Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-11-10

the speaker. It was extraordinary. "You
don't know what you're talking about" he cried
with a cauSelessness and disordered vehemence
which set them first staring, then specializing.
"Come on, you dumbheads; don't talk-ride!"
They were a good six miles to the south of
the fence. Already the road back nome would
have to be followed three parts in the dark.
Dared was the spokesman. Prank, I'm
going to call it a day."
The others reined up with him, but the man
ahead rode on. He didn't seem to hear
Dared lifted his voice. "Come on, call it
day, Frank. Tomorrow, maybe. But you see
we've run it out and they're not here
wait" said Frank over his shoulder, stin
riding on into the pocket.
Whites mount, a mare, laid back her ears,
SHE'D and stood trembling After moment
she whinnied
It was as If she had whinnied for q dozen.
A crashing in the woods above them to the
left and the avalanche came-downstream,
erupting, wheeling, wheeling away with volley-
ing snortS dark rout
Dared, refining his horse, began to shout,
Here they go this way, Frank" But Frank
was yelling: up here, boysl This way, quick!"
It was the same note-excited feverish, els
ordered, breaking like a child's When they
neared him they saw he was of his horse,
rife in hand and down on his knees to study
the ground where the woods began. BY the
time they reached his animal the impetuous
fellow had started up into the cover, his voice
trailing, Come on; spread out and come on!"
White spoke this time. "Be darned If dol"
He lifted protesting hail: Come back here,
Frank You're crazyI It's getting dark"
It was Franks own fault. They told him
plainly to come back and he wouldn't listen.
For a while they could hear his crackle in
the mounting underbrush Then that stopped
whether he had gone too far for their ears
or whether he had come to a halt to give his
own ears a chance. Once, of to his right
a little higher up under the low ceiling of the
trees that darkened moment by moment with
the rush of night, they heard another move
ment another restlesSness Of leaves and stones
Then that was still and everything was still.
Dared ran a sleeve over his face and swung
down. God alive, boysl"
1t was the silence.
The first they heard was the shot. No voice.
Just the one report Then after five breaths
Of another silence a crashing of growth, a
charge in the darkness under the withered
scrub continuous and diminishing.
They shouted, Prank" No answer They
called, Frank Bluedgel"
Now, since they had to, they did Keeping
contact by word and guided partly by direc-
tional memory (and mostly in the end by luck),
after a time they found the storekeeper in a
brake of ferns, lying across his gun.
They got him down to the open, watching
behind them all the while Only then, by the
flares of successive matches, under the noses
Of the snorting horses, did they look for the
damage done.
They remembered the stiffness and the gloom;
1t must have been quite black in there. The
attack had come from behind-eQuine and
pantherine at once, and planned and cunning.
deliberate lunge with forefoot again. The
shoe which had crushed the backbone between
the shoulder blades was a foreshoe-that much
they saw by the match flares In the red wreck.
THEY took no longer getting home than they
had to but it was longer than they would
have wished. With Frank across his own sad