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with an evil face and lustful eyes. Pierce, they called him, Pierce Boyden, lately come to the wilderness. Fraley hated him and feared him.
    “Here, you Pierce, come in here! We gotta get rid of this old woman. Give us a hand.”
    Then, turning to the other three men who drove up, he gave his orders.
    “Pete, you stand there with your gun and watch that girl while she milks that cow and gits us some grub. Whist, you and Babe get your shovels and be quick about it.”
    Fraley darted around the house to where the cow stood waiting to be milked. Every word that was spoken stung its terrible meaning into her frightened soul. Scarcely knowing what she did, she went at the task, a task from which her mother had saved her as long as she could. The angry voice of Brand rang from the house where he was moving around—roughly shoving a chair across the floor, flinging the old tin cup against the wall in his anger. She shuddered as she thought of what the men were doing. Her precious mother!
    The tears that had been flowing seemed to sting backward in her eyes. Her cheeks scorched dry, her heart came choking to her throat. Her hands were numb and could scarcely hold the pail in place. The milk was going everywhere.
    The voice of Brand, drunker than usual, sailed out into the twilight from the open doorway. “You, Pete! Stay there till I come back. If she starts to run, shoot her in the feet, then she can’t go fur!” He laughed a terrible haw, haw, and then she could hear the awful procession going down to the mountain.
    She knew what they were doing. She could hear the ring of a shovel against a rock. It seemed that every clod they turned fell across her quivering heart.
    Pete, with his gun, stood guard at the corner of the house. Pete, the silent one with the terrible leering eyes of hate. Pete who never smiled, not even when he was drunk. And now he was drunk! Oh, why had she lost her senses? Why had she not gone before they came, as her mother had meant her to do?
    The old dog hobbled to her and began to lick the tears from her face, and she felt comforted and less afraid. She whispered to him to lie down, and he obeyed her, sneaking into a shadow behind the cow.
    Pete stalked nearer and gruffly bade her to hurry. She managed to finish her milking, though her hands still felt more dead than alive, and stumbled into the house. The old dog slunk after her and hid in the bushes near the door. The shadows were growing long and deep on the grass and on the mountains across the dark valley where they had taken—No! It was not her mother! Merely the worn-out dress with which she was done! Hadn’t mother tried to make her understand that?
    She tried to take a deep breath and hold her shoulders up as she marched around the room, tried not to see the empty space where the cot had stood. Tried not to think, tried just to get the supper and get the men to eating. They were hungry now, and they would not bother her until they were fed, if she fed them quickly.
    She started the coffee boiling and put some salt meat on to cook. She fried a large skillet of potatoes and mixed up the crude corn bread. The familiar duties seemed to take her hours, and all the while her heart was listening in terror for the sound of returning feet. Pete had come into the house and was sitting in the corner with his gun aimed toward her. She shuddered when she looked at him, not so much because of the gun as because of the cunning look in his eyes, and once as she glanced up because she could not keep her eyes away from his shadowy corner he laughed, a horrid cackle, almost demonical. Pete, who never even smiled! It was as if he had her in his power. As if he was gloating over it. She would rather Brand had left almost any of the men than Pete. There was something about him that did not seem quite human.
    Feverishly she worked, her head throbbing with her haste, setting out the old table with the tin plates, the cracked cups. She could hear the men’s voices.