The influence of Musa, a wildly beautiful dumb girl, upon every citizen of Gallows Gulch, a rough western mining town, is almost uncanny. They fear, yet hate her, and claim she has “the evil eye.” John Coen and Hapgood, miners, endeavor to make advances to her, but are repulsed. One day Mr. Stingo, a sky-pilot, reads to Musa a letter announcing that she has come into a large inheritance. Musa thinks lightly of it, but Hapgood tells John the girl is rich and he intends on marrying her. John, however, has a few remarks on that order to make himself. They quarrel fiercely and Musa hearing the racket, opens the log cabin door and stands watching with a tigerish expression of delight the two men struggling. They see her and stop their fighting. She disappears and the two men agree that whoever wins the girl must divide the fortune with the other. John, pretending great love, asks her to be his wife. She seems about to consent when Hapgood appears and with a great show of jealousy, fakes up a quarrel. John apparently comes out victor and Musa consents to marry him. She discovers their deceit, however, when she overhears their conversation later, in which John is pointing out how easy it is going to be for them to secure the fortune. Filled with uncontrollable fury, she seizes a knife and buries it in John’s back, then disappears. Hapgood is found with the body and accused of murder. A hasty trial by “Judge Lynch” results in his being sentenced to hang at dawn next day. Musa, skulking around the building, hears the verdict and it awakens within her breast the still, small voice of Conscience. After a terrible mental struggle in which the voice of her guilty conscience predominates, she goes to the gallows tree before the dawn and leaving a note with the simple words, “I done it. Musa,” hangs herself. On finding the body Hapgood and his guards realize that the “still, small voice” has taken Justice into its own hands.