"Your old man knifed him, eh?"
She nodded.
"Ugh!" the man shivered. "I couldn't do that. A gun is a straight man's friend, but a knife is the weapon of traitors. I couldn't drive it home."
"Does this man suspect?"
"No."
"Then it is child's play. We will lay a trap."
"No, by God!" Gale interrupted her hotly. "I tried that kind of work, and it won't do. I'm no murderer."
"Those are only words," said the woman, quietly. "To kill your enemy is the law."
The only light in the room came from the stove, a great iron cylinder made from a coal-oil tank that lay on a rectangular bed of sand held inside of four timbers, with a door in one end to take whole lengths of cord-wood, and which, being open, lit the space in front, throwing the sides and corners of the place into blacker mystery.
When he made no answer the squaw slipped out into the shadows, leaving him staring into the flames, to return a moment later bearing something in her hands, which she placed in his. It was a knife in a scabbard, old and worn.