He
did not find any fresh tracks, however. And while he was standing in the
dark considering how the hills might have carried the sound deceptively
to his ear, and how he may have been mistaken, from somewhere on the
other side of the ridge came the abrupt report of a gun. The sound was
muffled by the distance, yet it was unmistakable. Starr listened, heard
no second shot, and ran back up the rocky gulch that led to the ridge he
had just left, behind Medina's house.
He was puffing when he reached the place where he had lain between the
two boulders, and he stopped there to listen again. It came,--the sound
he instinctively expected, yet dreaded to hear; the sound of a woman's
high-keyed wailing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"IS HE THEN DEAD--MY SON?"
Starr hurried down the bluff, slipping, sliding, running where the way
was clear of rocks. So presently he came to the stone wall, vaulted over
it, and stopped beside the tragic little group dimly outlined in the
house yard just off the porch.
"My son--my son!" the old woman was wailing, on her knees beside a long,
inert figure lying on its back on the hard-packed earth.
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