Young Pete in a stupor from which he did not awaken for many hours. He
was put to bed and a doctor summoned from a distant town. It would
have been useless, even brutal, to have questioned Pete, so the sheriff
simply took the two rifles and the cartridges to his office, with what
information the storekeeper could give him. The sheriff, who had
always respected Annersley, was sorry that this thing had happened.
Yet he was not sorry that Young Pete could give no evidence. The
cattlemen would have time to pretty well cover up their tracks.
Annersley had known the risks he was running when he took up the land.
The sheriff told his own conscience that "it was just plain suicide."
His conscience, being the better man, told him that it was "just plain
murder." The sheriff knew--and yet what could he do without evidence,
except visit the scene of the shooting, hold a post-mortem, and wait
until Young Pete was well enough to talk?

One thing puzzled Sheriff Sutton. Both rifles had been used. So the
boy had taken a hand in the fight? Several shots must have been fired,
for Annersley was not a man to suffer such an outrage in silence. And
the boy was known to be a good shot. Yet there had been no news of
anyone having been wounded among the raiders. Sutton was preparing to
ride to the Blue and investigate when a T-Bar-T man loped up and
dismounted. They talked a minute or two. Then the cowboy rode out of
town. The sheriff was no longer puzzled about the two rifles having
been used. The cowboy had told him that two of the T-Bar-T men had
been killed. That in each instance a thirty-thirty, soft-nosed slug
had done the business. Annersley's rifle was an old forty-eighty-two,
shooting a solid lead bullet.

When Sheriff Button arrived at the cabin he found the empty shells on
the floor, noted the holes in the window, and read the story of the