The story halted here for a moment before Howard took it up again.  “Things don’t always come out the way you figure them.  We didn’t anticipate any trouble.  We outnumbered them two to one.  We had the advantage of the surprise.  You couldn’t guess that for anything but a cinch, could you?”

“And it turned out different?”

“One of us stumbled over a rock as we were creeping forward.  Campeau heard us and drew.  The first shot came from them.  Now, I’m going to tell you something you’re to keep under your own hat.  It will surprise you a heap when I tell you that one man on our side did all the damage.  He was at the haid of the line, and it happens he is a dead shot.  He is liable to rages, when he acts like a crazy man.  He got one now.  Before we could put a stopper on him, he had killed Campeau and Jennings, and wounded the herders.  The whole thing was done before you could wink an eye six times.  For just about that long we stood there like roped calves.  Then we downed the man in his tracks, slammed him with the butt of a revolver.”

Howard stopped and looked at the ranger before he spoke again.  His voice was rough and hoarse.

“Steve, I’ve seen men killed before, but I never saw anything so awful as that.  It was just like they had been struck by lightning for suddenness.  There was that devil scattering death among them and the poor fellows crumpling up like rabbits.  I tell you every time I think of it the thing makes me sick.”

The ranger nodded.  He understood.  The picture rose before him of a man in a Berserk rage, stark mad for the moment, playing Destiny on that lonely, moonlit hill.  The face his instinct fitted to the irresponsible murderer was that of Jed Briscoe.  Somehow he was sure of that, beyond the shadow of a doubt.  His imagination conceived that long ride back across the hills, the deep agonies of silence, the fierce moments of vindictive accusation.  No doubt for long the tug of conscience was with them in all their waking hours, for these men were mostly simple-minded cattlemen caught in the web of evil chance.

“That’s how it was, Steve.  In as long as it takes to empty a Winchester, we were every one of us guilty of a murder we’d each have given a laig to have stopped.  We were all in it, all tied together, because we had broke the law to go raiding in the first place.  Technically, the man that emptied that rifle wasn’t any more guilty than us poor wretches that stood frozen there while he did it.  Put it that we might shave the gallows, even then the penitentiary would bury us.  There was only one thing to do.  We agreed to stand together, and keep mum.”

“Is that why you’re telling me, Alec?” Fraser smiled.

“We ain’t telling you, not legally,” the cow-puncher answered coolly.  “If you was ever to say we had, Dick and me would deny it.  But we ain’t worrying any about you telling it.  You’re a clam, and we know it.  No, we’re telling you, son, because we want you to know about how it was.  The boys didn’t ride out to do murder.  They rode out simply to drive the sheep off their range.”