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Updated: May 3, 2025
He walked over and laid a hand on her forehead and she involuntarily shrank from his touch, shuddering, for the hand which he had placed on her forehead was the right one the hand with which he had signed the agreement with Dakota Doubler's death warrant. "Don't, please," she said. "Cross, too?" he said jocularly. "Just tired," she lied listlessly, and with an air of great indifference.
There was a good moon, and its mellow light streamed full into Dakota's grim, travel-stained face as he halted his pony on the crest of a slope above the Two Forks and pointed out a light that glimmered weakly through the trees on a level some distance on the other side of the river. "There's Doubler's cabin where you see that light," he continued, speaking to Sheila in a low voice.
Doubler's interest was now intense; he spoke eagerly: "What did they say?" "I reckon you ought to be able to guess what they said," said Duncan with a crafty smile. "I reckon you know that Langford wants your land mighty bad, don't you? And you won't sell. Didn't he tell you in front of me that he was going to make trouble for you?
"I meant that it was bad business to allow Doubler's presence on the Two Forks to affect the profits of the Double R. Perhaps I have been stung as you call it but if I have been I am not complaining." Duncan's eyes glinted with satisfaction.
He was trembling horribly as he came close to her, and his breath was coughing in his throat shrilly. "I won't do anything of the kind!" Sheila got to her feet, and stood, rigid with anger, her eyes flaming defiance. "I am going to Doubler's cabin this minute, and if you molest me again I shall go to the sheriff with my story!"
His manner toward her was always cordial, and he seemed not to have a care. One morning, however, she rode up to the door of the cabin and Doubler's face was serious. He stood quietly in the doorway, watching her as she sat on her pony, not offering to assist her down as he usually did, and she knew instantly that something had happened to disturb his peace of mind.
Sheila drew the animal up on the rises, breathing it sometimes, but on the levels she urged it with whip and spur, and in something more than an hour after leaving Doubler's cabin, she flashed by the quicksand crossing, which she estimated as being not more than twelve miles from her journey's end.
There was an open stretch of grass land between the crossing and Doubler's cabin, and when Langford urged his pony up the sloping bank of the river he saw the nester standing near the door of the cabin, watching. Langford was about to force his pony to a faster pace, when he saw Doubler raise a rifle to his shoulder.
He had almost reached the water's edge when there came a spurt of flame from the door of Doubler's cabin, followed by the sharp whip like crack of a rifle! In the doorway of the cabin, clearly outlined against the flickering light of the interior, was a man. And as Sheila watched another streak of fire burst from the door, and she heard the shrill sighing of the bullet, heard the horseman curse.
With a secret satisfaction he had watched Langford's face this morning when he had told him that Doubler had long been suspected of rustling; that the men of the Double R had never been able to catch him in the act, but that the number of cattle missing had seemed to indicate the nester's guilt. Doubler's land was especially desirable, he had told Langford, and this was the truth.
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