By some mischance the tin bowl upset and fell noisily to the ground.  Expecting to see Harry start up, Joe looked across at him as he stooped to pick up the wayward bowl, but the quiet form did not move.  “Sleeping mighty sound,” Joe soliloquized, as he vigorously began to scour his face with a coarse, unsanitary-looking towel.  Suddenly the towel fell from his hands, and a startled, curious look shot into his face; it had come to him that the scanty clothing which covered his little driver neither rose nor fell.

For a few moments he stood gazing at the dimly outlined figure in the yet uncertain light, a feeling of growing terror stealing over him.  He tried to convince himself that his eyes were deceiving him, yet his laboring heart would not be comforted.  Twice he opened his mouth to call Harry’s name, but his parched throat refused to utter any sound.  He could endure the growing horror no longer, and with set, terrified gaze began to move toward the stretcher.  When at last his laggard steps reached it he had not the courage to shake the slim figure, but in a voice, which sounded strangely unnatural, called his mate’s name.  The quiet of the tent was broken by no response.  With pitiful hesitancy he finally stretched out his hand till it rested on the wan face; then he uttered a great cry—­it was as cold as the face of the dead!

In his terror and excitement he was about to snatch him up in his arms, when a sight, which made him start back with an exclamation of horror met his eyes:  in the side of the tent against which the body rested was a sinister cut, stained with blood.  Pushing the canvas back, the whole treacherous story stood out as clear as daylight; while sleeping, his companion had been stabbed through the folds of the tent.

“There’s only one man under God’s heaven, who’d do a deed like this, and that’s Bill Shuter.”  There was something weirdly ominous in the tones in which he uttered the words; in his dogged manner as he strode out of the tent, cut several of the ropes that fastened it to the ground, pieced them together, tried them to see if the knots were firm—­especially those which formed the noose at the end of the line—­and then winding the rope around his huge arm, strode into Bill Shuter’s tent.

Scarcely had he entered it when a man’s cry of terror rang out on the quiet morning air, and roused the few who already had not risen.  Before the echo had died away, Nellie Shuter ran out of her tent toward her father’s; but before she could reach it Joe Swan emerged from it, his massive hands grasping the rope, which was now wound tightly around her father’s throat.  In vain Shuter struggled to utter another cry, and to thrust away the avenging hand which grasped the rope.

With a terrified scream Nellie sprang upon Joe and endeavored to stop his march toward the derrick in the near distance, the ponderous arm of which stretched enticingly out some nine feet above the ground.  Without swerving an inch to the right or the left, Joe hurried on toward it, while with his disengaged hand, and without apparently using any force, he kept Nellie aside.