"We turn here toward Walton's, Judge," suggested Billy, when the jurist continued to ride straight ahead.

The judge pulled up.

"I'm not going to Walton's!" he cried aloud. "I'm not going, I tell you! You can't make me! You can't."

His voice broke at the last word. He threw his arms aloft in a wild gesture. The features of the face he turned toward Billy were contorted with emotion. He gibbered and mowed at them in the moon-light. He looked like an inmate of Bedlam. He was certainly in a bad way, was Judge Driver.

Suddenly he lost his head. He clapped heels to his horse's flanks in an effort to escape. But both Billy Wingo and Riley Tyler had been waiting for precisely such a move ever since leaving Golden Bar. Two ropes shot out simultaneously. One fastened on the red-and-white pinto's neck, the other settled round the Judge's shoulders. The paint pony stopped abruptly. The judge flew backward from the saddle and hit the snow on the back of his neck.

The three friends dismounted and gathered around the judge. Riley loosened his rope. The judge lay still and gasped and crowed. The wind had been considerably knocked out of him. When he sat up, he was promptly sick, very sick. The paroxysm shook him from head to heels.

It was half an hour before he was able to stand on his feet without support. The three boosted him into the saddle, mounted their own horses and proceeded along the draw.

Whenever the judge made as if to check his horse, which he did more than once, Billy Wingo would crowd his horse forward and kick the pinto. Their progress may be said to have been fairly regular.

A mile from the ranch house they climbed the shelving side of the draw and rode across the flat to where a straggling growth of pine and spruce made a black, pear-shaped blot along the smooth white slope of a saddle-backed hill. The tail of this evergreen plantation ran out across the flat from the base of the hill almost to the edge of the draw they had just quitted. A tall spruce, towering high above his fellows, formed the tip, as it were, of the stem of the pear.

Beyond and below this spruce, where the draw met lower ground and lost its ident.i.ty as a draw, was the Walton ranch house. On the flat the evergreens barred the four riders from the eyes of any one watching from the house.

The four men reached the trees, rode in among them. Three of them dismounted and tied their horses. The fourth remained in the saddle.

Said Billy Wingo to the fourth:

"Get down."

The judge got down. Swiftly his hands were tied behind his back, and his eyes were thoroughly blindfolded with his own silk handkerchief.

"Now, boys," said Billy, lowering his voice, "I guess we know what to do. You, Judge, won't have to say anything, but if anybody else thinks he has to say anything, he's got to do it in a whisper, and a skinny whisper at that. Let's go."

As Billy uttered the last low words Guerilla Melody seized the judge's right arm and forced him into motion. With Riley Tyler leading the judge's mount, the three men scuffled in among the trees on the back trail.

Billy Wingo stood silently in his tracks until the trio were out of earshot, then he padded to the spruce and halted behind it. He removed his overcoat. From a voluminous pocket he took what appeared to be a roll of cloth. He shook out the roll and discovered the common or garden variety of cotton nightshirt, size fifty.

"If whoever's in the house can pick me out from the snow after I'm wearing this, I'll give his eyes credit," he muttered, pulling on the garment in question over his head.

He b.u.t.toned the nightshirt with meticulous care, fished a washed flour sack from a hip pocket and pulled it over his head. A minute or two later he was joined by Riley Tyler.

"If I didn't know it was you," whispered Riley in a delighted hiss, "I'd be scared out of a year's growth. Those eyeholes are plumb gashly."

"I expect," said Billy grimly. "Get on your outfit. I guess you ain't needed, but we can't afford to take any chances."

Riley Tyler threw off his blanket capote, dragged from an inner pocket a disguise similar to the sheriff's and hurriedly put it on.

"Don't come till you see the signal," cautioned Billy, "and if you hear any shots before I give the signal, stay right here where the cover's good and drop anybody you see running away. Y'understand?"

"You bet."

"Judge swallow it all right?"

"Down to the pole. He thinks we're all three with him."

Billy nodded. "Better move along the draw about twenty yards," was his parting order. "You can't see the side the cedars are on from here."

Boldly, without any attempt at concealment, he walked straight to the edge of the draw. Below him barely fifty yards distant were the snow-covered buildings that were the Walton ranch house, the bunk house and the blacksmith shop. He could not see the corrals. They lay beyond the crowding cottonwoods growing beside the little stream that supplied the ranch house with water.

He half slid, half walked down the side of the draw and headed straight for the ranch house. He could not see lamplight shining through any of the windows. But there was a faint glow at the farthest of the windows in the side of the house. This window he knew was one of three lighting the front room, a room that ran clear across the house. This side of the house was clear of young trees and bushes. But on the other side of the house, the north side, Hazel had planted young cedars to serve as a windbreak. These cedars grew within a yard of the house.

Without any fear of being discovered, so confident was he that it would be impossible to see him against the white background, he approached the blacksmith shop, slid between it and the empty bunk house and came to the right angle end of the kitchen. His gun was out, be it known, but he held it behind his back. He wanted no touch of blackness to mar the hue of his costume.

At the corner of the kitchen he dropped on his knees and one hand.

Here behind the windbreak the snow was no more than two or three inches deep, and he crawled along the side of the house toward the faintly glowing window that was his goal, at walking speed.

Crouched beneath the window he laid his ear close to the window sill and listened. For a s.p.a.ce he heard nothing, then feet shuffled across the floor and there was the "chuck" of a log being thrown on the fire.

Then the shuffle of feet again.

Silence.

Inch by inch Billy raised a slow head above the window sill. When his eyes were level with the lower crosspiece of the sash, he paused. For a long time he could see nothing within the room but the fire in the ruddy jaws of the fireplace with its attendant pile of logs, and a big chair over which had been thrown a buffalo robe. Then after a time he saw, beyond the chair, the boot soles of a man lying on the floor. The body of the man lay in the shadow cast by the big chair.

There was something about those boot soles that told Billy that the man was dead.

"I figured it would be this way," Billy told himself. "I didn't see how else it could be. d.a.m.n their souls! They don't stop at anything!"

He continued to stare unblinkingly into the room and after a time he made out the dim lines of another man's figure sitting on the table beside one of the front windows. The head of this other man was turned away from Billy. He was watching the draw through the front window.

But there was no life in the draw--yet.

Billy waited. He continued to wait. His feet began to get cold. They gradually grew numb. The hand that held the six-shooter began to have a fellow feeling, or lack of it rather, with the feet. He changed hands and stuffed the chilled hand under his nightshirt into his armpit. A cramp seized his left knee. He straightened it gingerly and ironed out the cramp with the back of his gun hand.

The cold crept up both legs. When it reached his middle a cramp fell hammer-and-tongs upon his right knee, calf and sole of his foot. He straightened that leg and dealt with it like a brother.

S-s-suschloop! A section of snow several yards square slid off the roof and avalanched upon him. At the sound the figure at the window turned as if shot. Billy, by a supreme effort of will, stifled the impulse to dodge and held his body motionless. He was covered with snow. Snow was down the back of his neck as well as on the window sill in front of his mouth. To all intents and purposes and to any eye he was a pile of snow fallen from the roof.

Swiftly the figure on the table walked across the room to Billy's window and looked out. Billy remained with considerable less movement than the proverbial mouse. The snow, while it covered his head, did not completely conceal his forehead and eyes. But Billy reckoned on the reflection of the firelight on the window-pane to blind somewhat the man within. For a few seconds the man stood looking out the window over Billy's head. The pile of snow he gave but the most pa.s.sing of glances.

But to the frozen nucleus of the snow pile it seemed that the few seconds were hours and that the snow pile was subjected to the most searching scrutiny.

The man returned to his post on the table by the front window, and Billy breathed again. He had been unable to distinguish the man's features. The light from the fire was not strong enough.

After another century of waiting Billy perceived that the fire was again burning low. There was a small spurt of sparks as the remnant of the log fell apart. The man slipped from the table and strode across the room to the pile of logs and sticks beside the fireplace.

This was the moment for which Billy Wingo had been waiting. He scrambled on hands and knees to the front corner of the ranch house.

Whipping a box of matches from a hip pocket, he lit one in a cupped hand.

He let the match burn his fingers before flipping it down. He stood at gaze, straining his eyes down the draw toward the Hillsville trail.

Even as he looked a dark object detached itself from some bushes several hundred yards distant and moved toward the house.

Billy returned to his post at the window. Slowly he raised his head to the level of the lower crosspiece of the sash. When his eyes again became accustomed to the darkness of the room he saw that the man was no longer near the fireplace. He was standing at the front window, staring down the trail.

On account of the soft snow Billy did not hear the approaching horse until it had almost reached the ranch house door. When the horse stopped the man inside the ranch house moved quietly to the door and stood at one side of it. His hand moved to his leg and came away.