A Tar-Heel Baron

by Mabell S. C. Smith

He took down the boards that filled the cave's mouth, and pulled the bushes more carefully before it. The dogs would find and reveal him as quickly with one arrangement as the other, and he had no desire to undergo a siege shut up in that hole, when he might burst out and defend himself with some enjoyment.

Screened by his net-work of bushes, he listened keenly to every sound. A misgiving seized him that Bud had betrayed him, and he cursed him in a whisper. Yarebrough had told him in the afternoon that his baby was ill, and that he could not leave Melissa alone with her that night; but he had confessed at the same time, with his usual lack of reticence, that the Baron had "been a-talkin'" to him, and Pink suspected that the baby's illness was a fabrication to excuse his non-appearance at the still, and possibly his treachery. Pressley's judgment of his partner's honor was based on his own, and he felt in his pocket to make sure of the safety there of a letter whose crackle sounded pleasantly in his ears.

"'Twon' do to give him too much rope," he muttered.

Nearer came the soft scampering of dogs and the trampling of men, and the torches' glow warming the unlighted forest. Pressley hoped that they might pass along the mountain's side below him, or on top of the ledge that roofed his cavern, but there always was danger from the dogs. Even as he thought it, one padded along the shelf of rock that lay like a step before his door, and stopped short with a growl. He was so near that Pink struck him with the butt of his revolver, and sent him off with a paw uplifted in pain.

The man leaned out from his shelter and stared towards the right, whence the lights were coming. Then he looked straight ahead for a moment, down the mountain, under the leafy tops, and wished it were all over and he knew how it had come out.

When he looked back the foremost men were in view, a group of three or four, with their dogs following at heel soberly enough. Their torches flung grotesque shadows on the trees, and distorted their figures into uncouth semblances. He could not recognize them, yet they seemed familiar. Those two in front—was it——? Yes, by God! Like a fiend he sprang from his lair and rushed at von Rittenheim, as if from the very bowels of the rock. His face glared, malignant, in the unsteady light.

"So you did squeal on me, you damned German!" he yelled. "Take that and that and that." He fired three times full at von Rittenheim's face. With the third shot another rang in unison, and Pressley fell, twisted and snarling, on the stone before his still.

Bob Morgan's hand, holding the smoking pistol, fell to his side.

"Are you all right, von Rittenheim?" he asked; then added, weakly, "I reckon you'll have to carry me down, boys. He's touched me." And he staggered into Friedrich's arms.

He had been walking a stride higher up the hill-side than von Rittenheim, and, flinging himself from his greater elevation between the German and his assailant, he had received the bullets meant for Friedrich's head lower in his own body.