And Lawler's gun did swing up again, but the voice of the tall man came, blurtingly: "Warden told us to knife any men we found here." Lawler's lips straightened, and his eyes glowed with a passion so intense that the men shrank, gibbering, in the grip of a mighty paralysis.
Lawler walked to the table and sat beside it, placing the gun near his right hand.

The men watched him, fascinated; noting his swift movements as he plunged a hand into a pocket and drew out a small pad of paper and a pencil.

He wrote rapidly upon a leaf of the pad; then got up, stepped back and ordered the tall man to approach the table.
"Write your name below what I have written--and date it." When both men had signed the paper, Lawler folded it, stuck it between some leaves of the pad, and replaced pad and pencil in his pocket.
"That's all," he said.

"You'll hang out here until the norther blows itself out; then you'll hit the trail to town and tell your story to the sheriff.

I'll be doing the honors." He sheathed his gun and flung open the door, stepping back as a white avalanche rushed in; grinning broadly as he saw the men shrink from it.
He divined that the men thought he was going to force them out into the storm immediately, and he grinned coldly.
"You can be tickled that I'm not sending you out into it, to drift with the cattle you tried to kill," he said.