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Updated: June 21, 2025
Someone passing saw the fight and sent for an officer. Mart Wiley was deputy, afraid of neither man, God nor devil. Martin had grown disgusted over the petty crime at these kitchen-dances and started out to clean up this one right. Hap Ruggam killed him. He must have had help, because he first got Mart tied to a tree in the yard.
The man in his dementia hurled the weapon; it struck the sash and caromed off, hitting the stove. Then Hap Ruggam collapsed upon the floor. The woman sprang up. She found the rope thongs which had bound her pack to her shoulders. With steel-taut nerves, she rolled the insensible Ruggam over. She tied his hands; she tied his ankles.
On reaching the timberline they separated. It was agreed that if any of them found signs of Ruggam, the signal for assistance was five shots in quick succession "and keep shooting at intervals until the rest come up." We newspaper folk awaited the capture with professional interest and pardonable excitement....
"Ordinarily a kitchen-dance is harmless enough. But the Lost Nation folks use it as an excuse for a debauch. They gather in some sizable shack, set the stove out into the yard, soak themselves in aromatic spirits of deviltry and dance from Saturday night until Monday noon " "And this Ruggam killed a sheriff at one of them?" "He got into a brawl with another chap about his wife.
His head and his wirelike hair were moving rising, falling. Ruggam, his eyes riveted upon the phantom, recoiled mechanically to the western wall. He finished loading the revolver by the sense of touch. Then: Spurt after spurt of fire lanced the darkness, directed at the Thing in the window.
Her husband's name was mentioned therein; for when the sheriff had commandeered an automobile from the local garage to convey him and his posse to Lost Nation and secure Ruggam, Duncan had been called forth to preside at the steering-wheel. He had thus assisted in the capture and later had been a witness at the trial. The reading ended, the man rolled his head.
It was useless to search these cabins; they were too near civilization. Besides, if Ruggam had left the freight at Norwall on the eastern side of Haystack at noon, he had thirty miles to travel before reaching the territory from which she was starting. So she skirted the abandoned quiet of the clearing, laid the snowshoes properly down before her and bound the thongs securely about her ankles.
"If I wasn't held here, I might go!" he said. "I might try for that five thousand myself!" Cora was sympathetic enough, of course, but she was fast approaching the stage where she needed sympathy herself. "We caught him over on the Purcell farm," mused Duncan. "Something ailed Ruggam. He was drunk and couldn't run. But that wasn't all.
The semi-darkness of the hut, the outline of the moon afar through the uncurtained window these swam before her.... Suddenly her eyes riveted on that curtainless window and she uttered a terrifying cry. Ruggam turned. Outlined in the window aperture against the low-hung moon Martin Wiley, the murdered deputy, was staring into the cabin! From the fugitive's throat came a gurgle.
It was wholly by accident that she had stumbled into the clearing. And the capture of Ruggam had diminished in importance. Warm food, water that would not tear her raw throat, a place to lie and recoup her strength after the chilling winter night these were the only things that counted now. Though she knew it not, in her eyes burned the faint light of fever.
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