Lawler walked to the table and sat beside it, placing the gun near his right hand.  The men watched him, fascinated; noting his swift movements as he plunged a hand into a pocket and drew out a small pad of paper and a pencil.  He wrote rapidly upon a leaf of the pad; then got up, stepped back and ordered the tall man to approach the table.

“Write your name below what I have written—­and date it.”

When both men had signed the paper, Lawler folded it, stuck it between some leaves of the pad, and replaced pad and pencil in his pocket.

“That’s all,” he said.  “You’ll hang out here until the norther blows itself out; then you’ll hit the trail to town and tell your story to the sheriff.  I’ll be doing the honors.”

He sheathed his gun and flung open the door, stepping back as a white avalanche rushed in; grinning broadly as he saw the men shrink from it.  He divined that the men thought he was going to force them out into the storm immediately, and he grinned coldly.

“You can be tickled that I’m not sending you out into it, to drift with the cattle you tried to kill,” he said.  “You’d deserve that, plenty.  You’ll find wood beside the dugout.  Get some of it in here and start a fire.  Move; and don’t try any monkey business!”

He closed the door as the men went out.  He had no fear that they would try to escape—­even a threat of death could not have forced them to leave the cabin.

When they came in they kindled a fire in the big fireplace, hovering close to it after the blaze sprang up, enjoying its warmth, for the interior of the cabin had become frigid.

Lawler, however, did not permit the men to enjoy the fire.  He sent them out for more wood, and when they had piled a goodly supply in a corner, and had filled a tin water pail from a water hole situated about a hundred feet straight out from the door of the cabin, he sent them again to the dugout after their ropes.  With the ropes, despite the sullen objections of the men, he bound their hands and feet tightly, afterward picking the men up and tossing them ungently into upper bunks on opposite sides of the room.

He stood, after watching them for a time, his face expressionless.

“That’s just so you won’t get to thinking you are company,” he said.  “We’re holed up for a long time, maybe, and I don’t want you to bother me, a heap.  If you get to bothering me—­disturbing my sleep trying to untangle yourselves from those ropes, why——­”

He significantly tapped his pistol.  Then he pulled a chair close to the fire, dropped into it, rolled a cigarette, and calmly smoked, watching the white fleece trail up the chimney.

CHAPTER XVIII

STORM-DRIVEN

For an hour there was no sound in the cabin.  Lawler smoked several cigarettes.  Once he got up and threw more wood upon the fire, standing in front of the blaze for several minutes stretching his long legs, watching the licking tongues as they were sucked up the chimney by the shrieking wind.