Jean heard the bullet strike.

Jacobs fell to his knees, then forward on his face.
Jean Isbel felt himself turned to marble.

The suddenness of this tragedy paralyzed him.

His gaze remained riveted on those prostrate forms.
A hand clutched his arm--a shaking woman's hand, slim and hard and tense.
"Bill's--killed!" whispered a broken voice.

"I was watchin'....
They're both dead!" The wives of Jacobs and Guy Isbel had slipped up behind Jean and from behind him they had seen the tragedy.
"I asked Bill--not to--go," faltered the Jacobs woman, and, covering her face with her hands, she groped back to the comer of the cabin, where the other women, shaking and white, received her in their arms.
Guy Isbel's wife stood at the window, peering over Jean's shoulder.