The bearded man obeyed.  To have secured his freedom he could not have done otherwise.

For ten minutes they moved ahead, only the crunching snow breaking the stillness.

“Trot!” said Ben.

“I can’t.”

“Trot!” There was no misunderstanding the tone.

In single file they jogged ahead, reached the river, and descended to the level surface of its bed.

“Keep to the middle, and go straight ahead.”

On they went—­jog, jog, jog.

Of a sudden from under cover of the bank a frightened cottontail sprang forth and started running.  Instantly there was the report of a big revolver, and Tom jumped as though he felt the bullet in his back.  Again the report sounded, and this time the rabbit rolled over and over in the snow.

Without stopping, Ben picked up the still struggling game and slipped a couple of fresh cartridges into the empty revolver chambers.  The banks were lined with burrows and tracks, and within five minutes a second cottontail met the fate of the first.

“Come back!” called Ben to the man ahead.

Again Tom obeyed.  He would have gone barefoot in the snow without a question now.

“Can you make a fire?”

“Yes.”

“Do it, then.  I left the matches in your pocket.”

On opposite sides of the fire, from long forked sticks of green ash, they broiled strips of the meat which Ben dressed and cut.  Likewise fronting each other, they ate in silence.  Darkness was falling, and the glow from the embers lit their faces like those of two friends camping after a day’s hunt.  Had it not all been such deadly earnest, the scene would have been farce-comedy.  Suddenly Tom Blair raised his eyes.

“What are you going to do with me?” he asked directly.

Ben said nothing.

The question was not repeated, but another trembled on the speaker’s lips.  At last it found words.

“When you had me down I—­I thought you had done for me.  Why did you—­let me up?”

A pause followed.  Then Ben’s blue eyes raised and met the other’s.

“You’d really like to know?”

“Yes.”

Another moment of hesitation, but the youth’s eyes did not move.  “Very well, I’ll tell you.”  More to himself than to the other he was speaking.  His voice softened unconsciously.  “A girl saved you that time, Tom Blair, a girl you never saw.  You haven’t any idea what it means, but I love that girl, and I could never look her in the face again with blood on my hands, even such blood as yours.  That’s the reason.”

For a moment Tom Blair was silent; then into his brain there flashed a suggestion, and he grasped at it as a drowning man at a straw.

“Wouldn’t it be blood on your hands just the same if you take me back where we’re headed, back to Mick Kennedy and—­”

With a single motion, swift as though raised by a spring, Ben was upon his feet.