understand a word he said, so I thought I better go back home an' git
some help, seein's I couldn't manage him by myself. So I dragged him
up on the bank an' made him comfortable as I could, and lit out fer
home. We thought we'd better bring him up here, Mr. Jones, it bein'
just as near an' you could git the doctor sooner. I hitched up the
buck-board and went back. Pa an' some of the other fellers took their
guns an' went up in the woods lookin' fer the man that done the
shootin'. The thing that worries all of us is did the same man do the
shootin', or was there two of 'em, one waitin' down at the cross-
roads?"

"Must have been two," said Jones, thoughtfully. "The same man couldn't
have got down there ahead of him, that's sure. Did anybody go up to
Green Fancy to make inquiries?"

"'Twasn't necessary. Mr. Curtis heard the shootin' an' jest before we
left he sent a man out to see what it was all about. The old skeezicks
that's been drivin' his car lately come down half-dressed. He said
nothin' out of the way had happened up at Green Fancy. Nobody had been
nosin' around their place, an' if they had, he said, there wasn't
anybody there who could hit the side of a barn with a rifle."

"It's most mysterious," said Barnes, glancing around the circle of
awed faces. "There must have been some one lying in wait for these
men, and with a very definite purpose in mind."

"Strikes me," said Jones, "that these two men were up to some kind of
dirty work themselves, else why did they say they were goin' to
Spanish Falls? It's my idee that they went up that road to lay fer
somebody comin' down from the border, and they got theirs good an'