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 was in a serious condition between neglect and incipient infection. She looked from the wounds to Tom Simpson's eyes, hurting more by her pitying reproach for his attempted deceit than the horsethief's splintered bullet ever had done. Mrs. Ellison was beside her in a moment. She held Tom sternly when, with a confused "Oh, I say, now," he tried to withdraw his hand from their examination.

"Scratched your granny!" Mrs. Ellison said, that female relative always figuring largely in her exclamations of scoffing and depreciation. "You light right down off of that horse, Tom Simpson, and come in and let me get the lead out of them places. If you don't attend to that hand you're in for a peck of trouble with it. Scratched it! Yes, I've seen scratches of that kind too often to be put on that way."

"I'll take care of the horses, Tom; you go on in," Eudora said.

"I couldn't permit it," he replied, so high and mighty it seemed as if they had given him mortal offense.

Nor would he permit it, nor any further argument in the case at all. When he had the horses properly cared for he joined them at the corral gate, actually grinning as if he had accomplished more in overriding their tender concern than in restoring the animals to their rightful owners. But his embarrassment was almost overwhelming when Eudora jerked Noah Hays' belt and gun from under the saddle where he had tried to hide them when he hung it on the fence. He stammered something about a chap losing them, and would not say another word.

To make matters worse for him, Mrs. Ellison, with the

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 stern manner of a prosecutor hunting for evidence, drew the rifle out of the scarred old scabbard and saw where the horsethief's bullet had struck and jammed the trigger. She handed it to Eudora without a word. The two women stood staring at each other, white-faced, speechless, each constructing according to her imaginative capability the story that unimpeachable evidence suggested.

After that they did not question Tom on his adventure or the perils involved. They knew he had been hand to hand with death, and neither of them put the slightest credence in his evasive explanation of the sheriff and cowboy. While Mrs. Ellison probed the wounds in his hand, picking out the slivers of lead with pincers, Tom inquired of Waco Johnson. He was all right. Mrs. Ellison said. He had recovered his senses and his appetite; in about three weeks he would be the same as if nothing had happened to him.

Mrs. Ellison extracted the last bit of lead, squeezed the wounds and applied turpentine without stint. When she had the hand neatly bandaged she said Waco Johnson might be interviewed if Tom desired. He was in a bedroom just off the kitchen, more than likely reading Alice in Wonderland, which Eudora had lent him, and which he declared to be the beatinest book that ever came his way.

"And he's just about the beatinest man I ever run across," Mrs. Ellison declared. "He always asks you how you'd like to be a whale. It's a pleasantry of his, I guess, but it's past me where anybody's complimented by such a fool question as that."

Waco was bolstered up in bed with an overturned

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 kitchen chair and several pillows under his long back. He had not been doing much reading since the first commotion attending Tom's arrival, but he had done more listening than any invalid ought to, considering the result of such fragments as he had caught. He was flushed with excitement when Mrs. Ellison opened the door. She declared on her conscience she believed his fever was coming up, due to smoking.

Waco did not refute the charge against tobacco immediately, nor say anything whatever. He was gripping Tom Simpson's hand, looking at him with the straight eye of a man who understands far more than he has seen or heard. So the two of them remained a moment, in a sort of speechless hand-to-hand embrace. Then Waco:

"No ma'am, it ain't smokin'. I'm bilin' over havin' to lay here like a blame old lady while another man goes out to pay my debts. I couldn't help hearin' you talkin' about Tom's hand. Did they git you anyways bad, pardner?"

"Not at all," Tom said as lightly as his embarrassment could make the words. "Just a few little nicks, due to an awkward accident."

"There was a feller named Noahy, a tall, rangy, ganglin' cuss that looked a good deal like me," Waco said.

He put it more as a question than a flat statement of fact, slanting his words up at the end of it, a bid, hedged with the greatest delicacy at his command, for information on what had happened to Noah.

"Just so," said Tom. He was looking hard out of the window at the side of Waco's bed.

"He's the feller that slammed me with that gun," said

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 Waco, putting his hand up with rueful reminiscence to touch the bandaged hurt.

"I thought he'd be the one," said Tom in abstracted undertone.

Waco looked at him hard again, and put out his hand.

"I wish I could 'a' been along, old feller," he sighed. "But you know how I was fixed."

Waco was too wise to ask questions, knowing there were certain passages of amours and battles in a man's career which the proper kind never discussed. Tom Simpson was of that kind, and Waco had learned all he wanted, for the present at least, to know.

They were not to learn the inside of Tom's exploit until the sheriff came over next day, ostensibly to find out if there were any unclaimed horses, but mainly to unburden himself of any undue credit which he feared Simpson had set down to his account. Even after that the women did not talk to Tom about it: only they looked at him with great tenderness in their eyes, and once in passing him as he sat smoking after the supper dishes were cleared away, Mrs. Ellison laid her hand on his head with a caress so like the touch of kinship that a watery film came suddenly between Tom Simpson's eyes and the lamp.

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Simpson was delayed more than a week in his design of becoming the leading bone freighter of that country. His wounded hand was making him pay for holding it so lightly at the start. That neglect had set up infection which required all Mrs. Ellison's experience to overcome. Then it began to heal as rapidly as it had grown alarmingly sore, and Tom found himself able to hold the lines again, ready for the great enterprise.

Mrs. Ellison was against the plan he and Waco had worked out for coupling two wagons in train to each team. It wouldn't work as well as one wagon with extra sideboards, she said. That would be all four horses could manage in the event of rain overtaking him on the road, something always likely at that season. He could pile two tons of bones on one of those old freight wagons, more if he could pull them, but two tons would be about all four horses could wiggle along with over those meandering prairie roads.

Tom deferred to her judgment, wisely. She was experienced in the transportation methods of that country, and could have given the homesteaders and greenhorns generally plenty of valuable advice if they had been wise enough to come to her. Accordingly, Tom built up the sides of the gallant old prairie argosy which he and Waco

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 had used in their experimental hauling, until it looked as if it would hold half a carload.

Of course it would require many such loads to fill a car. It would be an unprofitable business for one man, but he already had enlisted the neighbors, who jumped eagerly at his offer of a premium above the current price for bones in Drumwell. He was going on ahead with his load, to order a car set for a certain date, when he expected to have bones enough delivered at the track to make up his carload.

Waco mourned his misfortune in getting himself in a fix that had made the services of a doctor necessary. Two trips from the county seat by the doctor had taken twenty dollars of Waco's last month's wages, paid him by Coburn when he was fired. But in place of his own services to the bone company Waco tendered the remaining twenty-five dollars. Let his capital work for him, he proposed; use it to pay the homesteaders for their bones as far as it would go.

This was sternly refused by all concerned. Sell a couple of his horses then, said Waco. They were good for nothing but chasing cows, and, since a business man was not likely to lower himself to such menial employment, he would have no use for the colts.

The other members of the company put a damper on Waco's enthusiastic offer to sacrifice his nags. When theyneeded money badly enough to take a man's horses from under him, they informed him haughtily, they would let him know. And so Tom Simpson loaded the old freight wagon—which was no stranger to the governor's palace on the plaza at Santa Fé—that evening. Early next morn-

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 ing saw him on the road, driving two pairs of fairly willing and tractable horses as if he had been brought up to the trade.

Adventure does not always dog a man, although he may be especially painted to attract its notice, as Tom Simpson sometimes believed he was. He drove into Drumwell on the morning of his second day on the road, having made the trip without incident, and in remarkably good time. The horses had buckled down to the job as if they had a proprietory interest in the great bone enterprise.

Not so bad, Tom thought. With the freight out, that cargo of bones represented not less than twelve or fifteen dollars. He could make two trips a week, counting every day as a working day, and Waco was already hobbling around with a crutch, against Mrs. Ellison's grave advice. Waco said he healed up from that kind of punctures like a fishin' worm. He had been shot up so much that he rather resented being shot merely in the thigh. It was almost too trifling to lay a man up at all. So Waco would be able to take the road in a week or two more, when the revenues would double, to leave out of the computation entirely the profit arising from the bones they would buy.

Tom was in pretty high spirits, therefore, when he pulled up near the railroad station and asked the agent where it would be agreeable to him and his company to have the bones unloaded, to repose there until the heap grew big enough to fill a car. The agent appeared to be somewhat distant and cold. He seemed to recall only with a great effort their previous talk on that subject, and then to doubt whether he had gone so far as to say Simpson might use the company's right-of-way as a repository for

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 his bones. But if he had said so, he guessed it would be all right, although neither the company nor he would assume any responsibility.

Simpson largely absolved him and the railroad of all liability, but his spirits had dropped several degrees when he turned from the brief interview. It seemed as if he had climbed down from the wagon in a sweating, eager glow to see the agent, and was returning to it now after having stepped into a cold wind. He drove to the spot indicated by the agent, which was at the end of some cars of lumber, directly behind the depot.

The lumberyard was in front of him, on the left side of the switch where the freight cars stood; the station and town on his right. From town he could not be seen as he pitched the bones from his high-sided wagon, quickly making a hole down to the bottom, starting at the forward end. He had put the spring seat on the ground and hung his gun on the upright, rudely ornamented board called a standard, in the center of the dashboard.

This standard was designed for wrapping the lines when one stopped for some such job as unloading bones. The gun was in the way when he worked. Any exigency calling for the need of it seemed to be so far away from the quietude of the morning that Tom did not give its absence from the handy place where it usually hung a second thought.

That was the domestic hour in Drumwell; the time when women came out to make their purchases, when children were abroad, when homesteaders drove in to transact their business. The dominant forces in that social

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 organization were quiescent, at that hour, lying off, as it were, with a sort of amiable deference, to give the town over to peaceful traffic and honest trading.

The sounds which reached Simpson as he labored with his load were assuring: the gabble of children at play, the hail of women from dooryard to dooryard, or across the street as they went about the business of the hour. His plan was to unload and drive away before the ruder life began to stir, after putting in the order for his car.

Tom quickly worked down to the last bone, which was a shinbone, and a noble one, of some ox that would have dressed eight hundred pounds. He stood holding it in his fist a while, looking down at the heap on the ground, thinking it was very small in comparison with the bulk of the freight car standing at his team's head. It would take many loads like that one to put enough in a car to justify freight, to say nothing of loading to capacity. But it was a beginning; there were plenty more where those came from, and a man out of a job, like one who had gambled away his money, had nothing to spend but his time.

He jumped at a sharp word behind him, turned, and looked into the bore of a large and efficient gun in the hands of an insignificant pale man whom he recognized as the city marshal.

"Put 'em up, pardner, and be damn sudden about it!" the marshal ordered, his voice grinding like a katydid's. His manner was determined, and his hand was steady, although his appearance was not entirely formidable.

Tom considered for a moment taking a chance with

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 that good shinbone, reckoned the probability of missing, as a man most always does when he tries hardest to hit, and passed it up.

"Oh, very well," he said lightly, not the slightest annoyance nor concern apparent in his voice, or his manner of lifting his chin, or the calm dignity of his face.

"Pile out!" the marshal directed.

He backed off a little as he spoke, to give himself unobstructed view of the prisoner's movements.

"Put your foot over on that breakbeam and hop down—and keep 'em up, keep 'em up!"

The marshal had come up on the left side of the wagon. He stood there with a lot of empty territory at his back, the wagon in front of him, the end of the freight car just a few jumps away. There wasn't anybody else in sight, not even the station agent. Tom put his foot over the side, which was a high straddle, feeling for the brakebeam, doing considerable thinking as he made the deliberate, cautious move. He managed to get to the ground without a fall, where the marshal closed up on him and ordered him to march.

"Now, hold on a minute, Mr. Marshal," Tom demurred, standing with hands lifted about on a level with his ears. "These horses are very-very skittish of trains. Better let me drive them over to the fence and hitch them, then I'll be at your service entirely."

"Hitch 'em to the ladder of that car," the marshal ordered, his meanness rising with his courage when he saw Simpson separated by ten feet or so from his gun. "I'll tend to them after I tend to you."

"Oh, very well. What's the game?"

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 "You're arrested," the marshal replied.

With the word Simpson swung his rather sizable foot and kicked the gun out of the marshal's hand. It would have required a quick eye to tell whether the gun hit the ground before the marshal, Simpson following up the kick with such a wallop as the officer never had stood in front of in his life.

"Wrong again, my man," said Tom.

He grabbed the marshal's gun, yanked the little chap to his groggy legs and ordered him to put the seat into the wagon. This the marshal accomplished with considerable effort, for his jawbone had been all but driven through his spinal cord and he was a dazed, dim-seeing, giddy little man.

Tom went up by the front hub as the marshal got aboard the old freight wagon amidships by means of the brake block. After the marshal, under the cold order of Simpson's eye and no word out of his tightly closed mouth, had arranged the spring seat in its proper place, Tom indicated that he was to lie down in the front of the wagon, like a dog, face to the dashboard. With a foot on the prostrate officer, Tom buckled on his gun, then took the lines and headed for home, nobody the wiser for the marshal's attempted bit of heroism to redeem himself in the eyes of his constituents.

Simpson did not say another word to the man cringing on the floor of the wagon bed; just kept him there under foot for a good five miles of about the hardest driving and the roughest riding that city marshal had experienced in many a day. At last Tom pulled up and told the officer they were out of town.

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 "And that being the case, you look just like any other slinkin' damned whelp to me," he said. "Get out!"

The marshal climbed down on uncertain legs, Simpson following with the two guns.

"You're beyond your contemptible jurisdiction now, and you look to me like a damned louse," Simpson told him. "Here's your gun. If you're not wearin' a dog's tail, step it off and we'll settle it, right here!"

The marshal stuck his gun in the leather, turned, and walked away, putting his feet down jerkily as if he jolted down off something at every step. There was nothing noble in his going, no high courage, no spirit of defiance. It was the exit of a coward, with a tail, Tom Simpson thought, as long as a man's arm.

But the man was full of venom for the failure of his coup, by which he had intended to lift himself to importance in town and turn the laugh they had been giving him since the prisoners locked him in his own calaboose that rainy night. Simpson knew he had no justification for lifting his hand against the officer, and he knew likewise that a lot of future trouble was walking back to town with the little beast.

There would not be any peace for him in Drumwell from that time forward, Simpson knew. He would either have to fight or quit. Technically, perhaps, he was on the wrong side of the question, but at the most they could not prefer a graver charge against him than assault and battery for that affair with Kane. But there was no knowing how they might railroad a man if Kane had the influence he was reported to hold over the county attorney. Simpson certainly had a lively nest of fledgling troubles under

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 his hat as he drove homeward through the languorous October day.

It was well past noon when he unloaded the marshal, but he continued on fully an hour longer, desiring to put as many miles as possible between himself and town before the marshal could get back. Somebody was certain to give the fellow a lift on his way; he might rally a gang and return for the solace of his dignity. One never could tell what to expect, except the bottom worst, of a palegilled rogue like that.

Tom stopped to feed the horses and put a cold dinner under his belt where he had hoped to fold away a large hot steak. Although the horses did not show any great weariness, he realized their incapacity for keeping up the gait he had put them to so far this trip. To keep them fit on a long haul like that they'd have to take it leisurely, even slowly. He was starting in on it like a man who blows his money on one short, lavish spree.

Considering all this, Tom unharnessed and picketed the horses out to graze. The late rains had quickened the grass, which grew thick and tall in that section of the country, as around and on the Ellison ranch. For miles the unmown hayfield spread around him, a sprinkling of cattle here and there, succulent grazing for the hard-blowing months of winter if there was not too much rain to leach it of its virtues. Even then it would sustain animal life and bring the herds through thin in flesh, but happy and lively, in shape to pick up quickly with the first enverduring of spring.

He had not driven more than ten or twelve miles from Drumwell, Simpson estimated, and was not at ease in

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 mind over his situation, but as the sunny afternoon wore away his immediate concern dissolved. Nobody came charging up the road on vengeful foray. Occasionally a rider swung in sight, sometimes two or three together, giving Simpson a start, but they always turned out cowboys or farmers returning home. These passed friendly greetings as they came along, some of them halting to chat, with the main view of satisfying their curiosity. As Tom had nothing to hide about his business, he always put their itching at ease.

Nobody had a word to say about any disturbance in town; no news of the city marshal returning from his enforced excursion with blood in his eye. It grew apparent to Simpson after a while that the marshal had kept his day's adventures to himself. He naturally would do so, considering the rude disposition of such men as inhabited Drumwell to laugh loud and long at any such official belittling as that.

Simpson was vastly relieved as this reasonable consideration of the case became established in his mind. The marshal had made a quiet sneak back to town. He was not likely to ask for help to go out and humble the man who had turned that trick on him, when the appeal would involve confession of his upset dignity.

But that little marshal would go home and make a broad chalk mark on the calaboose door, scoring an account that he, Tom Simpson, lately of Manchester, England, would be called on to settle at no distant day. Oh, very well, said he, feeling pretty easy again, tossing his head as if he threw all the trifles of the world away. He

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 hoped he'd be solvent when the little man came around to collect his bill.

It was such a purely personal account he could not ask anybody to ease him of his obligation, not even the sheriff, who would be quick enough, he believed, to grab a good excuse for scrubbing up that rats' nest. Yes, the sheriff would take great pleasure in making the way clear for the bone merchants' operations in Drumwell, he believed.

The city marshal was expanding over into the sheriff's jurisdiction when he interfered with the free coming and going among citizens of the county. The sheriff was jealous of his jurisdiction, although he could pin his badge inside his vest, as Mrs. Ellison had hoped to see him do, on occasion and ride out of it to good and efficient ends when necessary.

No, he could not call on the sheriff at this time. Try one more trip, go prepared for the worst, and then enlist the sheriff's assistance if it grew bigger than a one-man job. This resolution cleared all troubles and doubts away; he seemed to come out from under a weight that pressed him flat and made his breath come short. He could stand up again and haul his breath deep, and tingle with the iridescence of that bright October day.

He had hoped for peace; he desired it above money. It was a bad business to have to go around fighting one's way; it carried gloom with it, and memories which rose up in the night to confront a man and draw sweat from his pores. Nothing nice in weighting down with lead until they sunk even such wolves as those horsethieves of the Cherokee trails; nothing comforting in the recollection of

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 tered so terribly, that I never expected to recover its use.

The peasants complied with my request; all left me except four, who made a litter of boughs, and prepared to convey me to the neighbouring town. I enquired its name: it proved to be Ratisbon, and I could scarcely persuade myself that I had travelled to such a distance in a single night. I told the countrymen, that at one o'clock that morning I had passed through the village of Rosenwald. They shook their heads wistfully, and made signs to each other that I must certainly be delirious. I was conveyed to a decent inn, and immediately put to bed. A physician was sent for, who set my arm with success: he then examined my other hurts, and told me that I need be under no apprehension of the consequences of any of them, but ordered me to keep myself quiet, and be prepared for a tedious and painful cure. I answered him, that if he hoped to keep me quiet, he must first endeavour to procure me some news of a


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 violence, however just. A hangman must have his hard hours when he wrestles with remorse.

So Tom Simpson thought, sunning himself in the bone wagon that afternoon beside the Drumwell road.

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Mrs. Ellison had given Tom a list of groceries and the money to buy them; Waco Johnson had commissioned him to bring out a supply of tobacco. Tom's hasty exit from Drumwell was responsible for his return to the gate empty-handed, and he was a man with a peck of trouble ahead of him to devise an explanation that would satisfy them without divulging the true reason for his apparent remission.

Waco, evidently on the watch, heard the wagon before it came in sight. He hobbled to the gate, opened it, and stationed himself there like a toll-taker, his mouth dry for a smoke. The old cowpuncher spread a big red-gummed grin all over his face as Tom rounded to and struck the gate with the double team as nicely as Waco himself could have done it. He reached up a broad rough hand as Tom came to a stop exactly beside him.

"Hi, Tom?" he hailed heartily. "How you likes to be a w'ale?"

Tom understood this peculiar pleasantry somewhat better than Mrs. Ellison. While he had no more notion than anybody else what felicity there was in the life of a whale that would urge anybody on the Kansas prairie with a desire to exchange places with one, he knew that Waco meant to express the utmost feeling of friendship, good-fellowship and admiration when he made the specu-

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 lative proposal. Indeed, his manner of speech might lead one not schooled in such crude diction to take it that Waco intimated he already was a whale, for he invariably put it that way:

"How you likes to be a w'ale?"

Tom assured him, as always, that he'd like it fine, and then jumped right in to take the blame for coming home without tobacco. Waco's face elongated till there was not a horse in the team that could have bested him much on measurement.

"Hell's woodpeckers! I'm out!" he said.

"So am I," Tom admitted glumly. "I left there in a devil of a hurry—tell you about it later—here comes Eudora."

Waco knew something was urging a man along when he left town in such a hurry as to forget not only his friend's tobacco but his own, and he suspected it was a business that Tom wanted to keep from the women, above all.

"You made a flyin' trip, Tom," Eudora said, running up, the brightness of welcome in her face.

"He's a flyin' gopher," said Waco, pulling his long, lugubrious face down to wet-leather length. "He come off and forgot my t'backer."

"Oh, you Tom!" she laughed. And then she tiptoed and took a peep into the wagon. "And you forgot the groceries!" she said, looking up at him in reproving amazement.

"I'm altogether untrustworthy and unfit to run around without a nurse," Tom said contritely. "I didn't think of them, Eudora, till I was fifteen or twenty miles along. Then I didn't want to turn back."

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 "Of course not," she agreed, but with evident disappointment. "You can get them next trip—but I don't know what we're going to do without sugar and coffee."

Tom brightened a little.

"I think Waco and I've got enough of both to hold you till I can bring your supplies."

"We sure have, Eudora. If that's all that's eatin' you, take it easy."

Waco was quick to come to his partner's side in the difficulty, leaving explanations to their proper time and place.

"You'll have to lend us a cup or two, then. But what on earth were you thinkin' of Tom, to forget them that way?"

"I was figuring on prospective profits, I expect—building air castles, you know."

"Bone mansions," said Waco, stretching his big red grin all over his face.

Mrs. Ellison came out before Tom could drive on to unhitch. She inquired about the trip, of which Tom gave a glowing account, although brief.

"But he forgot the groceries!" Eudora said with tragic accusation.

Mrs. Ellison looked at him in speechless vexation, Tom's face growing so hot and red it hurt to have it around.

"Well, Tom Simpson! You sure are a bright one!" she said.

"Ain't I?" said he, miserably abject.

"Comin' off and forgettin' them groceries, when I told you we was nearly out of soda, and sugar, and coffee, and

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 canned tomatoes, and beans, and—and nearly everything you didn't get. Think of a grown man—why, Tom Simpson! you must be in love!"

"He ort to be in jail forgittin' my t'backer," said Waco.

Waco thought to throw a little comedy relief into the situation, but his break had the opposite effect on Mrs. Ellison, who looked sharply at Tom. She reached up suddenly and touched his arm, her face white, fright in her eyes.

"What happened down there, Tom?" she asked, her voice as gentle as if she consoled him for a loss.

"Oh, now," said Tom, depreciating her concern. "I'm just a stupid, absent-minded ass!"

"Well, you haven't had your dinner, have you?" She withdrew her hand from his arm slowly, watching him for a betraying flicker of the eye.

"No; I started early and drove slowly, without a stop."

"Come in when you unharness," she said, and would hear no protest against the hospitable order.

Tom drove to the corral, Waco starting after him.

"If t'backer was all I needed in this world to make me happy," he said, "I'd be throwin' my leg over the moon."

He stopped, turned back and closed the gate, putting up his hand in a mock threat of immediate violence when Eudora would have done it. Mrs. Ellison was looking after Tom, trouble knitting her black brows in a frown. Waco started off again to help unhitch, swinging his game leg, singing his song:

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 He gave Eudora a wink as he passed her, probably to imply in his humorous way that he identified her with the lady of the couplet. She grinned, but not very mirthfully, the cloud of suspicion that all had not been plain going with Tom having spread from her mother's face to her own.

"A man may forget sugar and coffee when he's flighty over a woman or something, but when he forgets t'backer!" Mrs. Ellison said.

"Mother—" Eudora's voice wavered, her heart felt smothered and slow—"Mother, do you think"

"I guess if it's for us to know, he'll tell us," Mrs. Ellison replied gentlygently. [sic]

She turned in at the kitchen gate, Eudora following, her light feet suddenly heavy, the ache of dread, the oppression of fear, in her breast.

It seemed it was not for them to know. Waco and Tom came to the kitchen, where Tom's lunch was spread, talking lightly, with the animation and banter that passes between a man who has a joke on his friend, and the friend who attempts a jocose defense. Tom praised the team, the wagon, the roads, as he made havoc in the hot meal. He said it was a lark to haul bones forty miles, and he was going to load up immediately to be ready for an early start in the morning.

Waco suggested trying out the other four horses which he had broken. Mrs. Ellison interposed an objection, which Waco overruled. They were as gentle as dogs, he declared, but if you let 'em stand around and forget what they'd learnt they'd be as mean as buzzards by the time he wanted to use them. Fine, said Tom; he'd put them

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 through their paces, and he wanted Mrs. Ellison to tie different colors of yarn in his button-holes, each representing some article in the grocery line. He wasn't coming home without those supplies this trip.

"Yes, and I'll tie a gunny sack around your neck to make you think of that t'backer," Waco said.

Then Waco began to talk about the horses which were left over from the number Tom had brought up from the Nation after the neighbors had taken their animals. There were seven of them, five good, the other two fair. He thought it was a shame for the sheriff to take them and fool around three or four months trying to find their owners. Feed bills and fees and expenses of one kind and another would eat their heads off, and there would be nothing left for Tom in the end.

"I couldn't think of laying 'claim to any of them. The idea is preposterous," said Tom, with his high, frozen-faced dignity.

"The one you rode home," said Waco, "he's a dang good horse. There's only one horse on this place better'n that colt, if you'll take it from a simple-minded feller like me. You're entitled to that one as much as you're entitled to the teeth in your head."

"Not at all," said Tom, distantly.

"The sheriff said so, didn't he, Eudory?"

"That's what he said, Tom."

"He's wrong," said Tom, stiffly. "Somebody owns that horse: it's the sheriff's business to find who."

Waco looked at him intently for a moment, incredulity in his leathery old face.

"You're weak," said he.

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 "You've hit it," Tom said, with the bright satisfaction he might have displayed if Waco had guessed a riddle which he had thought beyond his powers.

Waco and Eudora laughed, and that glimmer of mirth like firelight on a wall came into Tom Simpson's bright, wise eyes. Only Mrs. Ellison was not moved by the humor of the moment. She was sitting a little apart, the crochet work she had been half-heartedly doing lying in her lap, a sunbeam coming through the window bright on her idle needle.

"We'll take him for the one they shot under you," Eudora said, touching an episode of his adventure that had not been mentioned between them before.

Tom flushed as if confusion would drown him. If Eudora had accused him of complicity in the loss of the horse his embarrassment could not have been greater.

"Eudora!" her mother reproved gently, yet with the startled exclamation of a shock.

Eudora reached out impulsively and touched Tom's hand.

"Oh, Tom! I didn't mean"

"Very good—very-very good!" Tom said, his confusion vanishing before her own. "That will be a fair arrangement, fair compensation. Very-very good."

Waco had taken up his quarters in the bunk-house, his wound having growed up, as he expressed it, the recuperative powers of his kind being remarkable. The same qualities which inured these hard riders of the range to withstand its vicissitudes stored up in them phenomenal healing powers. There was no creature alive, with the probable exception of a fishin' worm as Waco had said,

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 lady who had quitted Rosenwald in my company the night before, and had been with me at the moment when the coach broke down. He smiled, and only replied by advising me to make myself easy, for that all proper care should be taken of me. As he quitted me, the hostess met him at the door of the room.

"The gentleman is not quite in his right senses," I heard him say to her in a low voice; "'tis the natural consequence of his fall, but that will soon be over."

One after another the peasants returned to the inn, and informed me that no traces had been discovered of my unfortunate mistress. Uneasiness now became despair. I entreated them to renew their search in the most urgent terms, doubling the promises which I had already made them. My wild and frantic manner confirmed the by-standers in the idea of my being delirious. No signs of the lady having appeared, they believed her to be a creature fabricated by my over-heated brain, and


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 that repaired itself of distressing wounds with such celerity as the old-time range man. His mode of life put him down pretty much on a level with the lower animals, and a bullet hole more or less, as long as no bone was broken, no vital part touched, did not inconvenience him long.

All his leg needed now, Waco said, was movement to keep it from stiffening and staying tender too long. He went cobbling around with the harness, saddles and everything about the place that stood in need of repairs, of which there was plenty to keep him engaged, using his crutch only because Mrs. Ellison insisted, threatening him with heavy penalties if she caught him without it. This misfortune had turned out a fruitful diversion in Waco's days. He probably never had enjoyed himself so long and continuously before in his life, singing his unvarying twoline song, greasing and hammering and tinkering around in his cleverly handy way.

Mrs. Ellison and Eudora liked him as much as he liked them, everybody being on a perfect plane of equality, comfortable and unrestricted by hampering conventions. Waco knew it was not precisely the polite thing to sit in the house with his hat on, or remove his boots in the presence of ladies, or cuss overmuch when they were in hearing, although mild ejaculations were permissible when one hit his thumb with the hammer.

Tom was not surprised when Waco, after standing around while he loaded the wagon for tomorrow's trip, throwing in a bone now and then to prove his able-bodied state, proposed that he go along. He said it was beginning to get kind of dull around there, that being the longest

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 vacation he had taken since he was shot up the last time, down in New Mexico eight or nine years ago. He made this pretext and he advanced that, keeping his only reason under cover, where it bulged as big as a fat woman trying to hide in bed.

He could ride along just as comfortable as a bird in a tree, Waco said, and a man needed company on a slow drive like that. It wasn't the same as rackin' out on a feller's horse to go some place, when he could streak right through and line up with his navel agin the bar. Wagon travel was worse than walkin', the way he looked at it; even a slab-sided old centipede like him was better than no company under such conditions. And so on, to a great length of irrelevant argument.

Tom thanked him heartily, told him he'd appreciate his company above the company of any man alive, but that was a one-man business, a purely personal affair at that stage, and he could not permit a friend to become involved. He had started it, and he would finish it. He was appreciative, but firm, so firm that Waco realized further argument would not advance his desires an inch.

"All right, Tom," he yielded. "I fixed up that rifle yisterday so it works fine."

"Thanks, old feller."

"There's a good shotgun here, too. I ain't in favor of a shotgun as a reg'lar thing, but there's exceptions, as the widder woman said when she married the one-eyed man. I could load you up a dozen shells with buckshot—it'd be excusable if they tried to gang a man. Of course, I always like to keep in the law myself, and stick to my old gun, but a shotgun's excusable at times, perfec-ly excusable."

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 "I don't think anything is going to happen, Waco. That marshal's a crook, with a streak down his back as broad as a skunk's, only his is yellow. The sheriff told me about him, knows him of old. The fellow used to be a sort of outpost for Wade Harrison; he's tipped off the sheriff's hand more than once when Treadwell was about to close in on that outfit. I believe he's due to lie down this trip."

"Yeah, maybe. But I wish you had a castiron wagon bed, pardner. You know, I found my old gun—did I tell you? Yeah. Out in the krel, where they either dropped it or throwed it away. It had a bunch of my silvery locks stuck to it—they had the nerve to hit me with my own gun! Guess that's all they thought it was good for, or maybe that they'd bent it over my old rock so it wasn't no use to nobody. It don't look fancy, but you can depend on it like pension money. You can take it along."

"You might need it, old chap, you never can tell. Keep it stickin' around you pretty close—I'll have plenty, a whole lot more than I'll need."

"Maybe," said Waco, but with little faith. "Anyhow, I'll be plenty able to drive next trip. About to-morrow I'm goin' to hitch up them colts and drag in some more bones."

"Don't get too fresh and overdo it, Waco. Many a good man's been ruined by drink and hard work."

"Nobody has to warn me agin hard work," Waco said, grinning his biggest. "I've been shyin' at it so long I'm wall-eyed."

Eudora came to the porch to hang dish towels on a line strung between the posts. Waco looked at her abstractedly, as if his thoughts were of her but not with her.

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 "Them two girls suspicion you got something in your hoof down at Drumwell, Tom," he said.

"Um-m-m," Tom grunted, bending over the pile of bones, pretending little concern in their suspicions.

"Missus Ellison's as uneasy as a cow with a calf hid in the brush," Waco went on, resorting to such homely simile not through any want of respect but because he made his comparisons with the most familiar things. "She'll not sleep a wink till she sees you drivin' up that road agin. I don't know, but I think sometimes it's worse to raise up a woman's suspicions by keepin' something from her than to tell her straight out. A woman's funny that way; she can sense things."

"You seem to know them pretty well," Tom remarked, turning on him a quick humorous eye.

"I ort to," Waco sighed.

As he volunteered no additional information on how he came to master the female psychology, Tom was too polite to inquire. But he supposed Waco's education had come through practical channels, perhaps by marrying. He must have gone quite extensively into the adventure, judging by his oracular declaration.

Tom knew that cowboys of Waco's type, the roving, restless, more or less romantic-minded, frequently had a wife on every range, sometimes not confining the number to one. They were as light-minded about it as certain Mexicans whom Tom had known, who boasted of a priest wife and'a judge wife as ingenuously as another man might speak of a second pair of boots.

Eudora stood looking their way a little while as if she considered joining them, hesitated, appearing some-

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 what wistful and lonely, and returned to the house.

"She's as bright as a lookin' glass," Waco admired her, "and as handy around the place as a man. She's a good tieup for some young feller. You remember the time I thought you was married into the fam'ly?"

"Damn old ass!" said Tom.

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As Waco had foretold, that was an anxious day for the women. Tom had gone off at dawn with his load drawn by the partly-broken horses, which were frisky and frivolous, inclined to lunge at the collar and throw their heels somewhat too high for earnest work. Waco was on hand to give some parting advice.

"Keep 'em steppin' lively for the first hour or two, Tom, and don't let 'em git their tails over the lines or straddle the tugs. You'll soon take the ginger out of 'em. By sunup they'll be as gentle as house cats."

Tom promised to watch the slack of the lines and the frisking tails, and keep them stepping so fast they wouldn't have time to hoist a leg over a tug. He also made Waco do a little pledging on his own account to the effect that he wouldn't attempt to do any hauling that day.

"You lay off of it till I come back, old man," Tom advised. "You've been overdoin' it already from the way you're cripplin' around this morning."

"I got a crimp in my leg, guess I must 'a' slep' crooked on it," Waco explained his limp. "But I'll wait till you come home if you say so, Tom, even if I could run a shanghai rooster down when my leg gits limbered up a little. You sure you don't want that shotgun?"

This subjoined question he whispered, turning a cau-

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 tious look toward the kitchen windows. Mrs. Ellison and Eudora were up, quietly as Tom had made ready and attempted to drive away without disturbing them.

"No, I'll pass it up," Tom replied.

Mrs. Ellison and Eudora came out as Tom was mounting to the high seat to wish him good luck and say goodby. They attempted a sprightliness which they did not feel, and which carried no deceit to the man on the load of bones. He drove away with their unvoiced anxiety tingeing the promise of a bright day with gloom, a foreboding of trouble ahead of him which his quick spirits could not allay.

All that morning Mrs. Ellison went around the house restlessly. She would go to a window and peer down the road, which could be seen to the point where it passed over the hill since Tom mowed the orchard and cut away the low-hanging limbs; then to the kitchen porch, where she would stand listening, her head turned as if she expected the sound of distant shots, her face furrowed by the concern that would not let her rest.

"I shouldn't have let him go," she said time and again as the bright morning passed.

Waco was busy with something in the barn; Eudora slipped into the men's quarters and came back big-eyed and white, to report that Tom had taken the rifle, the revolver he had captured in the raid, her father's pistol, and no telling what else that Waco had supplied.

"I knew it! I knew it!" Mrs. Ellison said fatefully. "I never should have allowed that boy to go."

"We couldn't have stopped him—nobody could," Eudora said, in the voice of utter futility.

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 "Waco knows all about it, I can tell by his actions. He's as restless as a wet hen. For two cents I'd have you hitch up the buckboard and I'd go after Tom and make him come back."

"We couldn't." Eudora shook her head slowly, in deep and somber conviction. "He'd make us feel as little as two pins the way he'd hold his head up and bite off his words. He can look worse insulted and say less about it than any man I ever saw."

"I guess it's the English style; they're said to be cold-hearted folks, although that's the last thing anybody could say of Tom."

"We ought to be the last to think that of him, all he's done for us. I wonder if he thought I blamed him for that horse gettin' killed?"

"A smaller man might 'a', the way you said it, but not Tom Simpson. He's quick to feel and know—quicker than any man I ever saw. He's a—I guess what you might call a gentleman, whatever his past may be."

"Mother! I don't believe he's got any past."

"Every man has, if he amounts to a hill of beans. I'll bet that Waco feller's got a history a mile long, and he's so downright honest it does a person good to look at him. Of course we can't blame him for keepin' Tom's trouble from us: he was told to. And men'I'll stick together—they will stick together—whatever other faults they've got."

If everything was all right with Tom he'd be about at this creek or that hill, Mrs. Ellison anxiously logged his progress through the day. At evening she computed the distance he had made if all had favored him, and the dreaded, unknown danger had not overtaken him on the

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 road. He would be camping at this branch, or that stock well with the windmill, or in a named piece of timber where he'd have wood for his fire.

It had been a long time since she had felt this disturbing anxiety for one of her men abroad, not since Ellison used to laugh at her fears in the old Pawnee days. And he had lived through those perils, healed of many a wound taken in battles with those swift-riding raiders who swept up from the south. She had not worried much about him when he spent day and night for three weeks on the blizzard-bound prairies trying to save some of his cattle from the disastrous winter kill, for the woman at home is not so much afraid of nature at its worst as she is of man at his meanest.

The winter storm had done what the Pawnee raiders, the horsethieves and rustlers of the Cherokee trails had failed to do. It had taken Ellison's life. And yet, there was nothing in the sound of the rising storm to make her face blanch, her heart drag with the slow pain of apprehension, that there was in the beat of galloping hoofs on the road at night. So many messengers of danger and disaster, so many appeals for help in extremity, had come on clattering hoofs to her door through the hampering, shudderful, villainy-shrouding dark.

All of those old ghosts of dead fears had risen with this unknown peril into which Tom Simpson had driven away from her gate. She arraigned herself for permitting him to go, when she knew neither command nor persuasion would have restrained him. All night she lay in that hot state of unrest between wakefulness and sleep, straining for the sound of a galloping horse. She had yielded to the weary

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 paid no attention to my entreaties. However, the hostess assured me, that a fresh enquiry should be made; but I found afterwards that her promise was only given to quiet me. No further steps were taken in the business.

Though my baggage was left at Munich under the care of my French servant, having prepared myself for a long journey, my purse was amply furnished: besides, my equipage proved me to be of distinction, and in consequence all possible attention was paid me at the inn. The day passed away: still no news arrived of Agnes. The anxiety of fear now gave place to despondency. I ceased to rave about her, and was plunged in the depth of melancholy reflections. Perceiving me to be silent and tranquil, my attendants believed my delirium to have abated, and that my malady had taken a favourable turn. According to the physician's order, I swallowed a composing medicine; and as soon as the night


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 strain at dawn, and was asleep when the rider came.

Wallace Ramsey was the man who came riding hard as the sun was rising. Mrs. Ellison's heart gave one great bound of apprehension, then seemed to stop as she heard the rider halt at the gate. She was at the window as he rode through. Waco Johnson, his pancakes fried in the fat of his bacon, his scalding coffee drunk, was coming from the corral to meet him.

Wallace had come directly from Coburn's ranch, having been an incredibly short time on the way. By the time Mrs. Ellison and Eudora had dressed, quickly as prairie women can accomplish that feat, Wallace had told what he had come riding to bear.

Coburn had returned home from Drumwell between midnight and morning after a forced ride. There was a gang of squaw men and mongrels up from the Nation, drinking and carousing at Kane's, making no secret of their intention to wait there until Simpson came in with another load of bones, when they intended to kill him. The toughs of Drumwell, notably the marshal, were lined up with the friends and relatives of Wade Harrison's gang who had lost their lives in Simpson's recent foray against them.

Wallace had hopped his horse at once, at Coburn's request as well as his own inclination, in the hope of reaching the Ellison ranch before Simpson left. He was greatly concerned when he learned that he was twenty-four hours too late.

Mrs. Ellison turned on Waco with severe censure for keeping the facts from her when he knew Tom was going out against such great odds. Waco did not shrivel in

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 the hot blast of her wrath, although she gave it to him unsparingly and without a chance to defend himself until she had said a great deal more than her temperate disposition would have betrayed her into speaking if she had not reached the breaking point of strain. Waco heard her to the end of the raking-down, then calmly told her what he knew.

Tom had experienced trouble with the marshal on his last trip, the hang-over of a former row, to which Wallace could testify, and to which Wallace did add his confirming word. Tom had not known anything about this graver development which Wallace had come to report.

Ashamed of her outburst of unfounded charges, Mrs. Ellison attempted to say she was sorry, but Waco put up his large hand, which seemed to shut her off like a closed door, turned and hurried toward the barn, going as nimbly as if it was somebody else's leg the bullet had gone through a little less than two weeks ago.

Wallace, big-eyed and white around the end of his nose as if somebody lately had let go that member, was all in a froth to start to his friend's assistance. He told the two women how Tom had stood up for him when he needed help, and swore he'd wade through wildcats to pay off what he still felt to be owing on that debt. But how to do it was the question. Eudora suggested the sheriff, giving up the thought almost at once when the element of time was considered. Tom must have made twenty-five or thirty miles yesterday; he would reach town around noon, and it would be all over before the sheriff, or anybody else, could do him a bit of good.

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 "Give me another horse and turn me loose!" said Wallace.

Wallace was sweating in the pressure of his desire to speed to Drumwell; he began to strip the saddle off his horse as he spoke, and Eudora went tearing to the barn after Frank, never turned out to pasture at night with the other animals, to drive up the horses for Wallace to select his remount.

Waco came out of the barn as she ran up to the door. He was leading his tall lean horse, the one that had carried Simpson on the long ride south trailing the horsethieves. He was carrying the shotgun over his shoulder; his gun was buckled around his lank body, and he was a grim and determined man, ready to ride on a grim and determined business, with a good deal of lead available for delivery.

"Where are you goin', Waco?" Eudora asked, a question that her own eyes had answered the moment she saw him in the door.

"Down the road a piece."

"Wait. That man wants a fresh horse—he'll go with you."

It wasn't much of a job to find the horses, as they always wandered up to the corrals in the morning, where they stood around in the way of horses, putting their necks over the fence, waiting, it seemed, to learn if they were wanted and, if not, to have it off their minds so they could enjoy the day. Eudora had them in the corral in less than fifteen minutes, and her mother, steady as a clock now, had a pot of coffee on the stove, biscuits in the oven

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 and bacon and eggs in the pan, by the time Wallace had a fresh horse saddled.

Eudora had hopped her horse barebacked to go to the pasture. She saddled him now, and came to the kitchen gate with him as Wallace was settling his feet under the table to eat a hasty breakfast. She chafed under this delay, but was as polite as Wallace was wise. He knew that ten minutes more meant little in the job ahead of him, and a full man was worth more than a hungry one for a long, hard ride. Waco was loading shotgun shells in the bunk-house: he was through by the time Wallace came out wiping egg from his chin.

Eudora, her face looking pinched and very pale, came bursting out of the house dressed for the saddle, having made the change in two swipes. Her breast was heaving as if she had been under water. She said she thought they could get some help down the road among the homesteaders, who all felt deep gratitude and obligation to Tom. She said she was going at once to see what could be done.

"You've got a good head," Waco approved. "Come on."

"Waco Johnson, you get right down off that horse!" Mrs. Ellison called sharply from the kitchen porch.

"Ma'am?" said Waco, twisting around in surprised comicality, the shotgun in his hand.

"Do you want to lose that leg?" she demanded.

"If I lose both of 'em clean up to my na—my belly-band, I don't give a cuss!" Waco replied.

They were off, the three of them starting with a bound, leaning like jockeys, their resolution made and acted on with celerity that promised badly for the gang at Drum-

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 well if they should have the luck to get there in time.

The long lean veteran of Jo Shelby's brigade was tinkering around his wagon, which stood in the yard loaded with bones, when the three rode up. When Waco, who assumed the office of spokesman, laid the case before him in few words, the homesteader did not say anything; simply turned and disappeared in his little board shack, which was already beginning to bulge with the customary overflow of towheads.

Eudora looked at Wallace; both turned to Waco. There was disappointment in the girl's eyes, through which the fire of indignation blazed. Wallace let his jaw go slack in the moment of unuttered contempt. He had his machinery in hand almost at once, however, and started to express himself according to his feelings. Waco put up his big interdicting hand. The homesteader was in the door, buckling a very competent and experienced-looking gun around his middle.

"Where do we meet?" he inquired.

Waco turned to Eudora.

"Where?" he repeated. "You know this country better than I do."

"Down the road where the old cattle trail crosses," she said.

They rode on.

Three had been added to their forces when they reached the house of the old soldier who had been with Grant at Appomattox. Yes, by heavens! he said; wait till he got his horse and gun. He was a cavalryman—his name was Kerns—and the cunning for quick saddling had not left his hand. He was up and with them, the eager light of ad-

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 shut in, my attendants withdrew, and left me to repose.

That repose I wooed in vain. The agitation of my bosom chased away sleep. Restless in my mind, in spite of the fatigue of my body, I continued to toss about from side to side, till the clock in a neighbouring steeple struck "one." As I listened to the mournful hollow sound, and heard it die away in the wind, I felt a sudden chillness spread itself over my body. I shuddered without knowing wherefore; cold dews poured down my forehead, and my hair stood bristling with alarm. Suddenly I heard slow and heavy steps ascending the stair-case. By an involuntary movement I started up in my bed, and drew back the curtain. A single rush-light, which glimmered upon the hearth, shed a faint gleam through the apartment, which was hung with tapestry. The door was thrown open with violence. A figure entered, and drew near my bed with solemn measured steps.


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 venture in his blue eyes, although his only weapon was a single-barreled, breech-loading shotgun of the type called Zulu.

Eleven men gathered at the crossing of the old cattle trail, including Wallace and Waco, within an hour of the first appeal for help. They were all fairly well mounted; all were accustomed to the saddle, and if luck was with them they could make the thirty-two miles, more or less, between that point and Drumwell in five hours. There was scarcely a man among them that had not suffered some insult or humiliation at the hands of the Drumwell roughs. One's wife had been affronted; another's daughter. One had lost a son in a gambling brawl there; all were bitter against the conditions which made the town a place to be avoided.

Added to this was the recent terrifying ordeal they had experienced in being stripped of the very means of existence by the thieves from the Cherokee trails. Simpson had restored their property, by a feat of admirable heroism in their eyes; their gratitude was as great as their relief, and most of them were steady brave men who had faced death in more than one guise before that day.

Eudora would have gone with them, but Waco, who had taken the lead by a kind of inherent generalship which all appeared to recognize, lifted his hand sternly and said that was where she turned back. But he lowred his hand slowly, until his finger-tips touched her hair as in a benediction. Then he wheeled his horse, set himself at the head of the little force, Wallace tight beside him, and the girl was alone at the crossing of the trails, the cold track of tears on her white face.

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For all the advice Waco had given on methods of handling half-broken draft animals, Simpson found himself lacking in a most essential one on the road that day, namely: a prescription for the cure of a balky horse.

Undoubtedly there is no more vexatious animal living than a balky horse, especially one that is swift and eager at times but stops short in the most critical situations and stands meanly unresponsive to force and persuasion alike. Such a horse Tom found he had in his team, a comely, chunky roan gelding with that facial distinction described among horses as well as men as a roman nose.

Due to the eccentricities of this beast, Simpson covered little more than half the distance between the ranch and Drumwell the first day. According to the inscrutable rules of balky horses the world over, among which there appears to be a close brotherhood, with rules and regulations like any labor union, this animal frequently did his share, and more, on hills, leaning to the collar manfully, only to stop in stubborn defiance when he reached the top. Again, he would come up short on level ground, where the pressure of the collar on his shoulders would not have mashed a fly.

Tom tried out all the remedies he ever had heard of, such as strapping up a fore leg, leaving the fellow only three to stand on, which appeared to be quite suffi-

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 cient for his purpose. Sometimes he went on when released from this mild punishment, more often he shook his head in haughty defiance, not at all unlike Tom Simpson's own expression of high aloofness from the petty things of life. Then Tom stuffed the striker's ears with grass, and cinched his belly hard with a rope, which he might as well have tied around himself for all the effect it had on the refractory beast. When it got ready to go, it went, always with a headlong suddenness that upset the balance of all concerned, in a manner bolting, with ears back, teeth clenched on the bit, and a general expression of desperation.

Frequently the horse held the load up half an hour before taking a notion to go on. Owing to these many delays Simpson found himself a good fifteen miles from town when he made camp, although he had pushed on until after dark. The balky horse's method had kept the horses fresh, at any rate, trying as it was to the patience of the driver.

Next morning things started off happily, that being, apparently, the day set aside by the balky horse for labor without protest. It was one of those bright, invigorating mornings which lifts a man's spirits until he minimizes his liabilities and frequently puts an unlawful valuation on his prospects. All hopes take on the color of the day at such times, perhaps due to the present physical comfort and beauty which autumn lavishes upon the travail-eased earth. A man is beguiled from speculation upon the worst phases of his existence by luxurious dreams of things to come.

So it was with Tom Simpson riding on his load of bones,

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 although he did not allow himself to believe the balky horse had experienced a reformation that would hold a great while. Every hour gained without a stop was at least three miles more on the way. At the rate he was going, Tom calculated on reaching town about noon.

In gratifying variance of his form, the troublesome horse kept steadily on. When he set to it earnestly that way there was not a better animal in the team. Tom forgave him much of yesterday's annoyance on account of the gratifying willingness to today. It was a little past noon when he came in sight of town, the southern end of the road being the rougher, a sight which dispelled the pleasant speculations of the morning and brought him straight down to the ground.

Yet Tom Simpson had seen trouble sufficient to know that it will come along fast enough without running ahead, even speculatively, to encounter it. What was to come, if anything, in that shape, would be the contrivance of somebody else. He had not driven there hunting trouble, although he had come heeled to meet it. His plan was to drive to the unloading place, leave his bones, pull up before a store like a man with a clear conscience and well within his rights, make his purchases and get out of town as quickly and quietly as dignity would permit.

There was a stretch of road, half a mile or more, leading into Drumwell as straight as the surveyor's transit could draw it, designed, one might believe, as a special straightaway for cowboys to put on a spurt and make a demonstration of speed and racket as they rode into the place of refreshment. This piece of road had a slight downhill tip into town, where it met the main and only

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 street at right angles in front of Eddie Kane's hotel and bar. Simpson let the horses swing along at a brisk trot down this finishing stretch while he buckled on the guns which had hung on the dashboard up to that time.

The balky horse was the liveliest stepper in the team, as he had been all morning. It appeared as if he knew he was approaching the end of the journey and desired to make a favorable impression on all beholders, after the manner of hypocrites everywhere. So Simpson came bowling into town rather gallantly, perched high on the spring seat, a gun on each hip-bone, the rifle beside him, a shining mark for anybody who might have the mean inclination to take a shot at him.

Nobody appeared to be so inclined, although his arrival was not without spectators. It seemed as if he was to go on his way unmolested. Certainly he knew nothing of the prowlers from the Nation, his only conceivable source of trouble lying in the city marshal and such friends as might step out in his behalf. The marshal was not in sight, nor anybody else who appeared to have more than a passing interest, such as might rest on any bone man with a good lively team.

To come to the unloading place the agent had assigned him beside the house track, as that particular switch is called in railroad parlance, Simpson had to make a right turn when entering the street and drive across the main line of railroad. All went as smoothly as a greased slide until the wagon was squarely across the main-line track, where the balky horse was taken with the notion of showing the town how mean he could be, and what a spectacle

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 he could make of the creature who posed as his master on the load of bones.

Tom knew there was nothing he could do to make the stubborn cuss move on. The best thing, he decided, was to take him out, tie his mate's end of the double-tree and drive the short distance without him. Accordingly he got down and began to unhitch the rebel.

At that point in the balky horse's act the station agent entered. He came on with spirit, adding considerably to the entertainment of the small crowd of men and boys who had collected out of the town's apparently barren possibilities in surprisingly short time. They wondered why a man would want to unhitch his team and leave his wagon straddle of an active piece of railroad like that.

"Git that wagon off of there!" the agent yelled, his voice cracked by what seemed to be a sense of outrage against his dignity. "Don't you see that board? Git 'em to hell off of there!"

He pointed to the semaphore signal, a red sheetiron contrivance at the end of a rod protruding to the edge of the platform from above the depot's bay window. Tom looked at it, curiously interested, it seemed.

"Very pretty," he said.

The bystanders laughed, a derisive haw-haw directed at the agent like a volley of excrement, station agents being almost invariably unpopular men in towns the size and stamp of Drumwell. This set the agent at Tom with redoubled charge of authority.

"She's due in less 'n a minute," he said, his shallow passion splitting about equally between anger and fear. "He's got to git to that tank,"—apparently making a

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 change in the sex of the approaching or impending thing which might have been confusing to anybody but a railroader, who would have known he was speaking of the train in one instance, the engineer in the other—"and how in the hell's he goin' to do it with that damn wagon on the track? Git 'em to hell off of here, I tell you—git 'em off!"

Tom was calmly, unhurriedly, unhitching the balky horse. He looked up with humorous twinkle in his eyes.

"Send it along," he said. "Maybe a locomotive could move this horse; I've tried about everything else."

The crowd laughed again, a note of friendliness in the sound for this calm young man who didn't hop any faster for all the agent's wrath. Some of the older men offered suggestions, some help, the latter quite in order, the former wasted wind. Tom gave one of them a rope and asked him to tie the end of the double-tree back to the axle, threw the tugs across the balky animal's back and started to lead him out.

But no; the horse had other plans. He braced his legs and set back against the pull on his bit. The crowd slapped him with hats, jabbed him in the belly with thumbs, twisted his tail, and the frantic agent, his eyes as big as eggs, got behind him and pushed. Wasted effort, all. The horse stood there maliciously stubborn, and the train against which the red board was turned came around a curve a quarter of a mile or so north of the station, with such a head of speed it looked as if nothing could save that load of bones, to say nothing of adding those of four pretty good horses to the collection.

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 The crowd broke, clearing the track, and the agent, flapping his arms in terrified signal to stop, went galloping down the road to meet the train. The engine came to a stop, Tom Simpson standing at the horse's head, hand on its bridle, with nicely calculated thrill for all beholders, about five feet from the wagon, the engineer leaning haughtily out of the cab, crabbed as if he regretted there was anything in law or morals which restrained him from making a mess of the whole affair.

It was beneath his station to speak to a man so low as a driver of a bone wagon, or any wagon whatever, there being a deep jealousy among railroad engineers against all people who guide the course of anything that moves on wheels. Not so the conductor, who came jogging forward in that little goat-trot peculiar to passenger train conductors, the gesticulating agent with him. The agent was almost wordless at this awful sacrilege in blocking the way of Number Five, or Five, as he called it, which was a prince among railroad trains in his eyes, although only a little plug of three coaches to everybody else. But there was that granger with his load of bones, blocking the way to the water tank and the station, and the agent and conductor were as vindictive against him as if the train had a thousand miles to go to get to its journey's end instead of a hundred yards.

"Git to hell out o' there! git—tohellout o'there!" the conductor ordered, spacing his words farther as they ran out to the end of his command. "Don't stand there holdin' up this train!"

"Oh, very well," said Tom, understanding the horse's

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 view of force and duress that moment better than ever before.

But how to get to hell out of there, or to anywhere else out of there, was the question. The passengers were leaving the train, not caring much where it stopped, many of them gathering around to enjoy the spectacle of a balky horse holding up a train. Tom had tried everything he knew on that horse; if anybody had a remedy to offer that would move him before his time, suggestions were then in order.

The conductor said here, some of you fellers—speaking to all assembled—git a hold of this damn wagon and roll it to hell off of this damn track. But conductors were even less popular than agents in Drumwell, where most of the male inhabitants had memories of high-handed dealings over fares and excess fares, and the question of taking dogs on board. They gave him cold looks and no assistance.

It looked as if the conductor would have to stoop to common labor himself to remove that obstruction, when Tom Simpson, nonchalantly striking a match on the sole of his boot, held the little flame to the balky horse's belly and moved him with a grunt and much twisting of the tail, and a look of wide-awake surprise on his romannosed countenance.

Tom had much pleasure in his discovery as he climbed to the seat and drove his bones clear of the track, and on to his unloading place, without a look behind to see the engineer range up to the water tank or the agent go hopping along the platform to get a truck for the trunks and express.

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 Tom was not greatly surprised to find the place where he had left his first load empty. There was not a bone, not a horn, nor even a tooth out of a jawbone. The mark of them was there in the soft ground, as well as man tracks and wagon tracks. A cattle car, partly loaded with bones, stood up the track a little way, its freight showing between its slatted siding. All evidence bore out the suspicion that his bones had been appropriated to help out that load not many hours before his arrival.

This time Tom did not take the seat off the wagon, but pushed it up near the dashboard, ready to move in an emergency without leaving it behind. He unloaded quickly, unhampered by even an onlooking citizen, public interest in him having passed on when he cleared the track. By the time he had emptied the wagon the train had pulled down below the station, where it lay on the dead end of track like a little chunky lizard in the sun. Everybody had gone from the depot, and the town had lapsed into its usual daytime state, the plaintive yelling of cowboys mingling with the lonesome lowing of cattle where the noisy work of loading was going on at the pens. These loading pens were on the other side of the lumber yard, not visible from Simpson's situation behind the depot. He had not one spectator of his homely activities.

Leaving his team standing, Tom went to the car which he had very good reason to believe had gobbled up his first jag of bones, as Mrs. Ellison had called the load. The car was only partly loaded; its side door stood open to receive additional freight. Waiting for him to bring it, Tom thought. Tom examined several skulls in the pile that

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 With trembling apprehension I examined this midnight visitor. God Almighty! it was the bleeding nun! It was my lost companion! Her face was still veiled, but she no longer held her lamp and dagger. She lifted up her veil slowly. What a sight presented itself to my startled eyes! I beheld before me an animated corse. Her countenance was long and haggard; her cheeks and lips were bloodless; the paleness of death was spread over her features; and her eye-balls, fixed stedfastly upon me, were lustreless and hollow.

I gazed upon the spectre with horror too great to be described. My blood was frozen in my veins. I would have called for aid, but the sound expired ere it could pass my lips. My nerves were bound up in impotence, and I remained in the same attitude inanimate as a statue.

The visionary nun looked upon me for some minutes in silence: there was something petrifying in her regard. At length,


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 blocked the door, then returned hastily to his wagon, drove up to the car and began loading it from the heap that lay within arm's reach.

Tom's indignation rose with every bone that he threw into the wagon. There was little use asking the agent who was loading that car, for the splay-footed coward would shield the thief, but it was due to him, Tom Simpson, to proclaim to the skulking citizenry of that town that his property must rest there untouched. He was in the car, throwing out bones with a clatter equal to that of the living cattle marching into the chutes not far away, when the one man above all others whom Simpson desired to meet that day appeared.

Simpson had heard him coming from the direction of the lumber yard, his feet noisy on the cinders of the roadbed, his manner of coming betraying his interest in that car of bones. Tom was in the door when he appeared. He was a large man, coatless, a wide brown hat shading his scowling eyes. From the little canvas apron he wore Tom knew he was the lumber dealer, the bone monopolist of the town.

There was an expression of petulant injury, rather than anger or surprise, on the man's harsh-featured brown face. He stood a moment chewing his tobacco, running a quick eye over Tom's accouterments, taking in the rifle standing inside the door.

"What in hell do you think you're doin' in that car?" he inquired, with all the sarcasm he could lay on the words, as if he would have it sound like a mistake had been made when he knew he was being robbed.

"Recovering stolen property," Simpson replied bluntly.

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 "You're talkin' kind of careless, it seems to me, pardner. You git to hell out of that car and put them bones back, and you do it damn quick!"

"I left a load of bones beside the track a few days ago, and I come back to find them in your car," Tom told him, not greatly moved by the blustering order. "When I've loaded that wagon I'll come out—unless you get too damn nasty about it."

"You'll have a sweet time provin' title to a load of bones!"

"Not at all," Tom corrected him. "I expected some damn thief would try to get away with them, and I marked a lot of them—here—look at that, you bloomin' pirate!"

Tom tossed a skull across the wagon. On the forehead it bore the pencilled brand of the Block E ranch. The lumberman threw it down with a sneer, but a flush that was not all due to virtue overspread his face.

"You've had time to mark a hundred of 'em," he said. "You can't git away with that in this man's town!"

The man's manner was portentous of trouble. He spoke with that big threat, that bullying certainty, of a boy who knows his parent will take up his row. Tom did not stop to argue the case any longer. He resumed the job of filling his wagon with bones, the lumberman watching him with malignant scowl a little while. He appeared to be standing there to get his resentment up to the fighting pitch by witnessing this high-handed work of a man who would not conform to the established usage of that town, under which a man pocketed his loss and rode away, charging it up to the expense of a sucker's education.

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 Presently the lumberman went away, perhaps to get his gun, maybe to summon his friends, Tom thought. Whatever his intention, it was not a pacific one. He would not throw down his hand and confess himself a thief and a coward before the ribald citizens of that town. Trouble was coming, and it would be there pretty soon. This would be the final show-down for him, Tom Simpson knew.

Simpson finished his load quickly, piling the bones high as indemnity for the labor he had spent in their recovery, drove to his heap beside the track and began to unload. He kept a wary eye out for the first hostile approach, surprised that they were so long in coming.

This surprise gave way to troubled conjecture when nothing happened. He worked down to the bottom, rearranged his seat, left the horses standing and went to the depot to order his car. The agent received the order sulkily, as if to imply that the railroad didn't want his business any more than the lumberman relished his rivalry in the merry market of osseous remains.

As matters stood, Simpson didn't see much future to that business just then. He believed the lumberman would clean up his pile of bones the minute he left town. The only way to meet such competition would be for him or Waco to remain there all the time, which would not be profitable unless they could work up a bigger trade among the homesteaders than promised.

True, they had enough bones contracted for, with what he had on the ground and would bring the next trip, when Waco would be able to handle a load, to fill a car. His customers were to deliver to Drumwell on the day he had ordered the car set, but he had grave doubts now

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 whether that bald-faced agent intended to place the order at all. It looked like a hopeless prospect for bones.

Thus turning the several obstacles of discouragement in his mind, Tom went back to the wagon and drove across the track into the street, the gap in his wheel-team unfilled, the balky horse in tow at the endgate. For the trip home he intended to rearrange the horses, move the lead-team back and hitch the willing horse by a singletree to the end of the tongue, with a rope around the balky fellow's neck behind. There he could travel with the rest of them or drag, according to his perverse inclination. If he hung back and got his fool head pulled off it would be a good riddance of the pestiferous pelter.

Tom was puzzled, but not betrayed into any feeling of false security, by the disappearance of the lumberman and the apparent indifference of everybody in town to his presence. The marshal had not come forward to display the authority he was fonder of asserting than he was successful in enforcing, in Tom Simpson's case, at least.

Many horses were hitched in front of stores and restaurants, cowboys were jangling up and down the board sidewalks with spurs on their heels, but a few moments out of their saddles, their sweating horses close by, while mixed groups of cowpunchers and farmers chatted amiably here and there.

The cowboys laughed at this granger's queer way of hitching a harnessed horse behind his wagon and leaving that comical gap in his wheel-team. Some of them guyed him goodnaturedly as he drove down the street looking for a place to hitch, but drew in their horns quickly when they got a nearer look at the face of the

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 driver and the two guns under his elbows. They stopped to discuss him in speculative wonder, watching him as he drove slowly along looking for a space between horses and wagons to accommodate his lengthy outfit.

There was space in front of the Railroad Restaurant, the place conducted by Eddie Kane's more or less estimable mother-in-law, a family tie of which Simpson was wholly unaware. He was firmly fixed on steak and potatoes, and that joint looked about as good as any. There he drew up along the edge of the sidewalk with his cumbersome wagon, ponderously, like a steamboat making its berth, and as he threw his leg over the side to get down and hitch, the lumberman and the city marshal popped suddenly around the corner of the calaboose and began to shoot.

It was no time for argument, or consideration of legal aspects of his situation; it was the pinch between life and death. Simpson grabbed the rifle from the seat beside him, the bullets of the pair slapping the planks of the restaurant's high false front. He heard somebody squeal inside the place, the front door slam violently, as he cut loose.

The two men were diagonally across the broad street, about two hundred feet away. At Simpson's first shot the city marshal dropped in his tracks, and went rolling a little way as if he had fallen on a hillside. The lumberman ran behind the calaboose when his companion fell, and the gust of shooting ended as suddenly as it had begun.

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Curiosity no doubt was as dominant in the minds of people who lived in Drumwell, and those who frequented its places of business and diversion, as elsewhere. Only discretion was somewhat farther to the front. Discretion cleared the street when the shooting began, as if a wind had picked all the two-legged creatures up and whisked them away like leaves.

Every door caught as many as could scramble inside before the proprietor slammed and locked it, after the custom of that town, and other places of its kind in the shooting zone of the cow country frontier. It was not the belief that a locked pine door would turn bullets; experience had proved the reverse often enough to Drumwell merchants. But a quickly shut door was outward proof of the owner's neutrality, and kept his standing unimpaired in the good graces of all belligerents.

Those who did not make it into open doors cut for spaces between the buildings which would lead to sufficient shelter behind them, from where they could leg it to back doors if they felt safer under a roof when bullets were humming around, as most people did. It was equal to a trick with cards the way that short street cleared of everything alive but horses. Some of these pranced and pulled back, frightened by that wave of warning which quickened even the senses of the dumb.

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 JUNE 5.

T as above A driving team, Taylor & self cutting logs for fence. Lewington at cooking etc.

JUNE 6.

As above.

JUNE 7.

The same.

JUNE 8.

Same - Self to outstation with provisions.

JUNE 9.

Men & A clearing spring, Self counted sheep (655), which is 1 short, docked 5 lambs, moved shepherd's traps to better feed & came home.

JUNE 10.

2 men at Spring garden, self at old one. A after cattle L shot 5 ducks.

JUNE 11.

Sunday,

JUNE 12.

Two & self at garden, A - cattle brought & 2 kangaroos.

JUNE 13.

A & self brought in 48 head of cattle & horses - men making another stye.

JUNE 14.

Same work.


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 The city marshal had rolled almost to the corner of his lockup, behind which his friend had expeditiously hidden himself. Standing in the wagon, Simpson turned a look toward Kane's place to see if anybody was moving with hostile intention from that quarter. When he glanced over at the calaboose again, the city marshal was gone.

A moment later Tom saw legs flit across the space between the calaboose and the nearest building, and he was certain one pair of those legs belonged to nobody but the marshal. The crafty little cuss had been playing 'possum, waiting his moment to slide to cover. Just as well if he hadn't damaged the little devil, Tom thought. He was not a man that counted for very much, shake him out of the box as you might.

Other legs went flitting across the chinks between other buildings, few of which stood shoulder to shoulder, admirable arrangement for refuge in such a public exigency as now. The trend of those flying legs was toward Kane's place, which was about half the distance of a city square from Simpson's situation in front of the Railroad Restaurant.

Tom believed they were gathering at Kane's in a force that soon must make it pretty lively for him. He knew it was useless to attempt flight, although he considered mounting the led horse and making a dash for the open. Even while he thought of it he knew it wouldn't do. The first break to run would set every coward in town at his heels, regardless of any actuating interest in the case except that of the chase. It would be better to stand and face the partisans of the marshal than, retreat and bring out the rabble.

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 He must get out of the wagon, and away from it. He was responsible for the horses; sticking around there for the shelter of the wagon—which would be like a chip to a bug for a man in his fix—could only result in some of the animals being killed. It would not be generous of him to stand in front of that little restaurant, either, and get it shot up. It had caught several bullets at the first outbreak; one of its windows was broken. There was only one thing to do, for the safety and consideration of all concerned except himself: walk out to the middle of the street and wait for them to come.

He jumped down, tied the lead team to the hitchingpole, emptied an extra box of ammunition into his pockets, grabbed the rifle and stepped into the road.

At that moment several men emerged so hastily from Eddie Kane's barroom door that it seemed as if the place had given way under their pressure and spilled them, exposing them before they were ready. The lumberman was conspicuous among them by his collarless white shirt, but the city marshal was not there.

They spread out like a covey of rising quail and began to shoot, some of them edging away from the building, where Eddie Kane could be seen at the door. Even at his distance, and against all the popping guns, Simpson could hear Kane, vituperative and raging, consigning him to the place where all undesirable people were billeted by the foul-mouthed of every frontier. Kane was putting on some trimmings of his own, and he was a competent decorator in that lurid line.

The distance was somewhat long for accuracy with pistols, although bullets were cutting the dust around

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 and beyond Simpson, edging up a little nearer as the shooters mastered their first wildness and took more calculative aim. Tom believed he could hold them beyond dangerous range with the rifle. He threw four quick shots with no other intention, and they bunched in a surge for the door as eagerly as they had emerged a few seconds before.

But Kane, false friend in their necessity, had followed the example of everybody else along the street. The door was locked. They cut around the corner, making for the main entrance, which they must have reached before Kane could slam it, for all but three of them dropped out of the open conflict, although somebody began firing with a rifle from an upstairs window a few seconds later.

The three who remained in the street were of the cowboy type, one of them a long-haired man who looked familiar to Tom, although he could not recall at the moment where he had seen him. Somebody yelled to them out of the window where the shooting had come from; Tom saw an arm between the curtains waving a rifle, which the long-haired man ran under and caught as it dropped. He was the Indian member of Wade Harrison's outfit, who had escaped that morning of the fight on the old cattle trail.

Tom jerked a shot at him as he stooped and ran swiftly for the corner of the building. It was a clean miss, although it was a shot thrown with deadly intention. The Indian began to shoot from cover around the corner, only his arm and shoulder and the side of his head visible as he fired. He was considerably better with that gun than he was with a revolver; he was handing them out pretty

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 close to Tom's head as he stood there a fair mark in the middle of the broad street, the brim of his old sombrero flapping in the wind.

Several cowboys had climbed to the tops of the cars they had been loading, from where they watched the fight. One of them tried to signal something to Tom that he did not understand. He waved his hand to show the friendly fellow that he appreciated his interest, even though he could not profit by the signal.

They would keep out of it, Tom knew; it was not their way to mix in sectional fights or take hand in anything that did not involve them. But he couldn't help wishing he had three or four of them with him. He'd smoke that gang out of the hotel then, and clean up that town until a man could leave his lying over there by the sidetrack

A shot from that same upstairs window cut off this ardent wish. Tom raised his gun to throw lead through the blowing curtains, but held it, remembering there were women in the place. The Indian, incautious at this deflection of attention, displayed a little too much of his anatomy at the corner, and Tom pitched the shot at him instead.

It was a hit. The fellow spun out into the open, whirling as if somebody unwound him from the coils of a rope. He dropped his gun, seemed to stumble over it, and fell. There was no pretense in the posture of that man, lying on his face with his arms thrown above his head in the dusty road.

Something hit Tom's arm with a spat; a gun cracked between the houses, and the meaning of the cowboy's

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 signal was made plain. Tom wheeled, his right arm suddenly numb as if he had been hit a hard blow on the crazy-bone. No other sensation, but the arm would not respond when he tried to lift the gun. He dropped it, slung his revolver with his left hand, and made a charge at the man who had flanked him and was still shooting, but wildly. And all the time that coward in the hotel window was pegging meanly away, maybe a woman, for all he knew.

There was nobody between the houses, where the smoke of the shooting was packed close. The sneak had heeled it, sticking close to the corner of the building—it was a little dry goods and millinery store—with that intention if pushed. It must have been the marshal, Tom believed; that was a trick worthy the wall-eyed little beast.

Tom turned back to the street, feeling a little queer, a light-headed sickness coming over him like the beginning of mal de mer. Strange such a little thing as a crack in the arm would do that; it never had upset him that way before, getting a shot in an out-of-the-way place such as an arm or leg. A smothering, sick, oppressive feeling of obscuration it was growing to be. Strange; very-very strange.

There was a lot of wet inside his shirt, and rings of varicolored light before his eyes. They must have got him somewhere—he must get under cover and find out how seriously. The sidewalk rose in front of him as he went ahead to try the door of the little shop. Locked, the curtains pulled down, no movement within answering

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 his knock and pettish: "Oh, I say now! Open this damn door, will you?"

That woman in the hotel—he could not think even in his extremity a man could be so base—was still shooting, and he had to go that way to get to the door of the hardware store next beyond, where a zinc washtub was standing on a barrel in front. He went on, annoyed by the shooting from the window, but not greatly concerned otherwise. The door was locked, and if anybody skulked inside he was too cowardly or vindictive to open it.

A crowd of men appeared at the corner of the hotel prancing fantastically, shooting straight in the air, it seemed to Tom. What silly asses the fellows were making of themselves, throwing their legs and arms in that outlandish dance!

Then the tipping world steadied a moment. They were not shooting in the air, but at him. A bullet hit the washtub, clanging loudly, jarring it a little from its unsteady place on the barrel. Tom sagged down behind the barrel, hoping it had salt in it, pushed the washtub off, trained his pistol over the top and began to shoot.

But that feeling of obscuration was pressing around him; there was a streak of fire running through his head. He was still pulling the trigger, his last shot going through the rusty tin dipper hanging at the end of the hardware sign, when he began falling, falling, dropping down from immeasurable heights; struck darkness, and lay still.

He did not hear the clatter of feet on the planks, nor the whoop of triumph as the crowd rushed him from the corner of the hotel; nor the break of galloping horses as

title: Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/293