and peered through the darkness. To his dizzy eyes matters seemed confused. His mouth was securely gagged and, at his back, his wrists were so stiffly pinioned that when he struggled to free them he felt the nasty bite of metal--evidently a buckle. Above him he made out a pair of eyes that glittered down on him with an unpleasant truculence. "Git up an' come on," ordered a voice. "Ye'll hev ter excuse me fer takin' yore rifle-gun an' pistol." Slowly Tom rose and went, prodded into amenability by the muzzle of a rifle in the small of his back. When he had been thus goaded to the point where his horse was hitched his captor stripped saddle, bridle and halter of their straps and ropes, and set the beast free. Some of the commandeered tethers he employed to truss his prisoner up in a manner that left him as helplessly immovable as a mummy. "Now I reckon ye'll hev ter wait fer me a leetle," said Bear Cat with brutal shortness. "Thar's still one more back thar ter attend ter." Carrying with him bridle-reins and stirrup-straps, he disappeared again into the defile. Creeping for the second time with the best of his Indian-like stealth to the edge of the fire-lighted clearing, he saw Jake Kinnard standing, with his eyes on the embers, ten feet away from the rifle that was propped against a tree.