A distant sound of disjointed conversation drew his eyes to the bunk-house. A light still burned there.
Urged by sudden recklessness, he hastily donned part of his clothing and climbed outside.
He found the prairie in another of its moods. To-night the moon blazed a spirit that ridiculed the proportions of darkness and day. It seemed inconceivable that the slightest movement could pass unnoticed in such brilliance, but this that he looked on was a new world of silent majesty. There were the old landmarks, but they were altered in size and distance and relative location. So plainly did the cliff across the river stand out that it seemed within a stone's throw, yet any attempt to decipher the familiar strata, the recesses and projections, was defeated by a bewilderingly new mass of shadows and high-lights. The ranch buildings were crowding closer, and the lazy movements of the horses in the corrals came sharp as pistol shots.
Stamford stood for minutes, gripped in the clutch of the prairie by moonlight. His mind refused to turn from the scene; he was restless, unsatisfied, undecided. The light was still there in the bunk-house, and at intervals he could hear the sound of voices.
Bringing himself back to realities by sheer force of will, he moved round to the front of the house, clinging to the shadows. Where they ended he paused a moment to fix in his memory the concealing depressions that stretched further up the slope toward the stables, and then struck swiftly through the moonlight.
He was conscious of an ill-defined desire to conceal his movements from the ranch-house as well as from the bunk-house for which he was making, and he sank to the first cover with a sigh of relief. After a careful inspection in both directions through the long grass he began to crawl forward.
Nearer and nearer he approached the bunk-house, though on a higher level, without having once exposed himself—he was confident of that. The voices grew audible, certain excited words coming to him, then phrases. A wordy quarrel was in progress, from which Bean Slade's high-pitched voice projected itself frequently.
Stamford moved nearer, crept over several rolls to a hollow before the bunk-house, and lay down to listen.
"Yah!" he heard General sneer. "You'd 'a' let him go, you would, and got a bellyful o' lead fer yore trouble, you would."
"There was other ways o' gettin' out of it," protested Bean shrilly, "besides doin' fer him. It was damn brutal murder, I call it."