Groping wildly, Yancy reached his rifle and faced about.  His scalp lay open where Slosson’s treacherous blow had fallen and his face was covered with blood; even as his fingers stiffened they found the hammer, but Murrell, springing forward, kicked the gun out of his hands.  Dashing the blood from his eyes, Yancy threw himself on Murrell.  Then, as they staggered to and fro, Yancy dully bent on strangling his enemy, Slosson—­whom the sight of blood had wonderfully sobered—­rushed out from the bar and let loose a perfect torrent of blows with his club.  Murrell felt the fingers that gripped him grow weak, and Yancy dropped heavily to the floor.

How long the boy slept he never knew, but he awoke with a start and a confused sense of things.  He seemed to have heard a cry for help.  But the tavern was very silent now.  The distant murmur of voices and the shouts of laughter had ceased.  He lifted himself up on his elbow and glanced from the window.  The heavens were pale and gray.  It was evidently very late, probably long after midnight but where was his Uncle Bob?

He sank back on his pillow intent and listening.  What he had heard, what he still expected to hear, he could not have told, but he was sure he had been roused by a cry of some sort.  A chilling terror that gripped him fast and would not let him go, mounted to his brain.  Once he thought he heard cautious steps beyond his door.  He could not be certain, yet he imagined the bull-necked landlord standing with his ear to some crack seeking to determine whether or not he slept.  His thin little body grew rigid and a cold sweat started from him.  He momentarily expected the latch to be lifted, then in the heavy silence he caught the sound of some stealthy movement beyond the lath and plaster partition, and an instant later an audible footfall.  He heard the boards creak and give, as the person who had been standing before his door passed down the hall, down the stairs, and to the floor below.

Limp and shivering, he drew his scanty covering tight about him.  In the silence that succeeded, he once more became aware of the tireless chorus of the frogs, the hooting of the owls, and the melancholy and oft-repeated call of the whippoorwill.  But where was his Uncle Bob?  Why didn’t he come to bed?  And whose was that cry for help he had heard?  Memories of idle tales of men foully dealt with in these lonely taverns, of murderous landlords, and mysterious guests who were in league with them, flashed through his mind.

Murrell had followed them for this—­and had killed his Uncle Bob, and he would be sent back to Bladen!  The law had said that Bladen could have him and that his Uncle Bob must give him up.  The law put men in prison—­it hanged them sometimes—­his Uncle Bob had told him all about it—­by the neck with ropes until they were dead!  Maybe they wouldn’t send him back; maybe they would do with him what they had already done with his Uncle Bob; he wanted the open air, the earth under his feet, and the sky over his head.  The four walls stifled him.  He was not afraid of the night, be could run and hide in it—­there were the woods and fields where he would be safe.