“You skunks bunked here last night!” charged Lawler, sharply.  “When I was here, yesterday, these bunks were made up.  Look at them now!  Talk fast.  Were you here last night?”

The smaller man nodded.

“Why didn’t you cut the fence last night?”

The smaller man grinned.  “We wasn’t aimin’ to get caught.”

“Expected there’d be line riders here, eh?”

The other did not answer.  Lawler watched both men derisively.

“Then, when you saw no one was here, and that it was likely the norther would keep anyone from coming, you cut the fence.  That’s it, eh?”

The two men did not answer, regarding him sullenly.

Lawler smiled.  This time there was a cold mirth in his smile that caused the two men to look quickly at each other.  They paled and scowled at what they saw in Lawler’s eyes.

Half a dozen bunks ranged the side walls of the cabin, four on one side, two on the other, arranged in tiers, upper and lower.  A rough, square table stood near the center of the room, with a low bench on one side of it and several low chairs on the other.  A big chuck-box stood in a corner near the fireplace, its top half open, revealing the supplies with which the receptacle was filled; some shelves on the other side of the fireplace were piled high with canned foods and bulging packages.  The bunks were filled with bedclothing; and an oil-lamp stood on a triangular shelf in a corner near the door.  The walls were bare with the exception of some highly colored lithographs that, evidently, had been placed there by someone in whom the love of art still flourished.

It was cold in the cabin.  A window in the north wall, with four small panes of glass in it, was slowly whitening with the frost that was stealing over it.  In the corners of the mullions were fine snow drifts; and through a small crevice in the roof a white spray filtered, ballooning around the room.  The temperature was rapidly falling.

During the silence which followed Lawler’s words, and while the two fence cutters watched each other, and Lawler, all caught the voice of the storm, raging, furious, incessant.

With his free hand Lawler unbuttoned his coat, tossed his cap into a bunk and ran a hand through his hair, shoving it back from his forehead.  His movements were deliberate.  It was as though catching fence cutters was an everyday occurrence.

Yet something in his eyes—­the thing the two men had seen—­gave the lie to the atmosphere of deliberate ease that radiated from him.  In his eyes was something that warned, that hinted of passion.

As the men watched him, noting his muscular neck and shoulders; the slim waist of him, the set of his head—­which had that hint of conscious strength, mental and physical, which marks the intelligent fighter—­they shrank a little, glowering sullenly.

Lawler stood close to the door, the pistol dangling from his right hand.  He had hooked the thumb of the left hand into his cartridge belt, and his eyes were gleaming with feline humor.