ammunition to be found in the bunk-house. Mrs. Ellison, to whom he was forced to appeal, found one box of fifty cartridges on a shelf in the kitchen, which she gave him, asking no questions. He returned to his horse without explanation, mounted and started on his way.
Mrs. Ellison was at the gate. She took hold of the bridle as he stopped beside her.
"Tom Simpson, where are you going?" she asked, the old dread that had moved again in her heart that tragic morning making her voice sound weary, as if she had come a long distance to meet him and question him at the gate.
"To scout around a little," he replied, trying to make his words come lightly, quickly, to give the impression that it was an expedition of slight importance.
"Don't go," she pleaded, looking up with such beseeching fear in her eyes that drew his hand with impetuous start as if to give her an assuring caress. "What are a few horses for you to put your life up for—you a stranger from another land? Don't you go. Let them have the horses—we can live down the loss, as we've lived down bigger ones."
"Just so," Tom replied abstractedly, his eyes studying the road where the hoofprints of the stolen horses told which way they had gone. "But because you are strong to bear misfortune is no reason why you shouldn't be spared it."
"Wait till Sheriff Treadwell comes, Tom. He'll be here by noon, if not before."
Tom was studying the tracks in the road, which were growing plainer as daylight increased. He read them for
