Barrington returned Payne’s greeting, and sat down with Dane close beside him, while, when the wounded man raised his head, the doctor spoke softly to the magistrate from the settlement a league or two away.

“I fancy he can talk to you, but you had better be quick if you wish to ask him anything,” he said.

Courthorne seemed to have heard him, for he smiled a little as he glanced at Barrington.  “I’m afraid it will hurt you to hear what I have to tell this gentleman,” he said.  “Now, I want you to listen carefully, and every word put down.  Doctor, a little more brandy.”

Barrington apparently would have spoken, but, while the doctor held a glass to the bloodless lips, the magistrate, who took up a strip of paper, signed to him.

“We’ll have it in due form.  Give him that book, doctor,” he said.  “Now repeat after me, and then we’ll take your testimony.”

It was done, and a flicker of irony showed in Courthorne’s half-closed eyes.

“You feel more sure of me after that?” he said, in a voice that was very faint and strained.  “Still, you see, I could gain nothing by deviating from the truth now.  Well, I shot Trooper Shannon.  You’ll have the date in the warrant.  Don’t know if it will seem strange to you, but I forget it.  I borrowed farmer Winston’s horse and rifle without his knowledge, though I had paid him a trifle to personate me and draw the troopers off the whisky-runners.  That was Winston’s only complicity.  The troopers, who fancied they were chasing him, followed me until his horse which I was riding went through the ice, but Winston was in Montana at the time, and did not know that I was alive until a very little while ago.  Now, you can straighten that up and read it out to me.”

The magistrate’s pen scratched noisily in the stillness of the room, but, before he had finished, Sergeant Stimson, hot and dusty, came in.  Then he raised his hand, and for a while his voice rose and fell monotonously, until Courthorne nodded.

“That’s all right,” he said.  “I’ll sign.”

The doctor raised him a trifle, and moistened his lips with brandy as he gave him the pen.  It scratched for a moment or two, and then fell from his relaxing fingers, while the man who took the paper wrote across the foot of it, and then would have handed it to Colonel Barrington, but that Dane quietly laid his hand upon it.

“No,” he said.  “If you want another witness take me.”

Barrington thanked him with a gesture, and Courthorne, looking round, saw Stimson.

“You have been very patient, Sergeant, and it’s rough on you that the one man you can lay your hands upon is slipping away from you,” he said.  “You’ll see by my deposition that Winston thought me as dead as the rest of you did.”

Stimson nodded to the magistrate.  “I heard what was read, and it is confirmed by the facts I have picked up,” he said.