the outer bunk post, where the knot could not possibly be reached by manacled hands. Mudgett's feet then were similarly bound, and lashed flat against the end of the bunk.
"I'll ease 'em up a bit when I come back," Dexter promised. "Meanwhile you'll have to make the best of it."
Serene in the knowledge that his prisoners would not escape during his absence, he walked out of the cabin and slammed the door behind him.
It was pitch dark outside, and growing colder. The corporal felt his way across the clearing to the thicket where he had left Susy, and was not greatly astonished to find that the pony had disappeared. His pocket lamp revealed her hoof prints leading through the timber, and he followed her for a half mile or so across the slope, and finally overtook her in an open ravine where she had smelled out a patch of elk hay that could be pawed up from under the snow.
She came back a few steps to meet him, and meekly nudged him with her forehead while she was receiving her deserved scolding. Dexter relieved her of the grim burden she carried. He made a hammock sling of his bed tarp and picket rope; and as the Indians protect their dead, so he hoisted among scented tree branches the muffled figure of his one-time comrade; and left him for the night. This melancholy service rendered, he took off Susy's saddle, removed the bit from her mouth, and permitted her to remain in the gulley where she had found shelter and pasturage for herself.
Then, with his thoughts on the savory pot that Mudgett had so opportu...There was an appalling hush; and then the horrid thump of another gunshot jarred the door of the cabin. The corporal's chilled fingers had found the latch at last, and as he lifted it up, he flung his weight forward to throw open the door. But the latch seemed to have jammed, and his shoulder bumped forcibly against solid planks that failed to give. He hammered at the catch, and heaved himself recklessly against the barrier, in an effort to break his way in. But he only bruised his shoulder, and the door would not yield. Instead of wasting his further efforts, he stooped to discover what was wrong. And then he understood. The bar was down. The door had been locked from the inside.

From the darkened cabin there came a vague jumble of sounds: a soft thud of a weight falling, a stifled groan of mortal anguish, a fluttering movement of something on the creaking floorboards. But the wind was also in Dexter's ears, and he could not have sworn definitely just what it was he heard.

He remembered a split of log on the ground, that he had stumbled over when he crossed the clearing a while before. Now he retraced his steps, and dug the heavy billet out of the snow. 

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