Determinedly Cap’n Ira led the old mare into and down the slope of this gully.

It was steep.  He went ahead haltingly, trying to steady his footsteps with the cane, which sank deeply into the sand, making orifices which, in the pale light of the dawn, seemed to startle the mare.  She held back, scuffling and snorting.

“Come on, drat ye!” adjured the captain.  “You needn’t blow your nose.  You ain’t been taking snuff.”

The sand was so light and dry that it seemed to be on the move all about them.  There was a stealthy sound to the whispering particles, too, as though they breathed.  “Hush.’  Hush-sh-sh!” The old man was made nervous by it.  He began to glance back over his shoulder at the faintly objecting mare.  When Queenie slipped a little and scrambled in the unstable sand he uttered such an exclamation as might have been wrung from him at time of stress upon his quarter-deck.

“I swan!  I’d rather be keelhauled than do this,” burst from his lips finally.

But they were well into the gully now.  The walls on either hand towered far above their heads.  He halted, and the mare stood still, again blowing softly through her nostrils.

The old man, with shaking hands, took from under his coat the heavy article that had sagged his pocket.  It was a black, old-fashioned, seven-chambered revolver, well oiled and as grim-looking as a rifled cannon on a battleship.  He produced three greased cartridges, broke the weapon, inserted the cartridges, then closed it and spun the cylinder.  It was not an unfamiliar weapon, this.  Its mere grim appearance, stuck into Cap’n Ira’s waistband, had once quelled mutiny aboard the Susan Gatskill.

While he was thus engaged he had not even glanced around at the old mare.  Suddenly he felt a touch upon his shoulder, then upon the sleeve of his coat.  He felt a creepy chill the length of his spine.  It seemed as if the hand of Prudence had been laid softly upon him.

“I swan!” he gulped, shaking himself.  “I’m as flighty as a gal.  What th’—­” He looked back.  Queenie was nuzzling his arm questioningly.  Her ears were cocked forward; her surprised face was almost ridiculously human in its expression.

Cap’n Ira groaned again.  He shuddered.  But his gnarled hand gripped the hard-rubber butt of the revolver with the desperation of the deed he had screwed his courage to do.  Better the old mare should be put out of the way than that she should fall into hands that would misuse her.  And he feared what other accident might happen if Prudence continued to take care of the animal.

“I swan!  It’s a wrench,” admitted Cap’n Ira, swerving to point the muzzle of the revolver at the gray mare.

He looked all about again.  Yes, the position was right.  If she fell here, a man with a shovel could easily pry down tons of sand from either bank upon her in a few minutes.  The burial might be done by himself without any other soul knowing what had become of Queenie.