live. Some day may God give you a good woman who will love you as I
love him. He killed a man, but killing is not always murder. We
have taken your weapons, and the storm will cover our trail. But
you would not follow. I know that. For you know what it means to
love a woman, and so you know what life means to a woman when she
loves a man. MRS. ISOBEL DEANE."

IV

THE MAN-HUNTERS

Like one dazed by a blow Billy read once more the words which Isobel
Deane had left for him. He made no sound after that first cry that had
broken from his lips, but stood looking into the crackling flames of
the fire until a sudden lash of the wind whipped the note from between
his fingers and sent it scurrying away in a white volley of fine snow.
The loss of the note awoke him to action. He started to pursue the bit
of paper, then stopped and laughed. It was a short, mirthless laugh,
the kind of a laugh with which a strong man covers pain. He returned
to the tent again and looked in. He flung back the tent flaps so that
the light could enter and he could see into the box. A few hours
before that box had hidden Scottie Deane, the murderer. And she was
his wife ! He turned back to the fire, and he saw again the red
bakneesh hanging over his tent flap, and the words she had scrawled
with the end of a charred stick, "In honor of the living." That meant
him. Something thick and uncomfortable rose in his throat, and a blur
that was not caused by snow or wind filled his eyes. She had made a
magnificent fight. And she had won. And it suddenly occurred to him
that what she had said in the note was true, and that Scottie Deane
could easily have killed him. The next moment he wondered why he had