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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Claim Number One, by George W. (George
+Washington) Ogden, Illustrated by J. Allen St. John
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Claim Number One
+
+
+Author: George W. (George Washington) Ogden
+
+
+
+Release Date: November 29, 2009  [eBook #30558]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLAIM NUMBER ONE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online
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+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+      See 30558-h.htm or 30558-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30558/30558-h/30558-h.htm)
+      or
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+
+
+
+
+
+CLAIM NUMBER ONE
+
+by
+
+GEORGE W. OGDEN
+
+Author of
+The Duke of Chimney Butte
+Trails End, Etc.
+
+Frontispiece by J. Allen St. John
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers New York
+
+Made in the United States of America
+
+Copyright
+
+A. C. McClurg & Co.
+1922
+
+Published May, 1922
+
+Copyrighted in Great Britain
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+      I.    Comanche                            1
+     II.    Guests for the Metropole            9
+    III.    Unconventional Behavior            21
+     IV.    The Flat-Game Man                  46
+      V.    Skulkers                           63
+     VI.    The Drawing                        79
+    VII.    A Midnight Extra                  104
+   VIII.    The Governor's Son                122
+     IX.    Double Crookedness                140
+      X.    Hun Shanklin's Coat               154
+     XI.    Number One                        172
+    XII.    The Other Man                     188
+   XIII.    Sentiment and Nails               206
+    XIV.    "Like a Wolf"                     219
+     XV.    An Argument Ends                  233
+    XVI.    A Promise                         255
+   XVII.    A Plan                            273
+  XVIII.    The Strange Tent                  288
+    XIX.    Crook Meets Crook                 304
+     XX.    A Sudden Cloud                    325
+    XXI.    The Crisis                        343
+
+
+
+
+CLAIM NUMBER ONE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+COMANCHE
+
+
+Coming to Comanche, you stopped, for Comanche was the end of the world.
+Unless, of course, you were one of those who wished to push the
+boundary-line of the world farther, to make homes in the wilderness
+where there had been no homes, to plant green fields in the desert where
+none had been before.
+
+In that case you merely paused at Comanche, like the railroad, to wait
+the turn of events.
+
+Beyond Comanche was the river, and beyond the river, dim-lined in the
+west, the mountains. Between the river and the mountains lay the
+reservation from which the government had pushed the Indians, and which
+it had cut into parcels to be drawn by lot.
+
+And so Comanche was there on the white plain to serve the present, and
+temporary, purpose of housing and feeding the thousands who had
+collected there at the lure of chance with practical, impractical,
+speculative, romantic, honest, and dishonest ideas and intentions.
+Whether it should survive to become a colorless post-office and
+shipping-station for wool, hides, and sheep remained for the future to
+decide. As the town appeared under the burning sun of that August
+afternoon one might have believed, within bounds, that its importance
+was established for good and all.
+
+It was laid out with the regular severity of the surveyor's art.
+Behind the fresh, new railroad depot the tented streets swept away
+pretentiously. In the old settlements--as much as two months before
+that day some of them had been built--several business houses of wood
+and corrugated sheet-iron reared above the canvas roofs of their
+neighbors, displaying in their windows all the wares which might be
+classified among the needs of those who had come to break the desert,
+from anvils to zitherns; from beads, beds, and bridles to winches,
+wagons, water bottles, and collapsible cups.
+
+At the head of the main street stood a hydrant, which the railroad
+company supplied with water, offering its refreshment to all comers--to
+man, beast, and Indian, as well as to dusty tourists with red
+handkerchiefs about their necks. Around it, where teams had been fed and
+the overflow of water had run, little green forests of oats were
+springing, testifying to the fecundity of the soil, lighting unbelieving
+eyes with hope.
+
+"Just look what a little water will do!" said the locaters and town-site
+men, pointing with eloquent gesture. "All this land needs, gentlemen, is
+a little water to make it a paradise!"
+
+On the right hand of the hydrant there was a bank, presenting a front of
+bricked stability, its boarded sides painted in imitation of that same
+resisting material, for the comfort of its depositors perhaps, and the
+benefit of its credit before the eyes of the passing world. Well out in
+the desert, among the hummocks of earth heaped around anchoring sage
+clumps, stood the Elkhorn Hotel. It was built of logs, with a design
+toward the picturesque and an eye to the tourist class of adventurers
+who were expected to throng to the opening. The logs had been cut along
+the river--they were that gnarled cottonwood which grows, leaning always
+toward the northeast, in that land of bitter extremes--the bark stripped
+from them until they gleamed yellowly, and fitted together with studied
+crudity. Upon the projecting end of the ridge-pole rode a spreading
+elk-prong, weathered, white, old.
+
+And there was the Hotel Metropole. There always is a Hotel Metropole and
+a newspaper, no matter where you go. When you travel beyond them you
+have penetrated the _Ultima Thule_ of modern times. The Hotel Metropole
+was near the station. It was picturesque without straining for it.
+Mainly it was a large, sandy lot with a rope around it; but part of it
+was tents of various colors, sizes, and shapes, arranged around the
+parent shelter of them all--a circus "top," weathered and stained from
+the storms of many years. Their huddling attitude seemed to express a
+lack of confidence in their own stability. They seemed a brood of dusty
+chicks, pressing in for shelter of the mothering wing.
+
+All was under the direction of a small man with a cream-colored
+waistcoat and a most incendiary-looking nose. It seemed tempting the
+laws of physics governing dry materials and live coals to bring that
+nose into the shelter of a desert-bleached tent. But it was there, and
+it flared its welcome with impartial ardor upon all arrivals.
+
+The scheme of the Hotel Metropole was this: If you wanted a cot in a
+tent where each bed was partitioned from the other by a drop-curtain of
+calico print, you could enjoy that luxury at the rate of two dollars a
+night in advance, no baggage accepted as security, no matter what its
+heft or outward appearance of value. If you didn't want to go that high,
+or maybe were not so particular about the privacy of your sleeping
+arrangements, you might have a cot anywhere in the circus-tentful of
+cots, spread out like pews. There the charge was one dollar. That rate
+chancing to be too steep for you, you might go into the open and rest in
+one of the outdoor canvas pockets, which bellied down under your weight
+like a hammock. There the schedule was fifty cents.
+
+No matter what part of the house you might occupy on retiring, you were
+warned by the wall-eyed young man who piloted you to the cot with your
+number pinned on it that the hotel was not responsible for the personal
+belongings of the guests. You were also cautioned to watch out for
+thieves. The display of firearms while disrobing seemed to be encouraged
+by the management for its moral effect, and to be a part of the ceremony
+of retiring. It seemed to be the belief in the Hotel Metropole that when
+a man stored a pistol beneath his pillow, or wedged it in between his
+ribs and the side of the bunk, he had secured the safety of the night.
+
+At the distant end of the main street, standing squarely across its
+center, stood the little house which sheltered the branch of the United
+States land-office, the headquarters being at Meander, a town a day's
+journey beyond the railroad's end. A tight little board house it was,
+like a toy, flying the emblem of the brave and the free as gallantly as
+a schoolhouse or a forest-ranger station. Around it the crowd looked
+black and dense from the railroad station. It gave an impression of
+great activity and earnest business attention, while the flag was
+reassuring to a man when he stepped off the train sort of dubiously and
+saw it waving there at the end of the world.
+
+Indeed, Comanche might be the end of the world--didn't the maps show
+that it _was_ the end of the world, didn't the railroad stop there, and
+doesn't the world always come to an abrupt end, all white and uncharted
+beyond, at the last station on every railroad map you ever saw? It might
+be the end of the world, indeed, but there was the flag! Commerce could
+flourish there as well as in Washington, D. C., or New York, N. Y., or
+Kansas City, U. S. A.; even trusts might swell and distend there under
+its benign protectorate as in the centers of civilization and patriotism
+pointed above.
+
+So there was assurance and comfort to the timid in the flag at Comanche,
+as there has been in the flag in other places at other times. For the
+flag is a great institution when a man is far away from home and
+expecting to bump into trouble at the next step.
+
+Opposite the bank on the main street of Comanche were the tents of the
+gods of chance. They were a hungry-mouthed looking lot that presided
+within them, taken at their best, for the picking had been growing
+slimmer and slimmer in Wyoming year by year. They had gathered there
+from the Chugwater to the Big Horn Basin in the expectation of getting
+their skins filled out once more.
+
+One could find in those tents all the known games of cowboy literature,
+and a good many which needed explanation to the travelers from afar.
+There was only one way to understand them thoroughly, and that was by
+playing them, and there seemed to be a pretty good percentage of curious
+persons in the throng that sweated in Comanche that day.
+
+That was all of Comanche--tents, hydrant, hotels, bank, business houses,
+and tents again--unless one considered the small tent-restaurants and
+lodging-places, of which there were hundreds; or the saloons, of which
+there were scores. But when they were counted in, that was all.
+
+Everybody in Comanche who owned a tent was on the make, and the making
+was good. Many of the home-seekers and adventure-expectant young men and
+women had been on the ground two weeks. They had been paying out good
+money for dusty stage-rides over the promising lands which had been
+allotted to the Indians already by the government. The stage people
+didn't tell them anything about that, which was just as well. It looked
+like land where stuff might be grown with irrigation, inspiration,
+intensity of application, and undying hope. And the locaters and
+town-site boomers led their customers around to the hydrant and pointed
+to the sprouting oats.
+
+"Spill a little water on this land and it's got Egypt skinned," they
+said.
+
+So the mild adventurers stayed on for the drawing of claims, their
+ideals and notions taking on fresh color, their canned tomatoes (see the
+proper literature for the uses of canned tomatoes in desert countries
+frequented by cowboys) safely packed away in their trunks against a day
+of emergency.
+
+Every one of them expected to draw Claim Number One, and every one of
+them was under the spell of dreams. For the long summer days of Wyoming
+were as white as diamonds, and the soft blue mountains stood along the
+distant west beyond the bright river as if to fend the land from
+hardships and inclemencies, and nurture in its breast the hopes of men.
+
+Every train brought several hundred more to add to the throng already in
+Comanche--most of them from beyond the Mississippi, many of them
+schemers, most of them dreamers ready to sacrifice all the endearments
+of civilization for the romance of pioneering in the West, beyond the
+limits of the world as defined by the map of the railroad-line over
+which they had come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+GUESTS FOR THE METROPOLE
+
+
+To Comanche there came that August afternoon, when it was wearing down
+to long shadows, a mixed company, drawn from the far places and the
+middle distances east of Wyoming. This company had assembled in the
+course of the day's acquaintance on the last long, dusty run into the
+land of expectations.
+
+At dawn these people had left their comfortable sleeping-cars at
+Chadron, in the Nebraska desert, to change to the train of archaic
+coaches which transported the land-seekers across the last stretch of
+their journey. Before that morning the company had been pursuing its way
+as individual parts--all, that is, with the exception of the miller's
+wife, from near Boston; the sister of the miller's wife, who was a widow
+and the mother of June; and June, who was pasty and off-color, due to
+much fudge and polishing in a young ladies' school.
+
+These three traveled together, as three of such close relationship
+naturally should travel. The widow was taking June to Wyoming to see if
+she could put some marketable color in her cheeks, and the miller's wife
+was going along for a belated realization, at least partially, of
+youthful yearnings.
+
+Since seventeen the miller's wife had longed to see the sun set behind a
+mountain with snow upon it, and to see a cowboy with dust on his
+shoulders, like the cowboys of the western drama, come riding out of the
+glow, a speck at first, and on, and on, until he arrived where she
+waited and flung himself from his panting horse, neckerchief awry, spurs
+tinkling, and swept off his broad hat in salute. Beyond that point she
+had not dared to go since marrying the miller, who had dust enough on
+_his_ shoulders--unromantic dust, unromantic shoulders, goodness knows!
+But that was her picture, all framed in the gold of her heart. She
+wanted to see the mountain with the sun behind it, and the cowboy, and
+all, and then she could sigh, and go back to the miller and near Boston
+to await the prosaic end.
+
+For all of her thirty-eight years Mrs. Dorothy Mann was shy in
+proportion as her miller husband, the widely known J. Milton Mann was
+bold. That he was a hard-mailed knight in the lists of business, and
+that he was universally known, Mrs. Mann was ready to contend and uphold
+in any company. She carried with her in the black bag which always hung
+upon her arm certain poems bearing her husband's confession of
+authorship, which had been printed in the _Millers' Journal_, all of
+them calling public attention to the noble office of his ancient trade.
+Of course the miller was not of the party, so we really have nothing
+more to do with him than we have with the rest of the throng that
+arrived on the train with these singled-out adventurers. But his
+influence traveled far, like a shadow reaching out after the heart of
+his spare, pert, large-eyed wife. She was not yet so far away from him
+that she dared move even her eyes as her heart longed.
+
+In the manner of the miller's wife, there was a restraint upon the most
+commonplace and necessary intercourse with strangers which seemed almost
+childish. She even turned in questioning indecision toward June's mother
+before taking a seat offered her by a strange man, feeling at the same
+time of the black bag upon her arm, where the poems reposed, as if to
+beg indulgence from their author for any liberties which she might
+assume.
+
+June's mother, Mrs. Malvina Reed, widow of that great statesman, the
+Hon. Alonzo Confucius Reed, who will be remembered as the author of the
+notable bill to prohibit barbers breathing on the backs of their
+customers' necks, was duenna of the party. She was a dumpy, small woman,
+gray, with lines in her steamed face, in which all attempts at
+rejuvenation had failed.
+
+Mrs. Reed was a severe lady when it came to respecting the conventions
+of polite life, and June was her heart's deep worry. She believed that
+young woman to be in the first stage of a dangerous and mysterious
+malady, which belief and which malady were alike nothing in the world
+but fudge. When she turned her eyes upon June's overfed face a moisture
+came into them; a sigh disturbed her breast.
+
+By one of those strange chances, such as seem to us when we meet them
+nothing short of preconceived arrangement, enough seats had been left
+unoccupied in the rear coach, all in one place, to accommodate a second
+party, which came straggling through with hand-baggage hooked upon all
+its dependent accessories. It proved very pleasant for all involved.
+There the June party scraped acquaintance with the others, after the
+first restraint had been dissolved in a discussion of the virtues of
+canned tomatoes applied to the tongue of one famishing in the desert.
+
+First among the others was the bright-haired young woman from Canton,
+Ohio, whose gray eyes seemed older than herself, lighting as if with new
+hope every time they turned to acknowledge a good wish for her luck in
+the new land. It seemed at such moments as if she quickened with the
+belief that she was coming upon the track of something which she had
+lost, and was in a way of getting trace of it again.
+
+She sat up straight-backed as a saint in a cathedral window, but she
+unbent toward June. June was not long in finding out that she, also, was
+a product of grand old Molly Bawn, that mighty institution of learning
+so justly famed throughout the world for its fudge; that her name was
+Agnes Horton, and that she was going to register for a piece of land.
+
+Some five years before June had matriculated, Agnes Horton had stepped
+out, finished, from the halls of Molly Bawn.
+
+"She's old," confided June to her mother's ear. "She must be at least
+twenty-five!"
+
+Old or young, she was handsomer than any other woman on the train, and
+seemingly unaware of it as she leaned her elbow upon the dusty
+window-sill and gazed out in pensive introspection upon the bleak land
+where glaciers had trampled and volcanoes raged, each of them leaving
+its waste of worn stone and blackened ledge.
+
+And there was the school-teacher from Iowa; a long, thin string of a
+man, who combed his hair straight back from his narrow, dished forehead
+and said "idear." He was thinking seriously of sheep.
+
+And there was the commissary sergeant from Fort Sheridan, which is
+within the shadow of Chicago, German-faced, towering, broad. He blushed
+as if scandalized every time a woman spoke to him, and he took Limburger
+cheese and onions from his cloth telescope grip for his noonday lunch.
+
+And there was the well-mannered manufacturer of tools, who came from
+Buffalo, and his bald brother with him, who followed the law. There was
+the insurance man from Kansas, who grinned when he wasn't talking and
+talked when he didn't grin; and the doctor from Missouri, a large-framed
+man with a worn face and anxious look, traveling westward in hope; and
+the lumberman from Minnesota, who wore a round hat and looked meek, like
+a secretary of a Y. M. C. A., and spat tobacco-juice out of the window.
+
+All of these men, save the school-teacher and manufacturer, were more or
+less failures, one way or another. Take the sergeant--Sergeant Schaefer,
+and Jake was the name in front of that--for example. He had failed in
+his examination for advancement to a commission, and blamed the
+aristocracy of the army for it. He was disgusted with military life; and
+to him a claim, especially Claim Number One, in the Indian Reservation
+of Wyoming, looked like a haven of independence and peace.
+
+There was the bald lawyer, too; a young man old from his honest cares, a
+failure in the law because he could not square his conscience with its
+practices. He was ready to quit it for an alfalfa-plot and a little
+bunch of fat cattle--especially if he drew Number One.
+
+Horace Bentley sighed when he looked back upon his struggles with the
+world and the law. The law had been a saddle that galled his back
+through many a heavy year. And his brother William, in need of a holiday
+from his busy factory, had taken a month to himself to see "the boy," as
+he called Horace, established in a new calling in the high-minded,
+open-faced West.
+
+As for the insurance solicitor and lumberman, it must be owned that they
+were gamblers on the drawing. They meant to register and hang around for
+the lottery. Then if they should draw Number One, or even anything up to
+a hundred, they would sell out for what there was to be gained.
+
+With Dr. Warren Slavens it was quite different from the case of these
+purely adventurous speculators. Dr. Slavens had been late in getting a
+start. It was not a difficulty peculiar to him alone that the start
+always seemed a considerable distance ahead of him. Up to that time he
+had been engaged with merely the preliminaries, and they had hobbled him
+and cumbered him, and heaped up continually such a mass of matter to be
+smoothed out of the way of his going, that he never had struck a canter
+on the highway of life.
+
+Of all the disheartened, blue, and beaten men on that dusty train that
+dusty day, Dr. Warren Slavens, late of Missouri, was without question
+the deepest down in the quagmire of failure. He hated himself for the
+fizzle that he had made of it, and he hated the world that would not
+open the gates and give him one straight dash for the goal among men of
+his size.
+
+He went frequently to the platform of the car and took a long pull at a
+big, black pipe which he carried in a formidable leather case, like a
+surgical instrument, in his inner pocket. After each pull at it he
+returned with a redder face and a cloudier brow, ready to snap and snarl
+like an under dog that believes every foot in the world is raised to
+come down on his own ribs.
+
+But there was nobody on that train who cared an empty sardine-can for
+the doctor's failures or feelings. Nobody wanted to jab him in the ribs;
+nobody wanted to hear his complaint. He was wise enough to know it, in a
+way. So he kept to himself, pulling his shoulders up in soldierly
+fashion when he passed Agnes Horton's place, or when he felt that she
+was looking at him from her station directly behind his seat.
+
+At any rate, up to the neck as he was in the bog of failure, the doctor
+was going to Wyoming with a good many practical advantages ahead of
+thousands of his fellows. Before turning doctor he had been a farmer's
+boy; and he told himself that, failing in his solid determination to get
+up to the starting-line in his profession, he believed he could do
+pretty well at his older trade. But if he drew Claim Number One he meant
+to sell it for ten thousand dollars--that being the current valuation
+placed on first choice--and go back home to establish himself in dignity
+and build up a practice.
+
+The school-teacher hadn't much to say, but his cast was serious. He
+expected to draw Number One, not to sell, but to improve, to put sheep
+on, and alfalfa, and build a long barn with his name on the roof so that
+it could be read from the railroad as the trains went by.
+
+June's mother, being a widow, was eligible for the drawing. She also
+meant to register. If she drew Number One--and she hadn't yet made up
+her mind about the certainty of that--she intended to sell her
+relinquishment and take June to Vienna for examination by an eminent
+physician.
+
+When anybody asked Agnes Horton what she intended to do with her
+winnings out of the land lottery, she only smiled with that little
+jumping of hope in her eyes. It was a marvel to the whole party what a
+well set-up girl like her, with her refinement and looks and clothes,
+wanted to fool her time away in Wyoming for, when the world was full of
+men who would wear their hands raw to smooth a way for her feet to pass
+in pleasanter places. But all of them could see that in her heart the
+hope of Number One was as big as a can of tomatoes--in cowboy
+literature--to the eyes of a man dying of thirst in Death Valley.
+
+Only the toolmaker, William Bentley--and he was gray at the curling hair
+which turned up at his broad temples--smiled as if he held it to be a
+pleasant fantasy, too nebulous and far-away to be realized upon, when
+any asked him of his intentions concerning Number One. He put off his
+questioners with a pleasantry when they pressed him, but there was such
+a tenderness in his eyes as he looked at his pale, bald brother, old in
+honest ways before his time, that it was the same as spoken words.
+
+So it will be seen that a great deal depended on Claim Number One, not
+alone among the pleasant little company of ours, but in the calculations
+of every man and woman out of the forty-seven thousand who would
+register, ultimately, for the chance and the hope of drawing it.
+
+At Casper a runner for the Hotel Metropole had boarded the train. He was
+a voluble young man with a thousand reasons why travelers to the end of
+the world and the railroad should patronize the Hotel Metropole and no
+other. He sat on the arms of passengers' seats and made his argument,
+having along with him a great quantity of yellow cards, each card
+bearing a number, each good for an apartment or a cot in the open. By
+payment of the rate, a person could secure his bed ahead of any need for
+it which, said the young man, was the precaution of a wise ginny who was
+on to his job. The train conductor vouched for the genuineness of the
+young man's credentials, and conditions of things at Comanche as he
+pictured them.
+
+It was due to Sergeant Jake Schaefer that the company organized to mess
+together. The hotel representative fell in with the idea with great
+warmth. There was a large tent on the corner, just off Main Street,
+which the company could rent, said he. A partition would be put in it
+for the privacy of the ladies, and the hotel would supply the guests
+with a stove and utensils. June's mother liked the notion. It relieved
+her of a great worry, for with a stove of her own she could still
+contrive those dainties so necessary to the continued existence of the
+delicate child.
+
+So the bargain was struck, the sergeant was placed in charge of the
+conduct and supply of the camp, and everybody breathed easier. They had
+anticipated difficulty over the matter of lodging and food in Comanche,
+for wild tales of extortion and crowding, and undesirable conditions
+generally, had been traveling through the train all day.
+
+Comanche was quiet when the train arrived, for that was the part of the
+day when the lull between the afternoon's activities and the night's
+frantic reaping fell. Everyone who had arrived the day previous
+accounted himself an old-timer, and all such, together with all the
+arrivals of all the days since the registration began, came down to see
+the tenderfeet swallow their first impressions of the coming Eden.
+
+The Hotel Metropole was the only public house in Comanche that
+maintained a conveyance to meet travelers at the station, and that was
+for the transportation of their baggage only. For a man will follow his
+belongings and stick to them in one place as well as another, and the
+proprietor of the Metropole was philosopher enough to know that. So his
+men with the wagon grabbed all the baggage they could wrench from, lift
+from under, or pry out of the grasp of travelers when they stepped off
+the train.
+
+The June party saw their possessions loaded into the wagon, under the
+loud supervision of Sergeant Schaefer, who had been in that country
+before and could be neither intimidated, out-sounded, nor bluffed. Then,
+following their traveling agent-guide, they pushed through the crowds to
+their quarters.
+
+Fortunate, indeed, they considered themselves when they saw how matters
+stood in Comanche. There seemed to be two men for every cot in the
+place. Of women there were few, and June's mother shuddered when she
+thought of what they would have been obliged to face if they hadn't been
+so lucky as to get a tent to themselves.
+
+"I never would have got off that train!" she declared. "No, I never
+would have brought my daughter into any such unprotected place as
+this!"
+
+Mrs. Reed looked around her severely, for life was starting to lift its
+head again in Comanche after the oppression of the afternoon's heat.
+
+Mrs. Mann smiled. She was beginning to take a comprehensive account of
+the distance between Wyoming and the town near Boston where the miller
+toiled in the gloom of his mill.
+
+"I think it's perfectly lovely and romantic!" said she.
+
+Mrs. Reed received the outburst with disfavor.
+
+"Remember your husband, Dorothy Ann!" warned she.
+
+Dorothy Ann sighed, gently caressing the black bag which dangled upon
+her slender arm.
+
+"I do, Malvina," said she.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+UNCONVENTIONAL BEHAVIOR
+
+
+Their situation was somewhat beyond the seat of noisy business and
+raucous-throated pleasure. Mrs. Reed, while living in an unending state
+of shivers on account of the imagined perils which stalked the footsteps
+of June, was a bit assured by their surroundings.
+
+In front of them was a vacant plot, in which inoffensive horses took
+their siesta in the sun, awaiting someone to come along and hire them
+for rides of inspection over the lands which were soon to be apportioned
+by lot. A trifle farther along stood a little church, its unglazed
+windows black and hollow, like gouged-out eyes. Mrs. Reed drew a vast
+amount of comfort from the church, and their proximity to it, knowing
+nothing of its history nor its present uses. Its presence there was
+proof to her that all Comanche was not a waste of iniquity.
+
+Almost directly in front of their tent the road branched--one prong
+running to Meander, the county Seat, sixty miles away; the other to the
+Big Horn Valley. The scarred stagecoaches which had come down from the
+seventies were still in use on both routes, the two on the Meander line
+being reenforced by democrat wagons when there was an overflow of
+business, as frequently happened in those prosperous times.
+
+Every morning the company assembled before the tent under the canvas
+spread to protect the cookstove, to watch Mrs. Reed and Sergeant
+Schaefer get breakfast, and to offer suggestions about the fire, and
+admire June at her toast-making--the one branch of domestic art, aside
+from fudge, which she had mastered. About that time the stage would
+pass, setting out on its dusty run to Meander, and everybody on it and
+in it would wave, everybody in the genial company before the tent would
+wave back, and all of the adventurers on both sides would feel quite
+primitive, in spite of the snuffling of the locomotive at the railway
+station, pushing around freight-cars.
+
+The locomotive seemed to tell them that they should not be deceived,
+that all of this crude setting was a sham and a pretense, and that they
+had not yet outrun the conveniences of modern life.
+
+Dr. Slavens appeared to be getting the upper hand of his melancholy, and
+to be drawing the comfort from his black pipe that it was designed to
+give. Next to the sergeant he was the handiest man in the camp, showing
+by his readiness to turn a full hand at anything, from paring potatoes
+to making a fire, that he had shifted for himself before that day. The
+ladies all admired him, as they always admire a man who has a little
+cloud of the mysterious about him. Mrs. Reed wondered, audibly, in the
+presence of June and Miss Horton, if he had deserted his wife.
+
+The others were full of the excitement of their novel situation, and
+drunk on the blue skies which strained the sunlight of its mists and
+motes, pouring it down like a baptismal blessing. Even William Bentley,
+the toolmaker, romped and raced in the ankle-deep dust like a boy.
+
+Sunrise always found the floating population of Comanche setting
+breakfastward in a clamoring tide. After that, when the land-office
+opened at nine o'clock, the stream turned toward it, the crowd grew
+around it, fringing off into the great, empty flat in which it stood--a
+stretch of naked land so white and gleaming under the sun that it made
+the eyes ache. There the land-seekers and thrill-hunters kicked up the
+dust, and got their thousands of clerkly necks burned red, and their
+thousands of indoor noses peeled, while they discussed the chances of
+disposing of the high numbers for enough to pay them for the expense of
+the trip.
+
+After noonday the throngs sought the hydrant and the shade of the
+saloons, and, where finances would permit, the solace of bottled beer.
+And all day over Comanche the heel-ground dust rose as from the
+trampling of ten thousand hoofs, and through its tent-set streets the
+numbers of a strong army passed and repassed, gazing upon its gaudy
+lures. They had come there to gamble in a big, free lottery, where the
+only stake was the time spent and the money expended in coming, in which
+the grand prize was Claim Number One.
+
+"It looks to me," said Horace Bentley, the bald lawyer, "like a great
+many people are going to be bitterly disappointed in this game. More
+than forty thousand have registered already, and there are three days
+more before the books close. The government circulars describing the
+land say there are eight thousand homesteads, all told--six hundred of
+them suitable for agriculture once they are brought under irrigation,
+the rest grazing and mineral land. It seems to me that, as far as our
+expectations go in that direction, we might as well pack up and go
+home."
+
+Four days in camp had made old-timers out of the company gathered under
+the awning before their tent, waiting for the meal which Mrs. Reed and
+her assistants were even then spreading on the trestle-built table.
+There had been a shower that afternoon, one of those gusty, blustery,
+desert demonstrations which had wrenched the tents and torn hundreds of
+them from their slack anchoring in the loose soil.
+
+After the storm, with its splash of big drops and charge of blinding
+dust, a cool serenity had fallen over the land. The milk had been washed
+out of the distances, and in the far southwest snowy peaks gleamed
+solemnly in the setting sun, the barrier on the uttermost edge of the
+desert leagues which so many thousand men and women were hungry to
+share.
+
+"Yes, it's a desperate gamble for all of us," Dr. Slavens admitted. "I
+don't see any more show of anybody in this party drawing a low number
+than I see hope for a man who stands up to one of the swindles in the
+gambling-tents over there."
+
+"Still," argued Milo Strong, the Iowa teacher, "we've got just the same
+chance as anybody out of the forty thousand. I don't suppose there's any
+question that the drawing will be fair?"
+
+"It will be under the personal management of the United States Land
+Commissioner at Meander," said Horace Bentley.
+
+"How do they work it?" asked June, perking up her head in quick interest
+from her task of hammering together the seams of a leaky new tin cup.
+She had it over a projecting end of one of the trestles, and was going
+about it like a mechanic.
+
+"Where did you learn that trick?" inquired the toolmaker, a look in his
+eyes which was pretty close kin to amazement.
+
+"Huh!" said June, hammering away. "What do you suppose a college
+education's good for, anyway? But how do they manage the drawing?" she
+pressed.
+
+"Did they teach you the game of policy at Molly Bawn?" the lawyer
+asked.
+
+"The idea!" sniffed Mrs. Reed.
+
+Miss Horton smiled into her handkerchief, and June shook her head in
+vigorous denial.
+
+"I don't even know what it is," said she. "Is it some kind of
+insurance?"
+
+"It beats insurance for the man that runs the game," said Strong,
+reminiscently.
+
+"All of the names of those who register will be taken to Meander when
+the registration closes," explained Horace. "There are half a dozen
+clerks in the little office here transcribing the names on to small
+cards, with the addresses and all necessary information for notifying a
+winner. On the day of the drawing the forty thousand-odd names will be
+put into a big hollow drum, fitted with a crank. They'll whirl it, and
+then a blindfolded child will put his hand into the drum and draw out
+Number One. Another child will then draw Number Two, and so on until
+eight thousand names have come out of the wheel. As there are only eight
+thousand parcels of land, that will end the lottery. What do you think
+of your chance by now, Miss Horton?"
+
+"Why, it looks fair enough, the way they do it," she answered,
+questioning Dr. Slavens with her eyes.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"You can't tell," he responded. "I've seen enough crookedness in this
+tent-town in the past four days to set my suspicions against everything
+and every official in it."
+
+"Well, the drawing's to be held at Meander, you know," reminded William
+Bentley, the toolmaker, "and Meander advertises itself as a moral
+center. It seems that it was against this town from the very start--it
+wanted the whole show to itself. Here's a circular that I got at Meander
+headquarters today. It's got a great knock against Comanche in it."
+
+"Yes, I saw it," said the doctor. "It sounds like one crook knocking
+another. But it can't be any worse than this place, anyhow. I think I'll
+take a ride over there in a day or so and size it up."
+
+"Well, I surrender all pretensions to Claim Number One," laughed Mrs.
+Reed, a straining of color in her cheeks.
+
+June had not demanded fudge once in four days. That alone was enough to
+raise the colors of courage in her mother's face, even if there hadn't
+been a change in the young lady for the better in other directions. Four
+days of Wyoming summer sun and wind had made as much difference in June
+as four days of September blaze make in a peach on the tip of an exposed
+bough. She was browning and reddening beautifully, and her hair was
+taking on a trick of wildness, blowing friskily about her eyes.
+
+It was plain that June had in her all the making of a hummer. That's
+what Horace Bentley, the lawyer, owned to himself as he told her
+mother in confidence that a month of that high country, with its
+fresh-from-creation air, would be better for the girl's natural
+endowments than all the beauty-parlors of Boston or the specialists
+of Vienna. Horace felt of his early bald spot, half believing that
+some stubby hairs were starting there already.
+
+There was still a glow of twilight in the sky when lights appeared in
+the windowless windows of the church, and the whine of tuning fiddles
+came out of its open door. Mrs. Reed stiffened as she located the sound,
+and an expression of outraged sanctity appeared in her face. She turned
+to Dr. Slavens.
+
+"Are they going to--to--_dance_ in that building?" she demanded.
+
+"I'm afraid they are," said he. "It's used for dancing, they tell me."
+
+"But it's a church--it's consecrated!" she gasped.
+
+"I reckon it's worn off by this time," he comforted. "It was a church a
+long, long time ago--for Comanche. The saloon man across from it told me
+its history. He considered locating in it, he said, but they wanted too
+much rent.
+
+"When Comanche was only a railroad camp--a good while before the rails
+were laid this far--a traveling preacher struck the town and warmed them
+up with an old-style revival. They chipped in the money to build the
+church in the fervor of the passing glow, and the preacher had it put
+up--just as you see it, belfry and all.
+
+"They even bought a bell for it, and it used to ding for the sheepmen
+and railroaders, as long as their religion lasted. When it ran out, the
+preacher moved on to fresh fields, and a rancher bought the bell to call
+his hands to dinner. The respectable element of Comanche--that is, the
+storekeepers, their wives, daughters and sons, and the clerks, and
+others--hold a dance there now twice a week. That is their only
+relaxation."
+
+"It's a shame!" declared Mrs. Reed.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said the doctor easily.
+
+"I'm _so_ disappointed in it!" said she.
+
+"Because it represents itself as a church when it's something else?"
+inquired the doctor softly. "Well, I shouldn't be, if I were you. It has
+really nothing to be ashamed of, for the respectable are mightily in the
+minority in Comanche, I can tell you, madam--that is, among the regular
+inhabitants."
+
+"Let's go over and look on," suggested William Bentley. "It may make
+some of you gloomy people forget your future troubles for a while."
+
+The party soon found that looking on exposed them to the contagion of
+sociability. They were such wholesome-looking people at the gathering,
+and their efforts to make the visitors who stood outside the door feel
+at home and comfortable were so genuine, that reserve dissolved most
+unaccountably.
+
+It was not long before June's mother, her prejudices against such
+frivolous and worldly use of a church blown away, was pigeoning around
+with William Bentley. Likewise Mrs. Mann, the miller out of sight and
+out of mind, stepped lightly with Horace, the lawyer, the sober black
+bag doubled up and stored in the pocket of his coat, its handles
+dangling like bridle-reins.
+
+June alone was left unpaired, in company with the doctor and Miss
+Horton, who asserted that they did not dance. Her heels were itching to
+be clicking off that jolly two-step which the Italian fiddlers and
+harpist played with such enticing swing. The school-teacher and the
+sergeant were not with them, having gone out on some expedition of their
+own among the allurements of Comanche.
+
+But June hadn't long to bear the itch of impatience, for ladies were not
+plentiful at the dance. Before anybody had time to be astonished by his
+boldness, a young man was bowing before June, presenting his crooked
+elbow, inviting her to the dance with all the polish that could possibly
+lie on any one man. On account of an unusually enthusiastic clatter of
+heels at that moment, Dr. Slavens and Miss Horton, a few paces distant,
+could not hear what he said, but they caught their breaths a little
+sharply when June took the proffered arm.
+
+"Surest thing you know," they heard her eager little voice say as she
+passed them with a happy, triumphant look behind.
+
+Dr. Slavens looked at Miss Horton; Miss Horton looked at the doctor.
+Both laughed.
+
+"Well, I like that!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," he agreed, but apparently from quite a different angle, "so do I.
+It's natural and unaffected; it's coming down to first principles. Well,
+I don't see that there's anything left for you and me to do but use up
+some of this moonlight in a walk. I'd like to see the river in this
+light. Come?"
+
+"Oh, that would be unconventional!" she protested.
+
+But it was not a strong protest; more of a question perhaps, which left
+it all to him.
+
+"This is an unconventional country," he said. "Look at it, as white as
+snow under this summer moon."
+
+"It's lovely by night," she agreed; "but this Comanche is like a sore
+spot on a clean skin. It's a blight and a disfigurement, and these
+noises they make after dark sound like some savage revel."
+
+"We'll put them behind us for two hours or so," he decided with finality
+which allowed no further argument.
+
+As they set off toward the river he did not offer her the support of his
+arm, for she strode beside him with her hands swinging free, long step
+to his long step, not a creature of whims and shams, he knew, quite able
+to bear her own weight on a rougher road than that.
+
+"Still it _is_ unconventional," she reflected, looking away over the
+flat land.
+
+"That's the beauty of it," said he. "Let's be just natural."
+
+They passed beyond the straggling limits of Comanche, where the town
+blended out into the plain in the tattered tents and road-battered
+wagons of the most earnest of all the home-seekers, those who had staked
+everything on the hope of drawing a piece of land which would serve at
+last as a refuge against the world's buffeting.
+
+Under their feet was the low-clinging sheep-sage and the running herbs
+of yellow and gray which seemed so juiceless and dry to the eye, but
+which were the provender of thousands of sheep and cattle that never
+knew the shelter of fold or stable, nor the taste of man-grown grain or
+fodder, from the day of their birth to the day of their marketing.
+Winter and summer alike, under the parching sun, under the strangling
+drifts, that clinging, gray vegetation was the animals' sole nutriment.
+
+Behind the couple the noises of Comanche died to murmurs. Ahead of them
+rose the dark line of cottonwoods which stood upon the river-shore.
+
+"I want to take another look at the Buckhorn Canyon," said the doctor,
+stalking on in his sturdy, farm-bred gait.
+
+"It makes a fearful roar," she remarked as they approached the place
+where the swift river, compressed into the flumelike passage which it
+had whetted out of the granite, tossed its white mane in the moonlight
+before plunging into the dark door of the canyon.
+
+"I've been hearing yarns and traditions about that canyon ever since I
+came here," he told her. "They say it's a thousand feet deep in
+places."
+
+"June and I came over here this morning," said Agnes, "along with
+Sergeant Schaefer. He said he didn't believe that June could hike that
+far. I sat here on the rocks a long time watching it. I never saw so
+much mystery and terror in water before."
+
+She drew a little nearer to him as she spoke, and he put his hand on her
+shoulder in an unconscious movement of restraint as she leaned over
+among the black boulders and peered into the hissing current.
+
+"Do you suppose anybody ever went in there?" she asked.
+
+"They say the Indians know some way of getting through," he replied,
+"but no white man ever went into the canyon and came out alive. The last
+one to try it was a representative of a Denver paper who came out here
+at the beginning of the registration. He went in there with his camera
+on his back after a story."
+
+"Poor fellow! Did he get through--at all?"
+
+"They haven't reported him on the other side yet. His paper offers a
+reward for the solution of the mystery of his disappearance, which is no
+mystery at all. He didn't have the right kind of footgear, and he
+slipped. That's all there is to it."
+
+He felt her shudder under his hand, which remained unaccountably on her
+warm shoulder after the need of restraint had passed.
+
+"It's a forbidding place by day," said she, "and worse at night. Just
+think of the despair of that poor man when he felt himself falling down
+there in the dark!"
+
+"Moccasins are the things for a job like that," he declared. "I've
+studied it all out; I believe I could go through there without a
+scratch."
+
+"What in the world would anybody want to do it for? What is there to be
+gained by it, to the good of anybody?" she wondered.
+
+"Well, there's the reward of five hundred dollars offered by the
+newspaper in Denver," he answered.
+
+"It's a pitiful stake against such odds!" she scorned.
+
+"And all the old settlers say there's gold in there--rich pockets of it,
+washed out of the ledges in the sides of the walls and held by the rocks
+in the river-bed and along the margins. A nugget is picked up now and
+then on the other side, so there seems to be ground for the belief that
+fortune waits for the man who makes a careful exploration."
+
+"He couldn't carry enough of it out to make it worth while," she
+objected.
+
+"But he could go back," Dr. Slavens reminded her. "It would be easy the
+second time. Or he might put in effect the scheme a sheep-herder had
+once."
+
+"What was that?" she asked, turning her face up to him from her place on
+the low stone where she sat, the moonlight glinting in her eyes.
+
+He laughed a little.
+
+"Not that it was much of a joke the way it turned out," he explained.
+"He went in there to hunt for the gold, leaving two of his companions to
+labor along the brink of the canyon above and listen for his signal shout
+in case he came across any gold worth while. Then they were to let a
+rope down to him and he'd send up the treasure. It was a great scheme,
+but they never got a chance to try it. If he ever gave any signal they
+never heard it, for down there a man's voice strained to its shrillest
+would be no more than a whisper against a tornado. You can believe that,
+can't you, from the way it roars and tears around out here?"
+
+"All the gold that remains unmined wouldn't tempt me a hundred feet down
+that black throat," she shuddered. "But what became of the adventurer
+with the scheme?"
+
+"He came through in time--they caught him at the outlet over there in
+the mountains. The one pocket that remained in his shredded clothing was
+full of gold nuggets, they say. So he must have found it, even if he
+couldn't make them hear."
+
+"What a dismal end for any man!"
+
+"A man could beat it, though," said he, leaning forward in thoughtful
+attitude. "He'd need a strong light, and moccasins, so he could cling to
+the rocks. I believe it could be done, and I've thought a good deal
+about exploring it myself for a day or two past. If I don't draw a low
+number I think I'll tackle it."
+
+"Don't you attempt it!" she cried, clutching his arm and turning her
+white face to him affrightedly. "Don't you ever dare try it!"
+
+He laughed uneasily, his eyes on the black gash into which the foaming
+river darted.
+
+"Oh, I don't know; I've heard of men doing riskier things than that for
+money," he returned.
+
+Agnes Horton's excitement and concern seemed to pass with his words. She
+propped her chin in her palms and sat pensively, looking at the broken
+waters which reared around the barrier of scattered stones in its
+channel.
+
+"Yes, men sometimes take big risks for money--even the risk of honor and
+the everlasting happiness of others," said she.
+
+It was like the wind blowing aside a tent-flap as he passed, giving him
+a glimpse of its intimate interior. That little lifting of her reserve
+was a glance into the sanctuary of her heart. The melancholy of her eyes
+was born out of somebody's escapade with money; he was ready to risk his
+last guess on that.
+
+"Besides, there may be nothing to that story of nuggets. That may be
+just one of these western yarns," she added.
+
+"Well, in any case, there's the five hundred the Denver paper offers,
+besides what I could make by syndicating the account of my adventure
+among the Sunday papers. I used to do quite a lot of that when I was in
+college."
+
+"But you don't need money badly enough to go into that place after it.
+Nobody ever needed it that badly," she declared.
+
+"Don't I?" he answered, a little biting of bitter sarcasm in his tone.
+"Well, you don't know, my lady, how easy that money looks to me compared
+to my ordinary channels of getting it."
+
+"It can't be so very hard in your profession," she doubted, as if a bit
+offended by his attitude of martyrdom before an unappreciative world. "I
+don't believe you have half as hard a time of it as some who have too
+much money."
+
+"The hardship of having too much money is one which I never experienced,
+so I can't say as to that," he said, moved to smiles by the humor of it.
+"But to understand what I mean by hardship you must know how I've
+struggled in the ruts and narrow traditions of my profession, and
+fought, hoped, and starved. Why, I tell you that black hole over there
+looks like an open door with a light inside of it compared to some of
+the things I've gone through in the seven years that I've been trying to
+get a start. Money? I'll tell you how that is, Miss Horton; I've thought
+along that one theme so confounded long that it's worn a groove in my
+brain.
+
+"Here you see me tonight, a piece of driftwood at thirty-five, and all
+for the want of money enough to buy an automobile and take the
+darned-fool world by storm on its vain side! You can't scratch it with a
+diamond on its reasoning side--I've scratched away on it until my nails
+are gone.
+
+"I've failed, I tell you, I've botched it all up! And just for want of
+money enough to buy an automobile! Brains never took a doctor
+anywhere--nothing but money and bluff!"
+
+"I wonder," she speculated, "what will become of you out here in this
+raw place, where the need of a doctor seems to be the farthest thing in
+the world, and you with your nerve all gone?"
+
+It would have reassured her if she could have seen the fine flush which
+this charge raised in his face. But she didn't even look toward him, and
+couldn't have noted the change if she had, for the moonlight was not
+that bright, even in Wyoming.
+
+"But I haven't lost my nerve!" he denied warmly.
+
+"Oh, yes, you have," she contradicted, "or you wouldn't admit that
+you're a failure, and you wouldn't talk about money that way. Money
+doesn't cut much ice as long as you've got nerve."
+
+"That's all right from your view," said he pettishly. "But you've had
+easy going of it, out of college into a nice home, with a lot of those
+pink-faced chaps to ride you around in their automobiles, and opera and
+plays and horse-shows and all that stuff."
+
+"Perhaps," she admitted, a soft sadness in her voice. "But wait until
+you've seen somebody drunk with the passion of too much money and crazy
+with the hunger for more; wait until you've seen a man's soul grow black
+from hugging it to his heart, and his conscience atrophy and his manhood
+wither. And then when it rises up and crushes him, and all that are his
+with it----"
+
+He looked at her curiously, waiting for her to round it out with a
+personal citation. But she said no more.
+
+"That's why you're here, hoping like the rest of us to draw Number
+One?"
+
+"Any number up to six hundred will do for me," she laughed, sitting
+erect once more and seeming to shake her bitter mood off as she spoke.
+
+"And what will you do with it? Sell out as soon as the law allows?"
+
+"I'll live on it," dreamily, as if giving words to an old vision which
+she had warmed in her heart. "I'll stay there and work through the hope
+of summer and the bleakness of winter, and make a home. I'll smooth the
+wild land and plant trees and green meadows, and roses by the door, and
+we'll stay there and it will be--_home_!"
+
+"Yes," he nodded, understanding the feeling better than she knew. "You
+and mother; you want it just that way."
+
+"How did you know it was mother?" she asked, turning to him with a
+quick, appreciative little start.
+
+"You're the kind of a woman who has a mother," he answered. "Mothers
+leave their stamp on women like you."
+
+"Thank you," said she.
+
+"I've often wanted to run away from it that way, too," he owned, "for
+failure made a coward of me more than once in those hard years. There's
+a prospect of independence and peace in the picture you make with those
+few swift strokes. But I don't see any--you haven't put any--any--_man_
+in it. Isn't there one somewhere?"
+
+"No," simply and frankly; "there isn't any man anywhere. He doesn't
+belong in the picture, so why should I draw him in?"
+
+Dr. Slavens sighed.
+
+"Yes; I've wanted to run away from it more than once."
+
+"That's because you've lost your nerve," she charged. "You shouldn't
+want to run away from it--a big, broad man like you--and you must not
+run away. You must stay and fight--and fight--and _fight_! Why, you talk
+as if you were seventy instead of a youth of thirty-five!"
+
+"Don't rub it in so hard on that failure and nerve business," he begged,
+ashamed of his hasty confession.
+
+"Well, _you_ mustn't talk of running away then. There are no ghosts
+after you, are there?"
+
+The moonlight was sifting through the loose strands of her gleaming hair
+as she sat there bareheaded at his side, and the strength of his life
+reached out to her, and the deep yearning of his lonely soul. He knew
+that he wanted that woman out of all the world full of women whom he had
+seen and known--and passed. He knew that he wanted her with such strong
+need that from that day none other could come across the mirror of his
+heart and dim her image out of it.
+
+Simply money would not win a woman like her; no slope-headed son of a ham
+factory could come along and carry her off without any recommendation but
+his cash. She had lived through that kind of lure, and she was there on
+his own level because she wanted to work out her clean life in her own
+clean way. The thought warmed him. Here was a girl, he reflected, with a
+piece of steel in her backbone; a girl that would take the world's
+lashings like a white elm in a storm, to spring resiliently back to
+stately poise after the turmoil had passed. Trouble would not break
+her; sorrow would only make her fineness finer. There was a girl to stand
+up beside a man!
+
+He had not thought of it before--perhaps he had been too melancholy and
+bitter over his failure to take by storm the community where he had
+tried to make his start--but he believed that he realized that moment
+what he had needed all along. If, amid the contempt and indifference of
+the successful, he'd had some incentive besides his own ambition to
+struggle for all this time, some splendid, strong-handed woman to stand
+up in his gloom like the Goddess of Liberty offering an ultimate reward
+to the poor devils who have won their way to her feet across the bitter
+seas from hopeless lands, he might have stuck to it back there and won
+in the end.
+
+"That's what I've needed," said he aloud, rising abruptly.
+
+She looked up at him quickly.
+
+"I've needed somebody's sympathy, somebody's sarcasm, somebody's soft
+hand--which could be correctional on occasion--and somebody's
+heart-interest all along," he declared, standing before her dramatically
+and flinging out his hands in the strong feeling of his declaration.
+"I've been lonely; I've been morose. I've needed a woman like you!"
+
+Without sign of perturbation or offense, Agnes rose and laid her hand
+gently upon his arm.
+
+"I think, Dr. Slavens," she suggested, "we'd better be going back to
+camp."
+
+They walked the mile back to camp with few words between them. The
+blatant noises of Comanche grew as they drew nearer.
+
+The dance was still in progress; the others had not returned to camp.
+
+"Do you care to sit out here and wait for them?" he asked as they
+stopped before the tent.
+
+"I think I'll go to bed," she answered. "I'm tired."
+
+"I'll stand sentry," he offered.
+
+She thanked him, and started to go in. At the door she paused, went back
+to him, and placed her hand in her soothing, placid way upon his arm
+again.
+
+"You'll fight out the good fight here," said she, "for this is a country
+that's got breathing-room in it."
+
+She looked up into his face a bit wistfully, he thought, as if there
+were more in her heart than she had spoken. "You'll win here--I know
+you'll win."
+
+He reached out to put his arm about her, drawn by the same warm
+attraction that had pulled the words from him at the riverside. The
+action was that of a man reaching out to lean his weary weight upon some
+familiar object, and there was something of old habit in it, as if he
+had been doing it always.
+
+But she did not stay. He folded only moonlight, in which there is little
+substance for a strong man, even in Wyoming. Dr. Slavens sighed as the
+tent-flap dropped behind her.
+
+"Yes; that's what I've needed all the time," said he.
+
+He sat outside with his pipe, which never had seemed so sweet. But, for
+all of its solace, he was disturbed by the thought that perhaps he had
+made a blunder which had placed him in a false light with Miss
+Horton--only he thought of her as Agnes, just as if he had the right.
+For there were only occasions on which Dr. Slavens admitted himself to
+be a fizzle in the big fireworks of the world. That was a charge which
+he sometimes laid to himself in mortification of spirit, or as a
+flagellant to spur him along the hard road. He had not meant to let it
+slip him aloud over there by the river, because he didn't believe it at
+all--at least not in that high-hoping hour.
+
+So he sat there in the moonlight before the tent, the noises of the town
+swelling louder and louder as the night grew older, his big frame
+doubled into the stingy lap of a canvas chair, his knees almost as high
+as his chin. But it was comfortable, and his tobacco was as pleasant to
+his senses as the distillation of youthful dreams.
+
+He had not attained the automobile stage of prosperity and arrogance,
+certainly. But that was somewhere ahead; he should come to it in time.
+Out of the smoke of his pipe that dreamy night he could see it. Perhaps
+he might be a little gray at the temples when he came to it, and a
+little lined at the mouth, but there would be more need of it then than
+now, because his legs would tire more easily.
+
+But Agnes had taken that foolishly blurted statement for truth. So
+it was his job henceforward to prove to Agnes that he was not bankrupt
+in courage. And he meant to do it he vowed, even if he had to get a
+tent and hang out his shingle in Comanche. That would take nerve
+unquestionably, for there were five doctors in the place already, none
+of them making enough to buy stamps to write back home for money.
+
+Already, he said, he was out of the rut of his despondency; already the
+rust was knocked off his back, and the eagerness to crowd up to the
+starting-line was on him as fresh again as on the day when he had walked
+away from all competitors in the examination for a license before the
+state board.
+
+At midnight the others came back from the dance and broke the trend of
+his smoke-born dreams. Midnight was the hour when respectable Comanche
+put out its lights and went to bed. Not to sleep in every case, perhaps,
+for the din was at crescendo pitch by then; but, at any event, to
+deprive the iniquitous of the moral support of looking on their
+debaucheries and sins.
+
+Dr. Slavens was in no mood for his sagging canvas cot, for his new
+enthusiasm was bounding through him as if he had been given an
+intravenous injection of nitroglycerin. There was Wyoming before him,
+all white and virginal and fresh, a big place for a big deed. Certainly,
+said Dr. Slavens. Just as if made to order for his needs.
+
+So he would look around a bit before turning in, with his high-stepping
+humor over him, and that spot on his arm, where her hand had lain, still
+aglow with her mysterious fire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE FLAT-GAME MAN
+
+
+The noises of the tented town swelled in picturesque chorus as Dr.
+Slavens walked toward them, rising and trailing off into the night until
+they wore themselves out in the echoless plain.
+
+He heard the far-away roll and rumble of voices coming from the
+gambling-tents; the high-tenor invitation of the barkers outside
+questionable shows; the bawl of street-gamblers, who had all manner of
+devices, from ring-pitching to shell-games on folding tables, which they
+could pick up in a twinkling and run away with when their dupes began to
+threaten and rough them up; the clear soprano of the singer, who wore
+long skirts and sang chaste songs, in the vaudeville tent down by the
+station.
+
+And above all, mingled with all--always, everywhere--the brattle of
+cornet and trombone, the whang of piano, the wail of violin, the tinkle
+of the noble harp, an aristocrat in base company, weeping its own
+downfall.
+
+All of the flaring scene appeared to the doctor to be extremely
+artificial. It was a stage set for the allurement of the unsophisticated,
+who saw in this strained and overdone imitation of the old West the
+romance of their expectations. If they hadn't found it there thousands of
+them would have been disappointed, perhaps disillusioned with a
+healthful jolt. All the reality about it was its viciousness, and that
+was unquestionable.
+
+It looked as if gambling crooks from everywhere had collected at
+Comanche, and as if the most openly and notoriously crooked of them all
+was the bony, dry-faced man with a white spot over the sight of his left
+eye, who conducted a dice-game in the front part of the chief
+amusement-place of the town. This was a combination variety theater and
+saloon, where free "living pictures" were posed for the entertainment of
+those who drank beer at the tables at twenty-five cents a glass.
+
+Of the living pictures there were three, all of them in green garments,
+which hung loosely upon flaccid thighs. Sometimes they posed alone, as
+representations of more or less clothed statuary; sometimes they
+grouped, with feet thrust out, heads thrown back, arms lifted in stiff
+postures, as gladiators, martyrs, and spring songs. Always, whether
+living or dead, they were most sad and tattered, famished and lean
+pictures, and their efforts were received with small applause. They were
+too thin to be very wicked; so it appeared, at least.
+
+Dr. Slavens stopped in the wide-spreading door of this place to watch
+the shifting life within. Near him sat a young Comanche Indian, his hair
+done up in two braids, which he wore over his shoulders in front. He had
+an eagle feather in his hat and a new red handkerchief around his neck,
+and he looked as wistful as a young Indian ever did outside a poem or a
+picture-film. He was the unwelcome guest, whom no one might treat, to
+whom no one might sell.
+
+That was one of the first things strangers in Comanche learned: one must
+not give an Indian a drink of liquor, no matter how thirsty he looked.
+And, although there was not a saloon-keeper in the place who would have
+considered a moment before stooping to rob a dead man, there was not one
+who would have sold an Indian a bottle of beer. Such is the fear, if not
+respect, that brave old Uncle Sam is able to inspire.
+
+But brave old Sam had left the bars down between his wards and the
+gamblers' tables. It is so everywhere. The Indian may not drink, but he
+may play "army game" and all the others where crooked dice, crooked
+cards, and crooked men are to be found. Perhaps, thought the doctor, the
+young man with the eagle feather--which did not make him at all
+invisible, whatever his own faith in its virtues might have been--had
+played his money on the one-eyed man's game, and was hanging around to
+see whether retributive justice, in the form of some more fortunate
+player, would, in the end, clean the old rascal out.
+
+The one-eyed man was assisted by a large gang of cappers, a gang which
+appeared to be in the employ of the gamblers' trust of Comanche. The
+doctor had seen them night after night first at one game, then at
+another, betting with freedom and carelessness which were the envy of
+the suckers packed forty deep around them. At the one-eyed man's game
+just then they were coming and going in a variety which gave a color of
+genuine patronage. That was an admirable arrangement, doubtless due to
+the one-eyed man's sagacity, which the doctor had noted the night
+before. For the game had its fascination for him, not because the fire
+of it was in his veins, but because it was such an out-and-out skin game
+that it was marvelous how fools enough could be found, even in a
+gathering like that, to keep it going.
+
+The living pictures had just passed off the stage, and it was the
+one-eyed man's inning. He rattled his dice in the box, throwing his
+quick glance over the crowd, which seemed reluctant to quit the
+beer-tables for his board. Art was the subject which the gambler took up
+as he poured out his dice and left them lying on the board. He seemed so
+absorbed in art for the moment that he did not see a few small bets
+which were laid down. He leaned over confidentially and talked into the
+eyes of the crowd.
+
+"Art, gentlemen, is a fine thing for the human race," said he. "You have
+just saw an elegant exhibition of art, and who is there in this crowd
+that don't feel a better man for what he saw?"
+
+He looked around, as if inviting a challenge. None came. He resumed:
+
+"Art in all its branches is a elegant fine thing, gentlemen. It raises a
+man up, and it elevates him, and it makes him feel like a millionaire.
+If I only had a dime, as the man said, I'd spend it for a box of
+cigareets just to git the chromo-card. That's what I think of art,
+gentlemen, and that's how crazy I am over it.
+
+"Now, if anybody here wants to bet me I ain't got two eyes, I ain't a
+goin' to take him up, for I know I ain't, gentlemen, and I've knowed it
+for thirty years. But if anybody wants to bet me I can't throw
+twenty-seven----"
+
+This was the one-eyed man's game. He stood inside the curve of a
+crescent-shaped table, which struck him almost under the arms, his back
+to the wall of the tent. Players could surround him, almost; still,
+nobody could get behind him. In that direction there always was a way
+out. He stood there offering odds of five to one to anybody who wanted
+to bet him that he couldn't himself, with his own hand and his own dice,
+throw twenty-seven. Any other number coming out of the box, the one-eyed
+man lost.
+
+Examine the dice, gents; examine the box. If any gent had any doubts at
+all about the dice being straight, all he had to do was to examine them.
+There they lay, gents, honestly and openly on the table before the
+one-eyed man, his bony hand hovering over them caressingly.
+
+Gents examined them freely. Nearly every player who put money
+down--secure in that egotistical valuation of one's own shrewdness which
+is the sure-thing-man's bank and goldmine and mint--rolled the dice,
+weighed them, eyed them sharply. Then they bet against the one-eyed
+man--and lost.
+
+That is, they lost if he wanted them to lose. There were victims who
+looked promising for a fat sacrifice who had to be tolled and primed and
+led on gently up to the block. At the right time the one-eyed man
+trimmed them, and he trimmed them down to the short bones.
+
+His little boost for art finished--for the living pictures were art in
+which he had a proprietary interest, and he could afford to talk for it
+once in a while--the one-eyed man cast his glance over his table and saw
+the small bets. By some singular fortune all of the bettors won. They
+pocketed their winnings with grins as they pushed out among the
+gathering crowd.
+
+Men began to pack thickly around the gambler's crescent table, craning
+over shoulders to see what was going on. He was making a great Wild-West
+show of money, with a large revolver lying beside it at his elbow.
+Seeing that the young man who had carried June Reed off to the dance so
+intrepidly had made his way forward and was betting on the game, Dr.
+Slavens pushed up to the table and stood near.
+
+The young fellow did not bear himself with the air of a capper, but
+rather with that of one who had licked a little poison and was drunk on
+the taste. He had won two small bets, and he was out for more.
+
+There were no chips, no counters except cash. Of that the young man
+appeared to have plenty. He held a cheerful little wad of it in his
+hand, so that no time might be lost in taking advantage of the great
+opportunity to beat a man at his own game.
+
+The display of so much money on both sides held the crowd in silent
+charm. The young man was the only player, although the one-eyed man
+urged others to come on and share the fortunes of his sweating patron,
+whose face was afire with the excitement of easy money, and whose reason
+had evaporated under the heat.
+
+"At every roll of the dice my young friend adds to his pile," said the
+gambler. "He's got a head, gents, and he knows how to use it. Look at
+'im, gents, gittin' richer at every roll of the dice! You might as well
+have a share in all this here money and wealth, and you would be sharin'
+it if you had the nerve of my young friend."
+
+The one-eyed man turned the dice out and lost again. There was a little
+movement of the crowd, a little audible intaking of breath, a little
+crowding forward, like that of cattle massed in a pen.
+
+The suckers never did seem to get it through their heads, thought the
+doctor as he beheld their dumb excitement with growing contempt, that
+the one-eyed man switched the dice on them just as often as he
+pleased between the table and the box, by a trick which was his one
+accomplishment and sole capital. Without that deftness of hand the
+one-eyed man might have remained a bartender, and a very sloppy and
+indifferent one at that; but with it he was the king-pin of the
+gamblers' trust in Comanche, and his graft was the best in the town.
+
+"There it goes, gents!" he said, shaking his long, hound-shaped head
+with doleful expression of face. "The tide of luck's turned ag'in' me.
+You can see that as plain as water in a pan, but they ain't one of you
+got the nerve to step up and help my young friend trim me.
+
+"You fellers know what you make me think of? Well, you make me think of
+a lot of little boys with ten cents to spend on Fourth of July. You
+stand around with your fingers in your mouth, afraid you'll see
+somethin' you like better if you let loose of your little old dime, and
+you hang on to it till the fun's all over and the ice-cream's all gone.
+
+"But my young friend here--Now, now!" he remonstrated as the highly
+excited young man took up his winnings, added them to the money which he
+held in reserve in his left hand, and placed the whole amount upon the
+table. "Now you're a comin' it purty strong! Go easy, young feller, and
+give a old man with only one eye and a game leg a chance. But you won't
+do it; I can see that in the cast of your eye; you're bound to clean me
+out at one smack; that's what you're bound to do."
+
+The one-eyed man shook the dicebox very carefully, as if mixing some
+rare prescription. Then he stopped shaking and held his hand over the
+mouth of the box, as if he expected the cubes might jump up and join in
+his ruination while his head was turned.
+
+"Now, look-a here!" said he, addressing them generally. "I've traveled
+this wide world over ever since I was a tender child, as the man said,
+and I never seen a chance like this to skin a feller slide by without
+more'n one lone man havin' sense enough and nerve enough to git in on
+it.
+
+"Do I see any more of your money, gents, before I roll the dice? Do I
+see any more of your money of the ream and dominion of Uncle Sam, with
+the eagle a spreadin' his legs, with his toes full of arrers, and his
+mouth wide open a hollerin' de-fiance and destruction ag'in' his
+innimies on land and sea, wheresomever they may be, as the feller said?
+
+"Do I see any more of your money, gents? Do I git sight of any more?
+Lowest bet's one dollar, gents, and you might as well git in on the
+finish and let the old man go up with a whoop. I'm game, gents; I go the
+limit. Do I see any more of your money? Do I see any more?"
+
+He did. He saw considerably more than he had seen at one time since he
+opened the game in Comanche. He seemed greatly affected by the sight,
+shaking his head with solemnity and casting his eye around with
+reproach.
+
+"That's right! That's right!" said he. "Sock it to a old feller when
+you've got him down! That's the way of this cold world. Well, all I ask
+of you, gents"--he paused in his request to shake the box again, holding
+it poised for the throw--"is this: When you clean me I ask you to stake
+me, between you, to twenty-seven dollars. Twenty-seven's my lucky
+number; I was borned on the 27th day of Jannewarry, and I always bet on
+twenty-seven."
+
+He poured the dice upon the table, reaching for his pile of bills and
+gold as if to cash in on the winnings as he set the box down, even while
+the dice were rolling and settling. But at that point the one-eyed man
+stayed his hand, bending over the dice as if he could not believe his
+eye.
+
+"Well, bust me!" said he, sighing as if honestly disappointed in the
+throw. "M' luck's turned! Dang me, fellers, if I didn't win!"
+
+Without enthusiasm, still shaking his head sadly, he drew the winnings
+over the table, sorting the bills, shuffling them into neat heaps,
+adding them to his enticing pile, which lay heaped upon a green cloth at
+his hand.
+
+"I don't know why I stick to this game, gents," said he, "for it's all
+ag'in' me. I don't win once in nine hundred times. This here's more
+money than I've took in at any one time since I come to Comanche, and
+it's more'n I ever expect to take in ag'in if I stay here forty-nine
+years.
+
+"But it's in m' blood to bet on twenty-seven. I can't help it, boys.
+It'll be the ruination of me ag'in, like it's ruined me many a time
+before; but I got to roll 'em! I got to roll 'em! And if anybody wants
+to git in, let him put his money down!"
+
+The young man seemed a little dazed by the quick change of the gambler's
+luck, but his reason had no voice to speak against the clamor of his
+desires. He produced more money, bills of large denomination, and
+counted out a thousand dollars, defiantly flourishing every bill. He
+whacked the pile down on the table with a foolishly arrogant thump of
+his fist.
+
+"I'm with you to the finish," he said, his boyish face bright with the
+destructive fire of chance. "Roll 'em out!"
+
+Other players crowded forward, believing perhaps that the queer freak of
+fortune which had turned the gambler's luck would not hold. In a few
+minutes there was more money on the table than the one-eyed man had
+stood before in many a day.
+
+Sorry for the foolish young man, and moved by the sacrifice which he saw
+in preparation, Dr. Slavens pressed against the table, trying to flash
+the youth a warning with his eyes. But the physician could not get a
+look into the young man's flushed face; his eyes were on the stake.
+
+The one-eyed man was gabbing again, running out a continual stream of
+cheap and pointless talk, and offering the dice as usual for inspection.
+Some looked at the cubes, among the number the young man, who weighed
+them in his palm and rolled them on the table several times. Doubtless
+they were as straight as dice ever were made. This test satisfied the
+rest. The one-eyed man swept the cubes into his hand and, still talking,
+held that long, bony member hovering over the mouth of the box.
+
+At that moment Dr. Slavens, lurching as if shoved violently from behind,
+set his shoulder against the table and pushed it, hard and suddenly,
+against the one-eyed man's chest, all but throwing him backward against
+the wall of the tent. The gambler's elbows flew up in his struggle to
+keep to his feet, and the hand that hovered over the dicebox dropped the
+dice upon the board.
+
+Instantly a shout went up; instantly half a hundred hands clawed at the
+table to retrieve their stakes. For the one-eyed man had dropped not
+five dice, but ten.
+
+He waited for no further developments. The tent-wall parted behind him
+as he dived through into the outer darkness, taking with him his former
+winnings and his "bank," which had been cunningly arranged on the green
+cloth for no other purpose; his revolver and his dice, leaving nothing
+but the box behind.
+
+The young man gathered up his stake with nervous hands and turned his
+flushed face to the doctor, smiling foolishly.
+
+"Thank you, old man," he said. "Oh, yes! I know you now," he added,
+offering his hand with great warmth. "You were with her people at the
+dance."
+
+"Of course," smiled the doctor. "How much did you lose?"
+
+"Say, I ought to have a nurse!" said the young man abjectly. "If you
+hadn't heaved that table into the old devil's ribs just then he'd 'a'
+skinned me right! Oh, about six hundred, I guess; but in ten minutes
+more he'd 'a' cleaned me out. Walker's my name," he confided; "Joe
+Walker. I'm from Cheyenne."
+
+Dr. Slavens introduced himself.
+
+"And I'm from Missouri," said he.
+
+Joe Walker chuckled a little.
+
+"Yes; the old man's from there, too," said he, with the warmth of one
+relative claiming kinship with another from far-away parts; "from a
+place called Saint Joe. Did you ever hear of it?"
+
+"I've heard of it," the doctor admitted, smiling to himself over the
+ingenuous unfolding of the victim whom he had snatched from the
+sacrifice.
+
+"They don't only have to show you fellers from Missouri," pursued
+Walker; "but you show _them_! That's the old man's way, from the
+boot-heels up."
+
+They were walking away from the gambling-tent, taking the middle of the
+road, as was the custom in Comanche after dark, sinking instep deep in
+dust at every step.
+
+"What are you doing with all that money in a place like this?" the
+doctor questioned.
+
+"Well, it's this way," explained Walker with boyish confidence. "The old
+man's going to set me up in a sheep-ranch between here and Casper. We've
+got a ranch bargained for with six miles of river-front, he sent me over
+here with five thousand dollars to cinch the business before the feller
+changed his mind."
+
+"Why didn't you bring a draft?" the doctor wondered.
+
+"Some of these sheepmen wouldn't take government bonds. Nothing but
+plain cash goes with them."
+
+"Oh, I didn't think you had any particular use for even that, the way
+you're slinging it around!" said the doctor, with no attempt to hide the
+feeling he held for any such recklessness.
+
+"Looked that way," admitted Walker thoughtfully. "But I've got to meet
+that sheepman here at the bank in the morning, where he can have
+somebody that he's got confidence in feel of the money and tell him it's
+genuine, and I'll have to put up some kind of a stall to cover the money
+I lost. Guess I can get away with it, somehow. Cripes! I sweat needles
+every time I think of what'd 'a' happened to me if you hadn't showed us
+suckers that one-eyed feller's hand!"
+
+"Well, the important thing now, it seems to me, is to hang on to what's
+left till you meet that rancher."
+
+"Don't you worry!" rejoined Walker warmly. "I'm going to sit on the edge
+of that little old bunk all night with my six-shooter in one hand and
+that money in the other! And any time in future that you see me bettin'
+on any man's game, you send for the fool-killer, will you?"
+
+"Yes, if I happen to be around," promised the doctor.
+
+"I ought to know 'em; I was raised right here in Wyoming among 'em,"
+said Walker. "I thought that feller was square, or maybe off a little,
+because he talked so much. He was the first talkin' gambler I ever
+met."
+
+"Talk is his trick," Slavens enlightened him. "That was old Hun
+Shanklin, the flat-game man. I've looked him up since I got here. He
+plays suckers, and nothing _but_ suckers. No gambler ever bets on Hun
+Shanklin's game. He talks to keep their eyes on his face while he
+switches the dice."
+
+Walker was gravely silent a little while, like a man who has just
+arrived at the proper appreciation of some grave danger which he has
+escaped.
+
+"I've heard of Hun Shanklin a long time, but I never saw him before," he
+said. "He's killed several men in his time. Do you suppose he knows you
+shoved his table, or does he think somebody back of you pushed you
+against it?"
+
+"I don't suppose he needs anybody to tell him how it happened," replied
+the doctor a little crabbedly.
+
+"Of course I've got my own notion of it, old feller," prattled Walker;
+"but they were purty thick around there just then, and shovin' a good
+deal. I hope he thinks it happened that way. But I know nobody shoved
+you, and I'm much obliged."
+
+"Oh, forget it!" snapped Slavens, thinking of the six hundred dollars
+which had flown out of the young fellow's hand so lightly. Once he could
+have bought a very good used automobile for four hundred.
+
+"But don't you suppose--" Walker lowered his voice to a whisper, looking
+cautiously around in the dark as he spoke--"that you stand a chance to
+hear from Hun Shanklin again?"
+
+"Maybe," answered Slavens shortly. "Well, here's where I turn off. I'm
+stopping at the Metropole down here."
+
+"Say!"
+
+Walker caught his arm appealingly.
+
+"Between you and me I don't like the looks of that dump where I've got a
+bed. You've been here longer than I have; do you know of any place where
+a man with all this blamed money burnin' his hide might pull through
+till morning with it if he happened to slip a cog and go to sleep?"
+
+"There's a spare cot in our tent," said the doctor, "and you're welcome
+to it if you feel that you can trust yourself in our company. We mess
+together in a sort of communistic fashion."
+
+Walker was profuse in his gratitude.
+
+"I'll feel easy among decent people!" he declared. "I'm mostly decent
+myself, and my family's one of the best in this state. Don't you size me
+up by what you saw me do tonight, will you?"
+
+"The best of us slip up once in a while," Slavens said.
+
+Walker had some business of clearing his throat. And then:
+
+"Are you--that is--is _she_, related to you?"
+
+"Oh, no," laughed the doctor. "I'm sorry she isn't."
+
+"She's a peach; don't you think so?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," admitted the doctor. "Well, here we are--at home."
+
+They stood outside a little while, their faces turned toward the town.
+It was quieting down now. Here and there a voice was raised in drunken
+song or drunken yelp; here and there a pistol-shot marked the location
+of some silly fellow who believed that he was living and experiencing
+all the recklessness of the untamed West. Now and then the dry, shrill
+laughter of a woman sounded, without lightness, without mirth, as if it
+came from the lips of one who long, long ago, in the fever of pain and
+despair, had wept her heart empty of its tears. Now and again, also, a
+wailing cornet lifted its lone voice, dying away dimly like a
+disappearing light.
+
+"The wolves are satisfied for one night; they've stopped howling," the
+doctor said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SKULKERS
+
+
+There remained but one day until chance should settle the aspirations of
+the dusty thousands who waited in Comanche; one day more would see Claim
+Number One allotted for selection to some more or less worthy American
+citizen.
+
+The young man, Walker, had been received on a footing of fellowship into
+the commune of the circus-tent. He said that he had concluded happily
+the arrangements for the purchase of the sheep-ranch, and that he
+intended to go and take possession of it in a few days. Meantime, he
+appeared to be considerably shot up over June. In spite of Mrs. Reed's
+frowns, he hung around her like a hornet after a soft pear.
+
+There was considerable excitement in the camp of the communists that
+morning, owing to preparations which were going forward for an excursion
+over the land where somebody's Number One lay shrouded in green
+greasewood and gray sage. For this important occasion Walker had engaged
+the most notable stage-driver in that part of the country, whose turn it
+was that day to lie over from the run between Comanche and Meander.
+
+The party was to use his stage also, and carry lunch along, and make a
+grand day of it along the river, trying for trout if conditions held
+favorable. Smith was the name of the driver.
+
+Smith was smiling like a baker as he drove up, for Smith could not
+behold ladies without blushing and smiling. Smith had the reputation of
+being a terror to holdup men. Also, the story was current in Comanche
+that he had, in a bare-handed, single encounter with a bear, choked the
+animal to death. There was some variance over the particulars as to the
+breed of bear, its color, age, size, and weight. Some--and they were the
+unromantic, such as habitually lived in Wyoming and kept saloons--held
+that it was a black cub with a broken back; others that it was a
+cinnamon bear with claws seven inches long; while the extremists would
+be satisfied with nothing short of a grizzly which stood five feet four
+at the shoulders and weighed eighteen hundred pounds!
+
+But, no matter what romance had done for Smith, it could not overdo his
+ancient, green vehicle, with the lettering,
+
+                            BIG HORN VALLEY
+
+along its side near the roof. It was a Concord stage, its body
+swinging on creaking straps. It had many a wound of arrowhead in its
+tough oak, and many a bullet-hole, all of which had been plugged with
+putty and painted over long years ago for the assurance and comfort
+of nervous passengers, to whom the evidence of conflict might have been
+disturbing.
+
+Now that there was no longer any reason for concealment, the owners had
+allowed the paint to crumble and the putty to fall away, baring the
+veteran's scars. These were so thick that it seemed a marvel that
+anybody who took passage in it in those perilous days escaped. In a
+sun-cracked and time-curled leather holster tacked to the seat at
+Smith's right hand, a large revolver with a prodigious black handle hung
+ready for the disciplining of bandits or bears, as they might come
+across Smith's way.
+
+Smith rounded up before the tent with a curve like a skater, bringing
+his four horses to a stop in fine style. No matter how Smith's parts
+might be exaggerated by rumor or humor in other ways, as a teamster he
+stood without a peer between Cody and Green River. He leaped to the
+ground with surprising agility and set himself about arranging the
+interior of the coach for the accommodation of his passengers. He was
+chewing on something which might have been bear-meat or buckskin, from
+its apparent tenacious and unyielding nature.
+
+Agnes Horton was to ride on the box with Smith, for she had a camera and
+wanted to catch some views. Smith grew so red over handing her up that
+Dr. Slavens began to fear lest he might take fire from internal heat and
+leave them with only the ashes of a driver on their hands. But they all
+got placed without any such melancholy tragedy, with a great many cries
+of "Oh, Mr. Smith!" here, and "Oh, Mr. Smith!" there, and many
+head-puttings-out on the part of the ladies inside, and gallantries from
+Mr. Walker and Mr. Horace Bentley, the lawyer.
+
+William Bentley, the toolmaker, with the basket of lunch upon his knees,
+showered the blessing of his kindly smile upon them all, as if he held
+them to be only children. Mrs. Mann, her black bag on her arm, squeaked
+a little when the coach lurched on the start, knocking her head and
+throwing her hat awry.
+
+Smith, proud of his load, and perhaps a little vain on account of so
+much unusual loveliness at his side, swung down the main street with its
+early morning crowds. People waved at them the friendly signals of the
+highroad of adventure, and June, in defiance of terrible eyebrows and
+admonishing pokes, waved back at them, her wild hair running over her
+cheeks. So they set out in the bright morning to view the promised
+land.
+
+They struck off down the Meander stage-road, which ran for the greater
+part of its way through the lands awaiting the disposition of chance.
+Mainly it followed the survey of the railroad, which was to be extended
+to Meander, and along which men and teams were busy even then, throwing
+up the roadbed.
+
+To the north there was a rise of land, running up in benched gradations
+to white and barren distant heights; behind them were brown hills. Far
+away in the blue southwest--Smith said it was more than eighty
+miles--there stood the mountains with their clean robes of snow, while
+scattered here and there about the vast plain through which they drove,
+were buttes of blue shale and red ledges, as symmetrical of side and
+smooth of top as if they had been raised by the architects of
+Tenochtitlan for sacrifice to their ugly gods.
+
+"Old as Adam," said Smith, pointing to one gray monument whose summit
+had been pared smooth by the slow knife of some old glacier. The sides
+of the butte looked almost gay in the morning light in their soft tones
+of blue and red.
+
+"From appearances it might very well be," agreed Agnes.
+
+She looked at Smith and smiled. There was the glory of untrammeled space
+in her clear eyes, a yearning as of the desert-born on the far bounds of
+home. Smith drove on, his back very straight.
+
+"Older," said he with laconic finality after holding his peace for a
+quarter of a mile.
+
+Smith spoke as if he had known both Adam and the butte for a long time,
+and so was an unquestionable authority. Agnes was not disposed to
+dispute him, so they lurched on in silence along the dust-cushioned
+road.
+
+"That ain't the one the Indian girl jumped off of, though," said Smith,
+meditatively.
+
+"Isn't it?"
+
+She turned to him quickly, ready for a story from the picturesque
+strangler of bears. Smith was looking between the ears of the
+off-leader. He volunteered no more.
+
+"Well, where is the one she jumped from?" she pressed.
+
+"Nowhere," said Smith.
+
+"Oh!" she said, a bit disappointed.
+
+"Everywhere I've went," said he, "they've got some high place where the
+Indian girl jumped off of. In Mezoury they've got one, and even in
+Kansas. They've got one in Minnesota and Illinoy and Idaho, and bend my
+eyebrows if I know all the places they ain't got 'em! But don't you
+never let 'em take you in on no such yarns. Them yarns is for suckers."
+
+Somehow Agnes felt grateful toward Smith, whose charitable purpose
+doubtless was to prevent her being taken in. But she was sorry for the
+fine tradition and hated to give it up.
+
+"But _didn't_ one ever jump off a cliff or--anything?" she asked.
+
+Smith struck out with a free-arm swing and cracked his whip so loudly
+that three female heads were at once protruded from the windows below.
+
+"What I want to know," said he argumentatively, "is, who seen 'em
+jump?"
+
+"I don't know," she admitted; "but I suppose they found their bodies."
+
+"Don't you believe it!" depreciated Smith. "Indian maidens ain't the
+jumpin' kind. I never seen one of 'em in my day that wouldn't throw down
+the best feller she ever had for a red umbreller and a dime's worth of
+stick candy."
+
+"I'm sorry for the nice stories your knowledge of the Indian character
+spoils," she laughed.
+
+"The thing of it in this country is, miss, not to let 'em take you in,"
+Smith continued. "That's what they're out for--to take in suckers. No
+matter how wise you may be in some other place, right here in this spot
+you may be a sucker. Do you git my words?"
+
+"I think so," she responded, "and thank you. I'll try to keep my eyes
+open."
+
+"They's places in this country," Smith went on, for he liked to talk as
+well as the next one, once he got under way, "where you could put your
+pocketbook down at the fork of the road with your card on top of it and
+go back there next week and find it O. K. But they's other places where
+if you had your money inside of three safes they'd git at it somehow.
+This is one of that kind of places."
+
+They had been dropping down a slope scattered with gray lava chunks and
+set with spiked soapweed, which let them to the river level. Ahead of
+them, twisted cottonwoods and red willows marked the brink of the
+stream.
+
+"This is the first bench," said Smith, "and it's mainly good land.
+Before the books was opened for registration the gover'ment give the
+Indians choice of a homestead apiece, and they picked off all this land
+down here. Oh, well, on up the river they's a little left, and if I draw
+a low number I know where to put my hand on a piece."
+
+"It looks nice and green here," said she, admiring the feathery
+vegetation, which grew as tall as the stage along the roadway.
+
+"Yes, but you want to watch out for greasewood," advised Smith, "when
+you come to pick land in this country. It's a sign of alkali. Pick that
+gray, dusty-lookin' stuff. That's sage, and where it grows big,
+anything'll grow when you git the water on it."
+
+"But how _do_ you get the water on this hilly land?" she asked.
+
+The question had been troubling her ever since she had taken her first
+look at the country, and nobody had come forward with a satisfactory
+explanation.
+
+"You got to go up the river till you strike your level," explained
+Smith, "and then you tap it and take the water to your land."
+
+"But if you're on the 'third bench' that I hear them talking about so
+much--then what do you do up there, a thousand or two feet above the
+river?"
+
+"You go back where you come from if you're wise," said Smith.
+
+When they reached the section which, according to Smith, had not all
+been taken up by the Indians already, the party got out occasionally for
+closer inspection of the land. The men gravely trickled the soil through
+their fingers, while the women grabbed at the sweet-smelling herbs which
+grew in abundance everywhere, and tore their sleeves reaching for the
+clusters of bullberries, then turning red.
+
+Dr. Slavens and William Bentley tried for fish, with a total catch
+between them of one small trout, which was carried in triumph to the
+place picked upon by Smith for the noonday camp. Smith would not trust
+the coffee to any hand but his own, and he blackened up the pot
+shamefully, Mrs. Reed declared.
+
+But what did Smith care for the criticism of Mrs. Reed when he was
+making coffee for Agnes? What did he care, indeed, for the judgment of
+the whole world when he was laying out his best efforts to please the
+finest woman who ever sat beside him on the box, and one for whom he was
+ready to go any distance, and do any endeavors, to save her from being
+made a sucker of and taken in and skinned?
+
+It was pleasant there by the river; so pleasant that there was not one
+of them but voted Wyoming the finest and most congenial spot in the
+world, with the kindest skies, the softest summer winds, and the one
+place of all places for a home.
+
+"Yes," Smith remarked, tossing pebbles into the river from the place
+where he sat cross-legged on the ground with his pipe, "it takes a hold
+of you that way. It goes to twenty below in the winter, sometimes, and
+the wind blows like the plug had popped out of the North Pole, and the
+snow covers up the sheep on the range and smothers 'em, and you lose all
+you got down to the last chaw of t'backer. But you stick, some way, and
+you forgit you ever had a home back in Indiana, where strawberries
+grow."
+
+"Why, don't they grow here?" asked the miller's wife, holding a bunch of
+red bullberries caressingly against her cheek.
+
+"I ain't seen a natural strawberry in fourteen years," said Smith, more
+proud than regretful, as if such a long abstinence were a virtue.
+
+"Natural?" repeated Mrs. Reed. "Surely you don't mean that they
+manufacture them here?"
+
+"They send 'em here in cans," explained Smith, "pale, with sour water on
+'em, no more like real, ma'am, than a cigarette's like a smoke."
+
+The men with pipes chuckled their appreciation of the comparison. Horace
+Bentley, with a fresh cigarette--which he had taken out of a silver
+case--in his fingers, turned it, quizzically smiling as he struck a
+match.
+
+"It's an imitation," said he; "but it's good enough for me."
+
+The sun was slanting near the rough hills beyond the river when they
+started back to Comanche.
+
+"You've seen the best of the reservation," explained Smith, "and they
+ain't no earthly use in seein' the worst of it."
+
+They were well along on the way, passing through a rough and outcast
+stretch of country, where upheaved ledges stood on edge, and great
+blocks of stone poised menacingly on the brows of shattered cliffs, when
+Smith, who had been looking sharply ahead, pulled in suddenly and turned
+to Agnes with apologetic questioning in his eyes. It seemed to her that
+he had something on his mind which he was afraid to put into words.
+
+"What is it, Mr. Smith?" she asked.
+
+"I was just goin' to say, would you mind goin' inside and lettin' that
+doctor man take your place for a while?"
+
+Smith doubtless had his reason, she thought, although it hurt her pride
+that he should withhold his confidence. But she yielded her place
+without further questioning, with a great amount of blushing over the
+stocking which a protruding screwhead was responsible for her showing to
+Dr. Slavens as he assisted her to the ground.
+
+The sudden stop, the excitement incident to changing places, threw the
+women within the coach into a cackle.
+
+"Is it robbers?" demanded Mrs. Reed, getting hold of June's hand and
+clinging to it protectingly as she put her head out and peered up at
+Smith, who was sitting there stolidly, his eyes on the winding trail
+ahead, his foot on the brake.
+
+"No, ma'am," answered Smith, not looking in her direction at all.
+
+"What is it, then?" quavered Mrs. Mann from the other side of the
+stage.
+
+She could not see Smith, and the desolation of their surroundings set
+her fancy at work stationing dusty cowboy bandits behind each riven,
+lowering stone.
+
+"Oh, I _hope_ it's robbers!" said June, bouncing up and down in her
+seat. "That would be just fine!"
+
+"Hush, hush!" commanded her mother, shaking her correctively. "Such a
+wicked wish!"
+
+Milo Strong, the teacher from Iowa, had grown very pale. He buttoned his
+coat and kept one hand in the region of his belt. One second he peered
+wildly out of the windows on his side, the next he strained to see if
+devastation and ruin were approaching from the other.
+
+"Smith doubtless had some very commonplace reason for making the
+change," said William Bentley, making room for Agnes beside him. "I
+expect Miss Horton talked too much."
+
+With that the stage started and their fears subsided somewhat. On the
+box Smith was looking sharply at the doctor. Then he asked:
+
+"Can you drive better than you can shoot, or shoot better than you can
+drive?"
+
+"I guess it's about a stand-off," replied the doctor without a ripple of
+excitement; "but I was brought up with four mules."
+
+Without another word Smith stood on the footboard, and Dr. Slavens slid
+along to his place. Smith handed the physician the lines and took the
+big revolver from its pocket by the seat.
+
+"Two fellers on horseback," said he, keeping his eyes sharply on the
+boulder-hedged road, "has been dodgin' along the top of that ridge kind
+of suspicious. No reason why any honest man would want to ride along up
+there among the rocks when he could ride down here where it's smooth.
+They may be straight or they may be crooked. I don't know. But you meet
+all kinds along this road."
+
+The doctor nodded. Smith said no more, but stood, one knee on the seat,
+with his pistol held in readiness for instant action. When they reached
+the top of the ridge nobody was in sight, but there were boulders
+enough, and big enough, on every hand to conceal an army. Smith nodded;
+the doctor pulled up.
+
+The stage had no sooner stopped than Walker was out, his pistol in hand,
+ready to show June and all her female relatives so dear that he was
+there to stand between them and danger as long as their peril might
+last.
+
+Smith looked around carefully.
+
+"Funny about them two fellers!" he muttered.
+
+From the inside of the stage came June's voice, raised in admiration of
+Mr. Walker's intrepidity, and her mother's voice, commanding her to be
+silent, and not draw down upon them the fury of the bandits, who even
+then might be taking aim at them from behind a rock.
+
+Nobody appearing, between whom and June he might precipitate himself,
+Walker mounted a rock for a look around. He had no more than reached the
+top when the two horsemen who had caused the flurry rode from behind the
+house-size boulder which had hidden them, turned their backs, crouching
+in their saddles as if to hide their identity, and galloped off.
+
+"Huh! Old Hun Shanklin's one of 'em," sniffed Smith, plainly disgusted
+that the affair had turned out so poorly.
+
+He put his weapon back in its place and took the lines.
+
+"And that feller, he don't have to go around holdin' people up with a
+gun in his hand," he added. "He's got a safer and surer game of it than
+that."
+
+"And that's no cross-eyed view of it, either," Dr. Slavens agreed.
+
+Walker came over and stood beside the near wheel.
+
+"One of them was Hun Shanklin!" said he, whispering up loudly for the
+doctor's ear, a look of deep concern on his youthful face.
+
+Slavens nodded with what show of unconcern he could assume. For, knowing
+what he knew, he wondered what the gambler was there for, and why he
+seemed so anxious to keep the matter of his identity to himself.
+
+When they arrived at Comanche the sun was down. Mrs. Reed hurried June
+indoors, all exclamations and shudders over what she believed to have
+been a very narrow escape. Vowing that she never would go exploring
+around in that wild land again, she whisked off without a word for
+Smith.
+
+The others shook hands with the driver, Agnes coming last. He took off
+his hat when it came her turn.
+
+"Keep your eyes skinned," he advised her, "and don't let 'em play you
+for a sucker. Any time you need advice, or any help that I can give you,
+if I'm not here I'm on the road between here and Meander. You can git me
+over there by telephone."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Smith," said she warmly and genuinely, wondering why he
+should take such an unaccountable interest in her.
+
+The others had gone about their business, thinking strongly of supper,
+leaving Smith and her alone beside the old green stage.
+
+"But don't ask for Smith if you call me up," said he, "for that's only
+my first name, and they's a horse-wrangler over there with that for his
+last. They might think you wanted him."
+
+"Oh, I didn't know!" she stammered, all confusion over the familiarity
+that she had been taking all day. "I didn't know your other name--nobody
+ever told me."
+
+"No; not many of 'em down here knows it," he responded. "But up at
+Meander, at the barn, they know it. It's Phogenphole."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"But if you don't like it," added Smith, speaking with great fervor, and
+leaning toward her a little eagerly and earnestly, "I'll have a bill put
+through the Legislature down at Cheyenne and change it!"
+
+They ate supper that evening by lantern-light, with the night noise of
+Comanche beginning to rise around them earlier than usual. Those who
+were there for the reaping realized that it would be their last big
+night, for on the morrow the drawing would fall. After the first day's
+numbers had been taken from the wheel at Meander, which would run up
+into the thousands, the waiting crowds would melt away from Comanche as
+fast as trains could carry them. So those who were on the make had both
+hands out in Comanche that night.
+
+They all wondered how it would turn out for them, the lumberman and the
+insurance agent--who had not been of the party that day in Smith's
+coach--offering to lay bets that nobody in the mess would draw a number
+below five hundred. There were no takers. Then they offered to bet that
+all in the mess would draw under five hundred. Mrs. Reed rebuked them
+for their gambling spirit, which, she said, was rampant in Comanche,
+like a plague.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE DRAWING
+
+
+As has been previously said, one must go fast and far to come to a place
+where there is neither a Hotel Metropole nor a newspaper. Doubtless
+there are communities of civilized men on the North American continent
+where there is neither, but Comanche was not one of them.
+
+In Comanche the paper was a daily. Its editor was a single-barreled
+grafter who wore a green mohair coat and dyed whiskers. His office and
+establishment occupied an entire twelve-by-sixteen tent; the name of the
+paper was _The Chieftain_.
+
+_The Chieftain_ had been one of the first enterprises of Comanche. It
+got there ahead of the first train, arriving in a wagon, fully equipped.
+The editor had an old zinc cut of a two-storied brick business house on
+a corner, which he had run with a grocery-store advertisement when he
+was getting out a paper in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This he now made use of with
+impressive effect and inspiring display of his cheerful confidence in
+his own future and that of the town where, like a blowing seed of
+cottonwood, he had found lodgment.
+
+He ran this cut in every issue at the top of what would have been his
+editorial column if there had been time for him to write one, with these
+words:
+
+                  FUTURE HOME OF _THE CHIEFTAIN_ ON THE
+                    CORNER THIS PAPER NOW OCCUPIES,
+                     AS DESIGNED BY THE EDITOR AND
+                         OWNER, J. WALTER MONG
+
+From the start that Editor Mong was making in Comanche his dream did not
+appear at all unreasonable. Everybody in the place advertised, owing to
+some subtle influence of which Mr. Mong was master, and which is known
+to editors of his brand wherever they are to be found. If a business man
+had the shield of respectability to present to all questioners, he
+advertised out of pride and civic spirit; if he had a past, J. Walter
+Mong had a nose, sharpened by long training in picking up such scents;
+and so he advertised out of expediency.
+
+That being the way matters stood, _The Chieftain_ carried very little
+but advertisements. They paid better than news, and news could wait its
+turn, said the editor, until he settled down steadily into a weekly and
+had room for it.
+
+But Mr. Mong laid himself out to give the returns from the drawing for
+homesteads, it being one of those rare chances in which an editor could
+combine business and news without putting on an extra form. The
+headquarters of the United States land-office for that territory being
+at Meander, the drawing was to take place there. Meander was sixty miles
+farther along, connected with the railroad and Comanche by stage and
+telephone. So, every hour of the eventful day, Editor Mong was going to
+issue an extra on telephonic information from the seat of the drawing.
+
+On the day of the drawing, which came as clear and bright as the painted
+dreams of those who trooped Comanche's streets, there remained in the
+town, after the flitting entrants had come and gone, fully thirty
+thousand expectant people. They were those in whom the hope of low
+numbers was strong. For one drawing a low number must make his selection
+of land and file on it at Meander within a few days.
+
+In the case of the first number, the lucky drawer would have but three
+days to make his selection and file on it. If he lapsed, then Number Two
+became Number One, and all down the line the numbers advanced one.
+
+So, in case that the winner of Number One had registered and gone home
+to the far East or the middle states, he couldn't get back in time to
+save his valuable chance. That gave big hope to those who expected
+nothing better than seven or nine or something under twenty. Three or
+four lapses ahead of them would move them along, each peg adding
+thousands to their winnings, each day running out for them in golden
+sands.
+
+By dawn the streets were filled by early skirmishers for breakfast, and
+sunrise met thousands more who, luggage in hand, talked and gesticulated
+and blocked the dusty passages between the unstable walls of that city
+of chance, which soon would come down and disappear like smoke from a
+wayside fire. The thousands with their bags in hand would not sleep
+another night beneath its wind-restless roofs. All those who expected to
+draw Claim Number One were ready to take the stage or hire a special
+conveyance to Meander, or, failing of their expectations in the lottery,
+to board the special trains which the railroad had made ready, and leave
+for home.
+
+By nine o'clock it seemed to the waiting throngs that several ordinary
+days had passed since they left their sagging canvas cots at daybreak to
+stand attendant upon the whim of chance. They gathered in the blazing
+sun in front of the office of the paper, looking in at Editor Mong, who
+seemed more like a quack doctor that morning than ever before, with his
+wrinkled coat-sleeves pushed above his elbows and his cuffs tucked back
+over them, his black-dyed whiskers gleaming in shades of green when the
+sun hit them, like the plumage of a crow.
+
+For all the news that came to Comanche over the telephone-wire that day
+must come through the office of _The Chieftain_. There was but one
+telephone in the town; that was in the office of the stage-line, and by
+arrangement with its owners, the editor had bottled up the slightest
+chance of a leak.
+
+There would be no bulletins, the editor announced. Anyone desiring news
+of the drawing must pay twenty-five cents for a copy of the paper
+containing it. It was the editor's one great chance for graft, and he
+meant to work it until it was winded.
+
+The lottery was to open in Meander at ten o'clock; but long before that
+hour the quivering excitement which shook the fabric of Comanche had
+reached the tent where Mrs. Reed mothered it over the company of
+adventurers. The lumberman and insurance agent were away early; Sergeant
+Schaefer and Milo Strong followed them to the newspaper office very
+shortly; and the others sat out in front, watching the long shadows
+contract toward the peg that June had driven in the ground the day
+before at the line of ten o'clock.
+
+"Well, this is the day," said William Bentley. "What will you take for
+your chance, Doctor?"
+
+"Well, it wouldn't take very much to get it this morning," Dr. Slavens
+replied, peering thoughtfully at the ground, "for it's one of those
+things that grow smaller and smaller the nearer you approach."
+
+"I'd say twenty-five hundred for mine," offered Horace.
+
+"Great lands!" exclaimed Mrs. Reed, blinking, as she looked out across
+the open toward the river. "If anybody will give me three dollars for my
+chance he can take it, and welcome."
+
+"Then you'd feel cheap if you won," June put in. "It's worth more than
+that even up in the thousands; isn't it, Mr. Walker?"
+
+Walker was warm in his declaration that it would be a mighty small and
+poor piece of Wyoming that wouldn't be worth more than that.
+
+"We haven't heard from you, Miss Horton," said William Bentley.
+
+"I'm afraid nothing would tempt me to part with my chance," Agnes
+replied. "I hold it just the reverse of Dr. Slavens. The longer I look
+at it the bigger it gets."
+
+The doctor was the only one present who understood fully how much she
+had built around that chance. Their eyes met as he looked across at her;
+he remembered what she had said of planting trees, and having roses
+beside her door.
+
+"It's almost there!" cried June, looking at her stake.
+
+"Twenty minutes yet," announced Horace, who sat with his watch in his
+palm.
+
+They were all bonneted and booted, ready for an expedition, although
+they had none in sight. It was as if they expected Number One to come
+flying through the town, to be caught and held by the swiftest of foot,
+the one alert and ready to spring up and dash after it.
+
+"Shall we go over to the newspaper office?" asked the doctor, looking
+across again and catching Agnes' eyes.
+
+June jumped up and accepted the proposal for all.
+
+"Oh, let's do!" she exclaimed. "Let's be there to get the very first
+word!"
+
+On the part of the ladies there was a dash into the tent to adjust their
+headgear before glasses and to renew the powder on their noses. While
+they were gone Horace Bentley, the lawyer, stood with his watch exposed
+to his impatient eye.
+
+"In five minutes," he announced as the ladies rejoined them, "they will
+draw the first name from the wheel at Meander. I hope that it may be the
+name of someone in this party."
+
+"I hope it will be yours," said Dr. Slavens' eyes as he looked earnestly
+at Agnes; and: "Number Two would do very well for me in case your name
+came first," her eyes seemed to answer him.
+
+But there was none by who knew what had passed between them of their
+hopes, so none could read the messages, even if there had been any so
+curious as to try.
+
+Mrs. Mann was humming a little song as they started away toward the
+newspaper office, for she was tiring of Wyoming, where she had not seen
+a single cowboy yet; and the prospect of returning to the miller was
+growing dear to her heart. There was a quiet over Comanche that morning
+which seemed different from the usual comparative peace of that portion
+of the day--a strained and fevered quiet, as of hushed winds before a
+gale. It took hold of even June as the party passed through the main
+street, joining the stream of traffic which pressed in one direction
+only.
+
+They could not arrive within a square of the newspaper-tent, for the
+crowd around it was packed and dense; so they stopped where there was
+breathing-space among groups of men who stood with their gripsacks
+between their feet, waiting for the first word.
+
+At five minutes past ten the editor of _The Chieftain_ handed his
+printer a slip of paper, and the name of the winner of Claim Number One
+was put in type. The news was carried by one who pushed through the
+throng, his hat on the back of his head, sweat drenching his face. The
+man was in a buck-ague over the prospect of that name being his own, it
+seemed, and thought only of drawing away from the sudden glare of
+fortune until he could collect his wits.
+
+Some people are that way--the timid ones of the earth. They go through
+life leaving a string of baited traps behind them, lacking courage to go
+back and see what they have caught.
+
+More than two hundred names were in the first extra run off _The
+Chieftain's_ press at half-past ten. The name of the winner of Number
+One was Axel Peterson; his home in Meander, right where he could step
+across the street and file without losing a minute.
+
+Milo Strong, the schoolmaster from Iowa, drew Number Thirty-Seven. None
+of the others in the colony at the Hotel Metropole figured in the first
+returns.
+
+They went back as silently as they had come, the doctor carrying the
+list in his hand. Before the tent stood the lumberman and the insurance
+agent, their bags in their hands.
+
+"We've got just six minutes to catch the first train out," said the
+insurance agent, his big smile just as wide as ever. "Good luck to you
+all, and hope we meet again."
+
+The lumberman waved his farewell as he ran. For them the gamble was off.
+They had staked on coming in below one hundred, and they had lost. There
+was nothing more to hang around Comanche for, and it is supposed that
+they caught the train, for they were seen there no more.
+
+There were several hundred others in that quick-coming and quick-going
+population whose hopes were dispersed by the printed list. And so the
+town suffered a heavy drain with the departure of the first train for
+the East. The railroad company, foreseeing the desire to be gone, had
+arranged a long string of coaches, with two engines hitched up and
+panting to set out. The train pulled away with every inch of space
+occupied.
+
+All day the enterprising editor printed and sold extras. His press, run
+by an impertinent little gasoline engine, could turn out eighteen
+hundred of those single-sheet dodgers in an hour, but it couldn't turn
+them out fast enough. Every time Editor Mong looked out of his tent and
+saw two men reading one paper he cursed his limited vision which had
+stood in the way of putting sixty dollars more into a press of twice
+that capacity. As it was, the day's work brought him nearly three
+thousand dollars, money on the spot; no back subscriptions to worry
+over, no cabbage or cordwood in exchange.
+
+When the drawing closed for the day and the last extra was off, more
+than three thousand numbers had been taken from the wheel at Meander.
+The only one among the Metropole colony to draw after the first
+published list was Agnes Horton. Claim Number Nine Hundred and Five fell
+to her lot.
+
+Claims that high were useless, and everybody knew it; so interest
+dropped away, the little gasoline engine popped its last impertinent pop
+and subsided, and the crowds drifted off to get ready to depart as fast
+as trains could be made up to haul them. Sergeant Schaefer, having
+failed of his expectations, felt a revival of interest in the military
+life, and announced that he would leave on the first train out next
+morning.
+
+That night the price of cots suffered a dispiriting drop. Fifty cents
+would hire the most exclusive bed in the phantom city of Comanche.
+
+As for Dr. Slavens, the day's events had left him with a dazed feeling
+of insecurity. His air was cleared of hope; he could not touch a stable
+bit of footing as far around him as he could reach. He had counted a
+good deal on drawing something along in the early hundreds; and as the
+day wore along to his disappointment in that hope he thought that he
+might come tagging in at the end, in the mean way that his cross-grained
+luck had of humiliating him and of forcing the fact that he was more or
+less a failure before his eyes.
+
+No matter what he drew under three thousand, he said, he'd take it and
+be thankful for it. If he could locate on a trickle of water somewhere
+and start out with a dozen ewes and a ram, he'd bury himself away in the
+desert and pull the edges of it up around him to keep out the
+disappointments of the world. A man might come out of it in a few years
+with enough money--that impenetrable armor which gives security even to
+fools--to buy a high place for himself, if he couldn't win it otherwise.
+Men had done well on small beginnings with sheep; that country was full
+of them; and it was a poor one, indeed, that wasn't able to buy up any
+ten doctors he could name.
+
+So Dr. Slavens ran on, following the lead of a fresh dream, which had
+its foundation on the sands of despair. When the drawing had passed the
+high numbers which he had set as his possible lowest, he felt like
+sneaking away, whipped, to hide his discouragement where there was no
+one to see. His confounded luck wouldn't even grant him the opportunity
+of burying himself out there in that gray sea of blowing dust!
+
+There was no use in trying to disguise the fact any longer; he was a
+fizzle. Some men were designed from the beginning for failures, and he
+was one of the plainest patterns that ever was made. There was a place
+for Axel Peterson, the alien, but there was no place for him.
+
+In spite of his age and experience, he did not understand that the world
+values men according to the resistance they interpose against it;
+according to the stamping down of feet and the presenting of shoulders
+and the squaring arms to take its blows. Cowards make a front before it
+and get on with amazing success; droves of poltroons bluster and storm,
+with empty shells of hearts inside their ribs, and kick up a fine dust
+in the arena, under the cloud of which they snatch down many of the
+laurels which have been hung up for worthier men. Success lies
+principally in understanding that the whole game is a bluff on the
+world's part, and that the biggest bluffer in the ring takes down the
+purse.
+
+But the timid hearts of the earth never learn this; the sentimentalists
+and the poets do not understand it. You can't go along sweeping a clear
+path for your feet with a bunch of flowers. What you need is a good,
+sound club. When a hairy shin impedes, whack it, or make a feint and a
+bluff. You'll be surprised how easily the terrifying hulks of adversity
+are charmed out of the highway ahead of you by a little impertinence, a
+little ginger, and a little gall.
+
+Many a man remains a coward all his life because somebody cowed him when
+he was a boy. Dr. Slavens had put his hands down, and had stood with his
+shoulders hunched, taking the world's thumps without striking back, for
+so many years in his melancholy life that his natural resistance had
+shrunk. On that day he was not as nature had intended him, but as
+circumstances had made him.
+
+It had become the friendly fashion in camp for the doctor and Agnes to
+take a walk after supper. June's mother had frowned on the boldness of
+it, whispering to June's aunt. But the miller's wife, more liberal and
+romantic, wouldn't hear of whisperings. She said their conduct was as
+irreproachable in that country as eating peas with a spoon.
+
+"I wish I was in her place!" she sighed.
+
+"_Dorothy Ann!_" gasped Mrs. Reed. "Remember your husband, Dorothy
+Ann!"
+
+"I do," sighed the miller's wife.
+
+"Well, if you _were_ in her place you'd ask somebody to accompany you on
+your moonlight strolls, I hope. I _hope_ that's what you'd do, Dorothy
+Ann."
+
+"No," answered the miller's wife thoughtfully. "I'd propose. She'll lose
+him if she doesn't."
+
+On the evening of that day of blasted hopes the two of them walked away
+in the gloaming toward the river, with few words between them until they
+left the lights of Comanche behind.
+
+"Mr. Strong is considerably elated over his luck," said Agnes at last,
+after many sidling glances at his gloomy profile.
+
+"That's the way it goes," Dr. Slavens sighed. "I don't believe that
+chance is blind; I think it's just perverse. I should say, not counting
+myself, that Strong is the least deserving of any man in the crowd of
+us. Look at old Horace Bentley, the lawyer. He doesn't say anything, but
+you can see that his heart is aching with disappointment."
+
+"I have noticed it," she agreed. "He hasn't said ten words since the
+last extra."
+
+"When a man like that dreams, he dreams hard--and deep," the doctor
+continued. "But how about yourself?"
+
+She laughed, and placed a restraining hand upon his arm.
+
+"You're going too fast," she panted. "I'll be winded before we get to
+the river."
+
+"I guess I was trying to overtake my hopes," said he. "I'm sorry; we'll
+go slower--in all things--the rest of the way."
+
+She looked at him quickly, a little curiously, but there was no
+explanation in his eyes, fixed on the graying landscape beyond the
+river.
+
+"It looks like ashes," said he softly, with a motion of the hand toward
+the naked hills. "There is no life in it; there is nothing of the dead.
+It is a cenotaph of dreams. But how about your claim?"
+
+"It's a little farther up than I had expected," she admitted, but with a
+cheerful show of courage which she did not altogether feel.
+
+"Yes; it puts you out of the chance of drawing any agricultural land,
+throws you into the grazing and mineral," said he.
+
+"Unless there are a great many lapses," she suggested.
+
+"There will be hundreds, in my opinion," he declared. "But in case there
+are not enough to bring you down to the claim worth having--one upon
+which you could plant trees and roses and such things?"
+
+"I'll stick to it anyhow," said she determinedly.
+
+"So this is going to be home?" he asked.
+
+"Home," she answered with a caressing touch upon the word. "I came here
+to make it; I sha'n't go away without it. I don't know just how long it
+will take me, nor how hard it will be, but I'm going to collect interest
+on my hopes from this country before I turn my back."
+
+"You seem to believe in it," said he.
+
+"Perhaps I believe more in myself," she answered thoughtfully. "Have you
+determined what you are going to do?"
+
+He laughed--a short, harsh expression of ironical bitterness.
+
+"I've gone through the mill today of heat and cold," said he. "First, I
+was going to sell my relinquishment for ten thousand dollars as soon as
+the law would allow, but by noon I had come down to five hundred. After
+that I took up the notion of sheep stronger than Milo, from Iowa, ever
+thought of it. It took just one more extra to put that fire out, and now
+the ashes of it aren't even warm. Just what my next phantasy will be I
+can't say."
+
+"But you're going to stay here, aren't you?"
+
+"I've thought of that, too. I've thought of making another try at it in
+a professional way. But this is a big, empty country. Few people live in
+it and fewer die. I don't know."
+
+"Well, you're a doctor, not an undertaker, anyhow," she reminded him.
+
+"Yes; I missed my calling," he laughed, with the bitterness of defeat.
+
+"No," she corrected; "I didn't mean that. But perhaps at something else
+you might get on faster here--business of some kind, I mean."
+
+"If I had the chance!" he exclaimed wearily, flinging his hat to the
+ground as he sat beside her on a boulder at the river's edge. "I've
+never had a square and open chance at anything yet."
+
+"I don't know, of course," said she. "But the trouble with most of us,
+it seems to me, is that we haven't the quickness or the courage to take
+hold of the chance when it comes. All of us let so many good ones get
+away."
+
+Dusk had deepened. The star-glow was upon the river, placid there in its
+serene approach to the rough passage beyond. He sat there, the wind
+lifting the hair upon his forehead, pondering what she had said.
+
+Was it possible that a man could walk blindly by his chances for
+thirty-five years, only to be grasping, empty-palmed, after them when
+they had whisked away? For what else did his complainings signify? He
+had lacked the courage or the quickness, or some essential, as she had
+said, to lay hold of them before they fled away beyond his reach
+forever.
+
+There was a chance beside him going to waste tonight--a golden, great
+chance. Not for lack of courage would he let it pass, he reflected; but
+let it pass he must. He wanted to tell her that he would be a different
+man if he could remain near her all the rest of his years; he longed to
+say that he desired dearly to help her smooth the rough land and plant
+the trees and draw the water in that place which she dreamed of and
+called home.
+
+But there was nothing in his past to justify her confidence in his
+future. Women worth having did not marry forlorn hopes in the
+expectation of making a profit out of them by and by. He had no hearth
+to offer her; he had no thatch; he had not a rood of land to lead a
+mountain stream across and set with the emerald and royal purple of
+alfalfa; not a foot of greensward beside the river, where a yeaning ewe
+might lie and ease the burden of her pains. He had nothing to offer,
+nothing to give. If he asked, it must be to receive all and return
+nothing, except whatever of constancy time might prove out of his
+heart.
+
+If he had even a plan to lay down before her and ask her to share, it
+would be something, he thought; or a brave resolve, like her own. But
+there was emptiness all around him; his feet could not find a square
+yard of solid earth to shape his future upon. It was not that he
+believed that she cared for money or the material rewards of success,
+for she had spoken bitterly of that. The ghosts of money's victims were
+behind her; she had said as much the first time they had talked of their
+hopes in that new land.
+
+There must be something in that place for him, as she had said; there
+must be an unimproved opportunity which Fate had fashioned for his hand.
+Hope lifted its resilient head again. Before the morning he must have a
+plan, and when he had the plan he would speak.
+
+"We'll have to be breaking up camp in a day or two more," Agnes said,
+disturbing the long silence which had settled between them.
+
+"I suppose so," he responded; "but I don't know what the plans of the
+others are."
+
+"Mr. Strong is going to Meander in the morning," she told him; "and
+Horace Bentley is going with him, poor fellow, to look around, he says.
+William Bentley told me this evening that he would leave for home in a
+day or two, and Mrs. Reed and her charges are waiting to hear from a
+friend of June's who was in school with her--I think she is the
+Governor's daughter, or maybe he's an ex-governor--about a long-standing
+invitation to visit her in her summer home, which is near here, as they
+compute distances in Wyoming."
+
+"And Schaefer is leaving in the morning," reflected the doctor. "That
+leaves but you and me unaccounted for. Are you going on to Meander
+soon?"
+
+"Yes; I want to be there to file when my time comes."
+
+"I've thought of going over there to feel things out, too," Dr. Slavens
+went on. "This place will shrink in a few days like a piece of wet
+leather in the sun. They'll have nothing left of it but the stores, and
+no business to sustain them until the country around here is settled.
+That may be a long time yet. Still, there may be something around here
+for me. I'm going to look into the possibilities tomorrow. And we'll
+have at least another talk before we part?"
+
+"Many more, I hope," she said.
+
+Her answer presented an alluring lead for him to say more, but before he
+could speak, even if minded to do it, she went on:
+
+"This has been a pleasant experience, this camping in the clean, unused
+country, and it would be a sort of Persian poet existence if we could go
+on with it always; but of course we can't."
+
+"It isn't all summer and fair skies here," he reminded her, "any more
+than it is in--well, Persia. Twenty below in winter sometimes, Smith
+said. Do you remember?"
+
+"Yes," she sighed. "But it seems impossible."
+
+"You wouldn't believe this little river could turn into a wild and
+savage torrent, either, a few hundred yards along, if you had nothing to
+judge it by but this quiet stretch," he returned. "But listen to it down
+there, crashing against the rocks!"
+
+"There's no news of that rash man who went into the canyon for the
+newspaper?" Agnes asked.
+
+"He must have lodged in there somewhere; they haven't picked him up on
+the other side," he said, a thoughtful abstraction over him.
+
+"I hope you've given up the thought of trying to explore it?"
+
+"I haven't thought much about it lately," he replied; "but I'm of the
+same opinion. I believe the difficulties of the canyon are greatly
+exaggerated. In fact, as I told you before, the reward posted by that
+newspaper looks to me like easy money."
+
+"It wouldn't pay you if the reward were ten times as large," she
+declared with a little argumentative heat.
+
+"Perhaps not," said he, as if he had but a passing and shallow interest
+in the subject.
+
+Sitting there bareheaded to the wind, which was dropping down coldly
+from the far mountains, he seemed to be in a brooding humor.
+
+"The moon is late tonight," he noted. "Shall we wait till it rises?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, feeling the great gentleness that there was about
+him when he was in a serious way.
+
+Why he had not been successful in the profession for which nature
+plainly had designed him she could not understand; for he was a man to
+inspire confidence when he was at his best, and unvexed by the memory of
+the bitter waters which had passed his lips. She felt that there would
+be immeasurable solace in his hand for one who suffered; she knew that
+he would put down all that he had in life for a friend.
+
+Leaning her chin upon her palm, she looked at him in the last light of
+the west, which came down to them dimly, as if falling through dun
+water, from some high-floating clouds. As if following in her thought
+something that had gone before, she said:
+
+"No; perhaps you should not stay in this big, empty country when there
+are crowded places in the world that are full of pain, and little
+children in them dying for the want of such men as you."
+
+He started and turned toward her, putting out his hand as if to place it
+upon her head.
+
+"How did you know that it's the children that give me the strongest call
+back to the struggle?" he asked.
+
+"It's in your eyes," said she. And beneath her breath she added: "In
+your heart."
+
+"About all the success that I ever won I sacrificed for a child," he
+said, with reminiscent sadness.
+
+"Will you tell me about it?"
+
+"It was a charity case at that," he explained, "a little girl who had
+been burned in a fire which took all the rest of the family. She needed
+twenty-two square inches of skin on her breast. One gave all that he
+could very well part with----"
+
+"That was yourself," she nodded, drawing a little nearer to him quite
+unconsciously.
+
+"But that was not half enough," he continued as if unaware of the
+interruption. "I had to get it into the papers and ask for volunteers,
+for you know that an average of only one in three pieces of cuticle
+adheres when set into a wound, especially a burn. The papers made a good
+deal of it, and I couldn't keep my name out, of course. Well, enough
+school-children came forward to patch up three or four girls, and
+together we saved her.
+
+"No matter. The medical association of that city jumped me very promptly.
+The old chaps said that I had handled the case unprofessionally and had
+used it merely for an advertisement. They charged unprofessional
+conduct against me; they tried me in their high court and found me
+guilty. They dug the ground from under my feet and branded me as a
+quack. They broke me, they tried to have my license to practice revoked.
+But they failed in that. That was three years ago. I hung on, but I
+starved. So when I speak in what may seem a bitter way of the narrow
+traditions of my profession, you know my reason is fairly well grounded."
+
+"But you saved the little girl!"
+
+It was too dark for him to see her eyes. The tears that lay in them
+could not drop their balm upon his heart.
+
+"She's as good as new," said he cheerfully, fingering the inner pocket
+of his coat. "She writes to me right along. Here's a picture-card that
+followed me here, mailed from the home that the man who gave his tough
+old hide to mend her found for her when she was well. She lives in
+Oklahoma now, and her sweet fortitude under her misfortune has been a
+remembrance to sustain me over many a hungry day."
+
+"But you saved the little girl!" Agnes repeated with unaccountable
+insistence, as if trying to beat down the injustice of his heavy penance
+with that argument.
+
+And then he saw her bow her head upon her folded arms like a little
+child, and weep in great sobs which came rackingly as if torn from the
+core of her heart.
+
+Dr. Slavens picked up his hat, put it on, got to his feet, and took a
+stride away from her as if he could not bear the sight of her poignant
+sympathy. Then he turned, came back, and stooped above her, laying his
+hand upon her hair.
+
+"Don't do that!" he pleaded. "All that's gone, all that I've missed, is
+not worth a single tear. You must not make my troubles your own, for at
+the worst there's not enough for two."
+
+She reached out her tear-wet hand and clung to his, wordless for a
+little while. As it lay softly within his palm he stroked it soothingly
+and folded it between his hands as if to yield it freedom nevermore.
+Soon her gust of sorrow passed. She stood beside him, breathing brokenly
+in the ebb of that overmastering tide. In the opening of the broad
+valley the moon stood redly. The wind trailed slowly from the hills to
+meet it, as if to warm itself at its beacon-fire.
+
+"You saved the little girl!" said she again, laying her warm hand for a
+moment against his cheek.
+
+In that moment it was well for Dr. Warren Slavens that the lesson of his
+hard years was deep within his heart; that the continence and abnegation
+of his past had ripened his restraint until, no matter how his lips
+might yearn to the sweets which were not his own, they would not taste.
+He took hold of himself with a rough hand, for the moonlight was upon
+her trembling lips; it stood imprisoned in the undried tears which lay
+upon her cheeks.
+
+The invitation was there, and the time, such as the lines of a man's
+life are plotted to lead up to from the beginning. But there was lacking
+too much on his part for an honest man to stoop and gather what
+presented. He might have folded his arms about her and drawn her to his
+breast, as the yearning of his soul desired; he might have kissed her
+lips and dispelled the moonlight from her trembling tears--and spoiled
+it all for both.
+
+For that would have been a trespass without mitigation, a sacrilege
+beyond excuse. When a man took a woman like that in his arms and kissed
+her, according to his old-fashioned belief, he took from every other man
+the right to do so, ever. In such case he must have a refuge to offer
+her from the world's encroachments, and a security to requite her in all
+that she yielded for his sake.
+
+Such he had not. There was no hearthstone, there was no roof-tree, there
+was no corner of refuge in all the vast, gray world. He had no right to
+take where he could not give, although it wrenched his heart to give it
+up.
+
+He took the soft, warm hand which had bestowed its benediction on his
+cheek, and held it in childish attitude, swinging at his side. No word
+was said as they faced back to the unstable city, their shadows trailing
+them, long and grotesque, like the sins of men which come after them,
+and gambol and grimace for all the world to see but those who believe
+them hidden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A MIDNIGHT EXTRA
+
+
+Dr. Slavens sat on the edge of his cot, counting his money. He hadn't a
+great deal, so the job was not long. When he finished he tucked it all
+away in his instrument-case except the few coins which he retained in
+his palm.
+
+It would not last much longer, thought he. A turn would have to be made
+soon, or he must hunt a job on the railroad or a ranch. Walker had
+talked a lot about having Dr. Slavens come in on the new sheep venture
+with him, on the supposition, of course, that the physician had money.
+Walker had told him also a great deal about men who had started in that
+country as herders, "running a band of sheep" on shares, receiving so
+much of the increase of the flock year by year. Many of the richest
+sheepmen in that country had started that way only a few years before,
+so Walker and others said.
+
+Perhaps, thought Dr. Slavens, there might be a chance to hook up with
+Walker under such an arrangement, put his whole life into it, and learn
+the business from the ground up. He could be doing that while Agnes was
+making her home on her claim, perhaps somewhere near--a few hundred
+miles--and if he could see a gleam at the farther end of the undertaking
+after a season he could ask her to wait. That was the best that he could
+see in the prospect just then, he reflected as he sat there with his
+useless instrument-case between his feet and the residue of the day's
+expenses in his hand.
+
+Agnes had gone into the section of the tent sacred to the women; he
+supposed that she was going to bed, for it was nearly eleven o'clock.
+Strong and Horace were asleep in their bunks, for they were to take the
+early stage for Meander in the morning. Walker and William Bentley and
+Sergeant Schaefer were out.
+
+The little spark of hope had begun to glow under Slavens' breath.
+Perhaps Walker and sheep were the solution of his life's muddle. He
+would find Walker before the young man took somebody else in with him,
+expose the true state of his finances, and see whether Walker would
+entertain a proposal to give him a band of sheep on shares.
+
+Like every man who is trying to do something that he isn't fitted to,
+because he has failed of his hopes and expectations in the occupation
+dearest to his heart, Slavens heated up like a tin stove under the
+trashy fuel of every vagrant scheme that blew into his brain.
+
+Sheep was all that he could see now. Already he had projected ahead
+until he saw himself the complacent owner of vast herds; saw the miles
+of his ranches; saw the wool of his flocks being trampled into the long
+sacks in his own shearing-sheds. And all the time his impotent
+instrument-case shone darkly in the light of his candle, lying there
+between his feet at the edge of the canvas bed.
+
+With a sigh he came back from his long flight into the future, and took
+up his instrument-case with caressing hand. Placing it on his knees, he
+opened it and lifted the glittering instruments fondly.
+
+Of course, if he _could_ make it go at his profession that would be the
+thing. It would be better than all the sheep on Wyoming's dusty hills. A
+little surgery somewhere, with its enameled table and white fittings,
+and automobiles coming and going all day, and Agnes to look in at
+evening----. Yes, that _would_ be the thing.
+
+Perhaps sheep for a few years would help to that end. Even five years
+would leave him right in the middle stretch of life, with all his vigor
+and all the benefit of experience. Sheep looked like the solution
+indeed. So _thinking_, he blew out his candle and went out to look for
+Walker.
+
+At the door of the tent he stopped, thinking again of Agnes, and of the
+moonlight on her face as they stood by the riverside, trembling again
+when the weight of the temptation which had assailed him in that moment
+swept over him in a heart-lifting memory. Perhaps Agnes condemned him
+for refusing the opportunity of her lips. For when a woman expects to be
+kissed, and is cheated in that expectation, it leaves her in censorious
+mood. But scorn of an hour would be easier borne than regret of years.
+
+So he reflected, and shook his head solemnly at the thought. He passed
+into the shadows along the deserted street, going toward the sounds
+which rose from beneath the lights beyond.
+
+Comanche appeared livelier than ever as he passed along its thronged
+streets. Those who were to leave as soon as they could get a train were
+making a last reckless night of it; the gamblers were busy at their
+various games.
+
+The doctor passed the tent where Hun Shanklin had been stationed with
+his crescent table. Shanklin was gone, and another was in his place with
+an army-game board, or chuck-a-luck, doing well with the minnows in the
+receding sea. Wondering what had become of Shanklin, he turned to go
+down a dark little street which was a quick cut to the back entrance of
+the big gambling-tent, where he expected to find Walker and go into the
+matter of sheep.
+
+Even at that moment the lights were bright in the office of _The
+Chieftain_. The editor was there, his green coat wide open, exposing his
+egg-spattered shirt-front to all who stopped to look, and making a
+prodigious show of excitement at the imposing-stone, where the form of
+the last extra of the day lay under his nervous hand.
+
+The printer was there also, his hair standing straight where he had
+roached it back out of his eyes with inky fingers, setting type for all
+he was worth. In a little while those on the street heard the familiar
+bark of the little gasoline engine, and hundreds of them gathered to
+inquire into the cause of this late activity.
+
+"Running off an extra," said Editor Mong. A great, an important piece of
+news had just reached the office of _The Chieftain_, and in a few
+minutes an extra would be on the streets, with the secret at the
+disposal of every man who had two bits in his pants. Those were the
+identical words of that advance-guard of civilization and refinement,
+Mr. J. Walter Mong.
+
+It was midnight when the circulator of _The Chieftain_--engaged for that
+important day only--burst out of the tent with an armful of papers,
+crying them in a voice that would have been red if voices had been
+colored in Comanche, it was so scorched from coming out of the tract
+which carried liquor to his reservoir.
+
+"_Ho-o-o!_ Git a extree! Git a extree! All about the mistake in the
+winner of Number One! Git a extree! _Ho-o-o-o!_"
+
+People caught their breaths and stopped to lean and listen. Mistake in
+the winner of Number One? What was that? The parched voice was plain
+enough in that statement:
+
+"Mistake in the winner of Number One."
+
+A crowd hundreds deep quickly surrounded the vender of extras, and
+another crowd assembled in front of the office, where Editor Mong stood
+with a pile of papers at his hand, changing them into money almost as
+fast as that miracle is performed by the presses of the United States
+Treasury.
+
+Walker and William Bentley bored through the throng and bought a paper.
+Standing under the light at a saloon door, they read the exciting news.
+Editor Mong had cleared a place for it, without regard to the beginning
+or the ending of anything else on the page, in the form which had
+carried his last extra of the day. There the announcement stood in bold
+type, two columns wide, under an exclamatory
+
+                               EXTRA!
+
+William Bentley read aloud:
+
+    Owing to a mistake in transmitting the news by telephone, the
+    name of the winner of Claim Number One in today's land-drawing at
+    Meander was omitted. The list of winners published heretofore in
+    _The Chieftain_ is correct, with the single exception that each
+    of them moves along one number. Number One, as announced, becomes
+    Number Two, and so on down the list.
+
+    The editor regrets this error, which was due entirely to the
+    excitement and confusion in the office at Meander, and takes this
+    earliest opportunity of rectifying it.
+
+    The editor also desires to announce that _The Chieftain_ will
+    appear no longer as a daily paper. Beginning with next Monday it
+    will be issued as a four-page, five-column weekly, containing all
+    the state, national, and foreign news. Price three dollars a year
+    in advance. The editor thanks you for your loyal support and
+    patronage.
+
+    The winner of Claim Number One is Dr. Warren Slavens, of Kansas
+    City, Missouri. Axel Peterson, first announced as the winner,
+    drew Number Two.
+
+Editor Mong had followed the tradition of the rural school of journalism
+in leaving the most important feature of his news for the last line.
+
+"Well!" said the toolmaker. "So our doctor is the winner! But it's a
+marvel that the editor didn't turn the paper over to say so. I never saw
+such a botch at writing news!"
+
+He did not know, any more than any of the thousands who read that
+ingenuous announcement, that Editor Mong was working his graft overtime.
+They did not know that he had entered into a conspiracy to deceive them
+before the drawing began, the clerk in charge of the stage-office and
+the one telephone of the place being in on the swindle.
+
+Mong knew that the Meander stage would leave for Comanche at eight in
+the morning, or two hours before the drawing began. It was the only
+means, exclusive of the telephone, by which news could travel that day
+between the two places, and as it could carry no news of the drawing his
+scheme was secure.
+
+Mong had feared that his extras might not move with the desired
+celerity during the entire day--in which expectation he was agreeably
+deceived--so he deliberately withheld the name of the winner of Number
+One, substituting for it in his first extra the name of the winner of
+Number Two. He believed that every person in Comanche would rush out of
+bed with two bits in hand for the extra making the correction, and his
+guess was good.
+
+Walker and Bentley hurried back to the Hotel Metropole to find that
+Sergeant Schaefer had arrived ahead of them with the news. They were all
+up in picturesque _deshabille_, Horace with a blanket around him like a
+bald-headed brave, his bare feet showing beneath it. The camp was in a
+state of pleasurable excitement; but Dr. Slavens was not there to share
+it, nor to receive the congratulations which all were ready to offer
+with true sincerity.
+
+"I wonder where he is?" questioned Horace a little impatiently.
+
+He did not like to forego the ceremony, but he wanted to get back to
+bed, for a man's legs soon begin to feel chilly in that mountain wind.
+
+"He left here not very long ago," said Agnes; "perhaps not more than an
+hour. I was just preparing to go to bed."
+
+"It's a fine thing for him," commented Sergeant Schaefer. "He can
+relinquish as soon as he gets his papers for ten or twelve thousand
+dollars. I understand the railroad's willing to pay that."
+
+"It's nice and comfortable to have a millionaire in our midst," said
+June. "Mother, you'd better set your cap for him."
+
+"June Reed!" rebuked her mother sharply above the laughter which the
+proposal provoked.
+
+But under the hand of the night the widow blushed warmly, and with a
+little stirring of the treasured leaves of romance in her breast. She
+_had_ thought of trying for the doctor, for she was only forty-seven,
+and hope lives in the female heart much longer than any such trifling
+term.
+
+They sat and talked over the change this belated news would make in the
+doctor's fortunes, and the men smoked their pipes, and the miller's wife
+suggested tea. But nobody wanted to kindle a fire, so she shivered a
+little and went off to bed.
+
+The night wore on, Comanche howling and fiddling as it never had howled
+and fiddled before. One by one the doctor's friends tired of waiting for
+him and went to bed. Walker, William Bentley, and Agnes were the last of
+the guard; the hour was two o'clock in the morning.
+
+"I believe you'd just as well go to bed, Miss Horton," suggested
+Bentley, "and save the pleasure of congratulating him until tomorrow. I
+can't understand why he doesn't come back."
+
+"I didn't know it was so late," she excused, rising to act on his
+plainly sensible view of it.
+
+"Walker and I will skirmish around and see if we can find him," said
+Bentley. "It's more than likely that he's run across some old friend and
+is sitting talking somewhere. You've no notion how time slips by in such
+a meeting."
+
+"And perhaps he doesn't know of his good fortune yet," she suggested.
+
+"Oh, it's all over town long ago," Walker put in. "He knows all about it
+by this time."
+
+"But it isn't like him to keep away deliberately and shun sharing such
+good news with his friends," she objected.
+
+"Not at all like him," agreed Bentley; "and that's what's worrying me."
+
+She watched them away until the gloom hid them; then went to her
+compartment in the tent, shut off from the others like it by gaily
+flowered calico, such as is used to cover the bed-comforts of the
+snoring proletariat. It was so thin that the light of a candle within
+revealed all to one without, or would have done so readily, if there had
+been any bold person on the pry.
+
+There she drew the blanket of her cot about her and sat in the dark
+awaiting the return of Bentley and Walker. There was no sleep in her
+eyes, for her mind was full of tumult and foreboding and dread lest
+something had befallen Dr. Slavens in the pitfalls of that gray city,
+the true terrors and viciousness of which she could only surmise.
+
+Bentley and Walker went their way in silence until they came to the
+lights. There was no thinning of the crowds yet, for the news in the
+midnight extra had given everybody a fresh excuse for celebrating, if
+not on their own accounts, then on account of their friends. Had not
+every holder of a number been set back one faint mark behind the line of
+his hopes?
+
+Very well. It was not a thing to laugh over, certainly, but it was not
+to be mended by groans. So, if men might neither groan nor laugh, they
+could drink. And liquor was becoming cheaper in Comanche. It was the
+last big night; it was a wake.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you," said Walker, "I don't think we'd better look for
+him too hard, for if we found him he wouldn't be in any shape to take
+back there by now."
+
+"You mean he's celebrating his good luck?" asked Bentley.
+
+"Sure," Walker replied. "Any man would. But I don't see what he wanted
+to go off and souse up alone for when he might have had good company."
+
+"I think you've guessed wrong, Walker," said Bentley. "I never knew him
+to take a drink; I don't believe he'd celebrate in that way."
+
+Even if he had bowled up, protested Walker, there was no harm in it. Any
+man might do it, he might do it himself; in fact, he was pretty sure
+that he _would do it_, under such happy conditions, although he believed
+a man ought to have a friend or two along on such occasions.
+
+From place to place they threaded their way through the throng, which
+ran in back-currents and cross-currents, leaving behind it upon the bars
+and gaming-tables an alluvium of gold. Dr. Slavens was not at any of the
+tables; he was not reeling against any of the bars; nor was he to be
+seen anywhere in the sea of faces, mottled with shadows under the smoky
+lights.
+
+"Walker, I'm worried," Bentley confessed as they stood outside the last
+and lowest place of diversion that remained to be visited in the town.
+
+"I tell you, it flies up and hits a man that way," protested Walker.
+"Sheep-herders go that way all of a sudden after a year or two without a
+taste of booze, sometimes. He'll turn up in a day or two, kind of mussed
+up and ashamed; but we'll show him that it's expected of a gentleman in
+this country once in a while, and make him feel at home."
+
+"Yes, of course," Bentley agreed, his mind not on the young man's
+chatter nor his own reply. "Well, let's run through this hole and have
+it over with."
+
+Inside the door four dusty troopers, on detached duty from the military
+post beyond Meander, sat playing cards. As they appeared to be fairly
+sober, Walker approached them with inquiries.
+
+No, they hadn't seen Dr. Slavens. Why? What had he done? Who wanted
+him?
+
+Explanations followed.
+
+"Well," said a sergeant with service-stripes on his sleeve and a broad,
+blue scar across his cheek, "if I'd 'a' drawed Number One you bet you
+wouldn't have to be out lookin' for me. I'd be up on the highest point
+in Comanche handin' out drinks to all my friends. Ain't seen him,
+pardner. He ain't come in here in the last two hours, for we've been
+right here at this table longer than that."
+
+They passed on, to look upon the drunken, noisy dance in progress beyond
+the canvas partition.
+
+"Not here," said Walker. "But say! There's a man over there that I
+know."
+
+Bentley looked in that direction.
+
+"The one dancing with the big woman in red," directed Walker.
+
+Bentley had only a glance at Walker's friend, for the young man pulled
+his arm and hurried him out. Outside Walker seemed to breathe easier.
+
+"I'll tell you," he explained. "It's this way: I didn't suppose he'd
+want to be seen in there by anybody that knew him. You see, he's the
+Governor's son."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Bentley.
+
+"So if we happen to run across him tomorrow you'll not mention it, will
+you?"
+
+"I'll not be advertising it that I was in there in very big letters,"
+Bentley assured him.
+
+"A man does that kind of a thing once in a while," said Walker. "It
+bears out what I was saying about the doctor. No matter how steady a man
+is, it flies up and hits him that way once in a while."
+
+"Maybe you're right," yielded Bentley. "I think we'd just as well go to
+bed."
+
+"Just as well," Walker agreed.
+
+The chill of morning was in the air. As they went back the crowds had
+thinned to dregs, and the lights in many tents were out.
+
+"She thinks a lot of him, doesn't she?" observed Walker reflectively.
+
+"Who?" asked Bentley, turning so quickly that it seemed as if he
+started.
+
+"Miss Horton," Walker replied. "And there's class to that girl, I'm here
+to tell you!"
+
+Agnes, in the darkness of her compartment, strained forward to catch the
+sound of the doctor's voice when she heard them enter, and when she knew
+that he was not there a feeling which was half resentment, half
+accusation, rose within her. Was she to be disappointed in him at last?
+Had he no more strength in the happy light of his new fortune than to go
+out and "celebrate," as she had heard the sergeant confidentially
+charging to Horace, like any low fellow in the sweating throng?
+
+But this thought she put away from her with humiliation and self-reproach,
+knowing, after the first flash of vexation, that it was unjust. Her fears
+rose towering and immense again; in the silence of the graying morning
+she shivered, drawing her cold feet up into the cot to listen and wait.
+
+Walker and Bentley had gone quietly to bed, and in the stillness around
+her there was an invitation to sleep. But for her there was no sleep in
+all that night's allotment.
+
+The roof of the tent toward the east grew transparent against the sky.
+Soon the yellow gleam of the new sun struck it, giving her a sudden warm
+moment of hope.
+
+It is that way with us. When our dear one lies dying; when we have
+struggled through a night hideous with the phantoms of ruin and
+disgrace, then the dawn comes, and the sun. We lift our seamed faces to
+the bright sky and hope again. For if there is still harmony in the
+heavens, how can the discord of the earth overwhelm us? So we comfort
+our hearts, foolishly exalting our troubles to the plane of the eternal
+consonance.
+
+The sun stood "the height of a lance" when Agnes slipped quietly to the
+door of the tent. Over the gray desert lands a smoky mist lay low.
+Comanche, stirring from its dreams, was lighting its fires. Here passed
+one, the dregs of sleep upon him, shoulders bent, pail in hand, feet
+clinging heavily to the road, making toward the hydrant where the green
+oats sprang in the fecund soil. There, among the horses in the lot
+across the way, another growled hoarsely as he served the crowding
+animals their hay.
+
+Agnes looked over the sagging tent-roofs with their protruding
+stovepipes and wondered what would be revealed if all were swept
+suddenly away. She wondered what fears besides her own they covered,
+silent in the pure light of day. For Comanche was a place of secrets and
+deceits.
+
+She laid a fire in the tin stove and put the kettle on to boil. Horace
+Bentley and Milo Strong were stirring within the tent, making ready for
+the stage, which departed for Meander at eight.
+
+Mrs. Mann, the miller's wife, came out softly, the mark of the comb in
+her hair, where it had become damp at the temples during her ablution.
+She looked about her swiftly as she stood a moment in the door, very
+trim and handsome in her close-fitting black dress, with a virginal
+touch of white collar and a coral pin.
+
+Agnes was bending over a bed of coals, which she was raking down to the
+front of the stove for the toast--a trick taught the ladies of the camp
+by Sergeant Schaefer--and did not seem to hear her.
+
+"Dr. Slavens hasn't come back?" Mrs. Mann whispered, coming over softly
+to Agnes' side.
+
+Agnes shook her head, turning her face a moment from the coals.
+
+"I heard you get up," said Mrs. Mann, "and I hurried to join you. I know
+just how you feel!"
+
+With that the romantic little lady put an arm around Agnes' neck and
+gave her a hurried kiss, for Horace was in the door. A tear which sprang
+suddenly leaped down Agnes' face and hissed upon the coals before the
+girl could take her handkerchief from her sweater-pocket and stop its
+wilful dash. Under the pretext of shielding her face from the glow she
+dried those which might have followed it into the fire, and turned to
+Horace with a nod and smile.
+
+What was there, she asked herself, to be sitting there crying over, like
+a rough-knuckled housewife whose man has stayed out all night in his
+cups? If he wanted to stay away that way, let him stay! And then she
+recalled his hand fumbling at the inner pocket of his coat, and the
+picture post-card which he had handed her at the riverside.
+
+Still, it wasn't a matter to cry about--not yet at least. She would
+permit no more disloyal thoughts. There was some grave trouble at the
+bottom of Dr. Slavens' absence, and she declared to herself that she
+would turn Comanche over, like a stone in the meadow of which the
+philosopher wrote, and bare all its creeping secrets to the healthy sun,
+but that she would find him and clear away the unjust suspicions which
+she knew were growing ranker in that little colony hour by hour.
+
+They all gathered to bid Sergeant Schaefer good-bye, for he was to
+rejoin them no more. June pressed upon him a paper-bag of fudge, which
+she had prepared the day before as a surprise against this event. The
+sergeant stowed it away in the side pocket of his coat, blushing a great
+deal when he accepted it.
+
+There was a little sadness in their hearts at seeing the soldier go, for
+it foretold the dissolution of the pleasant party. And the gloom of Dr.
+Slavens' absence was heavy over certain of them also, even though
+Sergeant Schaefer tried to make a joke of it the very last thing he
+said. They watched the warrior away toward the station, where the engine
+of his train was even then sending up its smoke. In a little while
+Horace and Milo followed him to take the stage.
+
+There came a moment after the men had departed when Agnes and William
+Bentley found themselves alone, the width of the trestle-supported table
+between them. She looked across at him with no attempt to veil the
+anxiety which had taken seat in her eyes. William Bentley nodded and
+smiled in his gentle, understanding way.
+
+"Something has happened to him," she whispered, easing in the words the
+pent alarm of her breast.
+
+"But we'll find him," he comforted her. "Comanche can't hide a man as
+big as Dr. Slavens very long."
+
+"He'll have to be in Meander day after tomorrow to file on his claim,"
+she said. "If we can't find him in time, he'll lose it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE GOVERNOR'S SON
+
+
+After a conference with Walker in the middle of the morning, Bentley
+decided that it would be well to wait until afternoon before beginning
+anew their search for the doctor. In case he had been called in his
+professional capacity--for people were being born in Comanche, as
+elsewhere--it would be exceedingly embarrassing to him to have the
+authorities lay hands on him as an estray.
+
+"But his instrument-case is under his cot in the tent," persisted Agnes,
+who was for immediate action.
+
+"He may have had an emergency call out of the crowd," explained
+Bentley.
+
+In spite of his faith in the doctor, he was beginning to lean toward
+Walker's view of it. Slavens was big enough to take care of himself, and
+experienced enough to keep his fingers out of other people's porridge.
+Besides that, there had to be a motive behind crime, and he knew of none
+in the doctor's case. He was not the kind of man that the sluggers and
+holdups of the place practiced upon, sober and straight as he always had
+been. Then it must be, argued Bentley, that the doctor had his own
+reason for remaining away. His unexpected luck might have unbalanced him
+and set him off on a celebration such as was common in such cases.
+
+"Very well," agreed Agnes. "I'll wait until noon, and then I'm going to
+the police."
+
+Being a regularly incorporated city, Comanche had its police force.
+There were four patrolmen parading about in dusty _deshabille_ with
+prominent firearms appended, and a chief who presided over them in a
+little box-house, where he might be seen with his coat off and a diamond
+in the front of his white shirt, smoking cigars all day, his heels on
+the window-sill.
+
+As Dr. Slavens had not appeared at the time designated as her limit by
+Agnes, Bentley went with her to the chief's office to place the matter
+before him. It was well that they did not go there for sympathy, and
+unfortunate that they expected help. The chief received them with
+disdainful aloofness which amounted almost to contempt. He seemed to
+regard their appeal to him for the elucidation of the doctor's mystery
+as an affront.
+
+The chief was a short man, who vainly believed that he could sustain his
+trousers in dignified position about his hipless body with a belt. The
+result of this misplaced confidence was a gap between waistcoat and
+pantaloons, in which his white shirt appeared like a zebra's stripe.
+
+He was a much-bedizened and garnitured man, for all that he lacked a
+coat to hang his ornaments upon. Stones of doubtful value and
+unmistakable size ornamented the rings upon his stocky fingers, and
+dangled in an elaborate "charm" upon the chain of his watch. The only
+name they ever addressed him by in Comanche other than his official
+title was Ten-Gallon. Whether this had its origin in his capacity, or
+his similarity of build to a keg, is not known, but he accepted it with
+complacency and answered to it with pride.
+
+Ten-Gallon was the chief guardian of the interests of the gamblers'
+trust of Comanche, which was responsible for his elevation to
+office--for even the office itself--and which contributed the fund out
+of which his salary came. It is a curious anomaly of civilization,
+everywhere under the flag which stretched its stripes in the wind above
+the little land-office at Comanche, that law-breaking thrives most
+prosperously under the protection of law.
+
+Gambling in itself had not been prohibited by statute at that time in
+Wyoming, though its most profitable side diversions--such as dropping
+paralyzing poisons in a man's drink, snatching his money and clearing
+out with it, cracking him on the head with a leaden billet, or standing
+him up at the point of a pistol and rifling him--were, as now,
+discountenanced under the laws.
+
+But what profit is there in gambling if the hangers-on, the cappers, the
+steerers, and the snatchers of crumbs in all cannot find protection
+under the flag and its institutions? That was what the gamblers' trust
+of Comanche wanted to know. In order to insure it they had the city
+incorporated, and put in a good, limber-wristed bartender as chief of
+police.
+
+It was to that dignitary that Dr. Slavens' friends had come with their
+appeal for assistance. There was discouragement in the very air that
+surrounded the chief, and in the indifference with which he heard their
+report. He looked at Agnes with the slinking familiarity of a man who
+knows but one kind of woman, and judges the world of women thereby. She
+colored under the insult of his eyes, and Bentley, even-tempered and
+slow to wrath as he was, felt himself firing to fighting pitch.
+
+"Well," said the chief, turning from them presently with a long gape,
+terminating in a ructatious sigh, "I'll shake out all the drunks in the
+calaboose this afternoon, and if your friend's among 'em I'll send him
+on over to you. No harm could happen to him here in Comanche. He'd be as
+safe here, night or day, as he would be playin' tennis in the back yard
+at home."
+
+The chief mentioned that game with scorn and curling of the lip. Then he
+gazed out of the window vacuously, as if he had forgotten them, his
+mashed cigar smoking foully between his gemmed fingers.
+
+Bentley looked at Agnes in amazed indignation. When he squared off as if
+to read his mind to the chief she checked him, and laid her hand on his
+arm with a compelling pressure toward the door.
+
+"That man's as crooked as the river over there!" he exclaimed when they
+had regained the sunlight outside the smoke-polluted office.
+
+"That's plain," she agreed; "and it doesn't mitigate my fears for the
+doctor's safety in the least."
+
+"Walker and I were wrong in our opinion; something has happened to
+Slavens," said Bentley.
+
+"Your opinion?" she questioned.
+
+"Well, I should say Walker's rather," he corrected. "I only concurred
+weakly along toward the end. Walker has held out all the time that
+Slavens went out to hold a celebration all by himself."
+
+"No; he didn't do that," said she calmly. "I thought so for a little
+while this morning, too. But I know he didn't. Do you suppose----"
+
+She stopped, as if considering something too extravagant to utter.
+
+"Suppose?" he repeated.
+
+"He talked a good deal about going into the canyon to clear up the
+mystery of that newspaperman and earn the reward," said she.
+
+Bentley shook his head.
+
+"He'd hardly start at night and without preparation."
+
+"He seemed to be a man of peculiar moods. If it came over him suddenly
+and strongly in an hour of depression he might even go to that desperate
+length. He believed the difficulties of the canyon were largely
+exaggerated, anyhow. Once he told me that he would undertake to go
+through it with nothing more than a pair of moccasins and a lantern. It
+was his theory that a man would need the moccasins for clinging to the
+rocks."
+
+"It's a queer notion," said Bentley reflectively.
+
+"Do you think----" she began, halting her words again and looking at him
+with distended eyes.
+
+"There's no telling what a man might do when desperate and despondent,"
+he answered. "But I don't believe he'd go without leaving some word, or
+at least making some disposition of his property in writing, in case he
+never returned. We'll open his bags and see what we can find."
+
+They hurried forward to carry out this intention.
+
+The doctor's baggage consisted of his battered suitcase and the black
+bag which contained his instruments. Neither was locked, but neither
+contained any word to explain where he had gone, nor to give support to
+the belief that he had intended going anywhere.
+
+Walker, whom Bentley and Agnes rejoined at the camp, sat pondering the
+information supplied by the girl concerning the doctor's designs on the
+canyon.
+
+"I'll tell you," he declared at length, as if talking to himself, "that
+man had the nerve to tackle it!"
+
+Agnes looked at him, her face quickening.
+
+"What do you know about him?" she asked.
+
+"I know," said Walker mysteriously, with no intention of bringing his
+own indiscretions up for the censure of June and her severe mother,
+"that he had courage enough to tackle anything. I've seen proof of that
+right here in Comanche, and I want to tell you people that doctor wasn't
+any man's coward."
+
+"Thank you for saying that," blurted Agnes, wholly unintentionally, a
+glow of pride on her cheeks.
+
+Mrs. Reed and June looked at her, the widow with a severe opening of her
+mouth, out of which no sound came; June with a smile behind her hand.
+
+Walker shook his head.
+
+"He had the courage," said he, "but he had too much sense to try to go
+through that canyon. No white man ever went in there and came out alive.
+And even if the doctor had wanted to go he wouldn't have started at
+night."
+
+"I don't know that it would make much difference," said Agnes. "It's
+always night in that terrible canyon."
+
+"And that's so, too," Walker agreed. "I think I'll go over there and
+take a look around."
+
+"Do you mind if Mr. Bentley and I go with you?" Agnes asked.
+
+"I was going to suggest it," Walker replied, looking longingly at June.
+
+June asked permission with her eyes; Mrs. Reed nodded, having overcome
+her fears of Walker, owing to the substantial credentials which he was
+able to show. Mrs. Mann put on her hat and slipped her black bag a bit
+farther up her arm, and stood ready in a moment to join the expedition.
+Mrs. Reed was to remain alone in camp to watch things, for they had been
+warned that morning by the hotel people against a band of visiting
+Indians, who picked up anything and everything that was not anchored at
+least at one end.
+
+It was late in the afternoon; the sun was low when they reached the
+river. There wasn't anything to be made out of the footprints there. The
+mouth of the canyon had been visited by a great many tourists, some of
+whom had ventured within a little way to bring out stones for mementos
+of their daring days of fearsome adventures in the West.
+
+The party stood looking into the mouth of the narrow slit between the
+high-towering walls. Down there it was already dark; the eye could
+pierce the gloom but a little way.
+
+"There are places in there where the sun never shines, even for a second
+a day," Walker declared. "And that water goes through there with power
+enough in it to grind a man's bones against the rocks. There must be a
+fall of more than a thousand feet."
+
+"I don't believe he went in there," said Agnes with finality, after
+standing as if trance-bound for a long time, gazing after the foam-white
+river as it roared into the echoing depths.
+
+"No," Walker agreed. "He had too much sense for that."
+
+They were all cheered and lightened by this conclusion. A daylight study
+of the terrors of the place was sufficient to convince anybody that a
+man would have to be driven to desperate lengths before he would venture
+for the dubious reward or narrow notoriety to be gained by following
+that wild river through its dark way.
+
+"I camped over at the other side one summer," Walker told them as they
+turned away to go back to Comanche, "and I used to pick up things that
+had come through--boards and things that people had dropped in over at
+Meander. It pounds things up, I tell you!"
+
+"Did you ever pick up any gold on the other side?" asked June.
+
+"I never found a trace of any," said Walker. "I think that's all a
+sheep-herder's yarn."
+
+They saw one of the police force in conversation with Mrs. Reed in front
+of the tent as they drew near, and hastened forward in the hope that he
+had brought news of the missing man. Mrs. Reed received them with
+shocked expression, and a gesture of the hands denoting hopelessness for
+the salvation of the world.
+
+"It's scandalous!" she declared.
+
+The policeman, a carpenterly looking man full of sandy hairs, stood by,
+grinning.
+
+"What is it, Mother?" asked June.
+
+"I'll not repeat what he says," announced Mrs. Reed. "I
+will--not--repeat--it!"
+
+They turned to the officer, who wore his tarnished badge--evidently
+bought after long service in a pawn-shop at Cheyenne--pinned to his
+suspender at a point where he could turn his eye down on it whenever the
+longing, or a desire to feed upon the pride of his official importance,
+overcame him.
+
+"I was tellin' her that the chief sent me over to say that your friend,
+the doctor, was seen last night at half-past two in the mornin', jagged
+up so tight he took two steps back'ards for every one he went ahead. The
+chief told me to tell you he was layin' under a tent somewhere, and that
+he'd be as safe as a calf in a barn. I hope that's what you wanted to
+know."
+
+The policeman turned and went his dusty way after delivering his message
+from the chief, the wagon-spoke which he carried at the end of a thong
+twirling at his wrist.
+
+Walker looked around with a little flash of triumph in his eyes, for a
+man likes to be vindicated in his opinion, even at the expense of his
+friends' honor. But the gust of pain and disappointment which he saw
+sweep over Agnes' face set him back with a sudden wrench.
+
+"Say," said he with an assumption of indignation which he did not
+altogether feel, "I don't believe that!"
+
+"Nor I," declared Bentley, with no need of assuming a part to say it. "I
+heard a man describing a crook the other day. He said the fellow was so
+crooked that if you were to shoot him in the top of the head the bullet
+would make seven holes in his body before it hit the ground. That's the
+kind of a man that chief is."
+
+"Well, it's scandalous!" declared Mrs. Reed. "Even it he comes back, his
+conduct is simply disgusting, and I'll never permit him to address a
+word to my daughter again!"
+
+Agnes had drawn a little apart from them. She had no heart to come to
+Dr. Slavens' defense, although she knew that the charge was calumnious.
+But it furnished her a sudden and new train of thought. What interest
+had the chief of police in circulating such a report? Was the motive for
+Dr. Slavens' disappearance behind that insidious attempt to discredit
+him, and fasten a character upon him wholly foreign to his own?
+
+It was a matter worth looking into. Had Dr. Slavens incurred, somehow,
+the disfavor of the vicious element which was the backbone of the place?
+And had he paid the penalty of such temerity, perhaps with his life?
+
+Thinking over the futility of a further appeal to the authorities there,
+and wondering where she could turn for honest assistance beyond William
+Bentley, who could do no more than herself, Agnes walked away from the
+camp a short distance, retracing the way they had come.
+
+"Of all the deluded, deceived creatures!" said Mrs. Reed.
+
+"Hush-sh-sh!" said the miller's wife.
+
+It was almost sunset when Agnes, overtaking her thoughts, halted with a
+start to find that she had gone half the distance back to the river.
+Hoping that they would not be waiting supper on her account, she turned
+and hurried back.
+
+Meanwhile, at camp there had been a little running-up of excitement,
+occasioned by the arrival of the Governor's son, who came on a
+commission from his mother and sister, bearing a note of invitation to
+Mrs. Reed, her sister, Mrs. Mann, and June Reed.
+
+Jerry Boyle--for that was the name of the Governor's son--was greatly
+surprised to find his friend, Joe Walker, in the camp. But that only
+made it easier for him, he declared, seeing that Walker could vouch for
+him and put him on unquestionable terms at once.
+
+"Just as if it were necessary!" exclaimed Mrs. Reed, glowing with
+pleasure. "And you the brother of my daughter's dearest friend!"
+
+Jerry Boyle seemed older by ten years than Walker. He was a tall man,
+with a little forward bend to him that gave him an awkward cast. He was
+dark-skinned and big-nosed, with black eyebrows which met at its bridge
+and appeared to threaten an invasion of that structure. Little
+sensitive, expressive ripples ran over his face as he talked, and that
+was all the time. For Boyle was as voluble as a political press-agent.
+
+Bentley recognized him, even before he was introduced, as the man whom
+Walker had pointed out in the dance-house the night before. He said
+nothing about that, but he smiled to himself when he recalled Walker's
+anxiety to leave the place. It was a sort of guilty honor, he thought,
+such as that which was anciently supposed to stand between thieves.
+
+As Agnes approached, Boyle was in the middle of a story of his
+experiences in Comanche during the days of its infancy. Mrs. Reed, busy
+about the stove, had grown so deeply interested that she stood with a
+lamb chop in her hand poised above the frying-pan, her face all smiles.
+Boyle was seated on a low box, and some of the others were standing
+around him, hiding him from Agnes, who stopped near the stove on
+catching the sound of the new voice. Mrs. Reed nodded reassuringly.
+
+"It's the Governor's son," said she.
+
+Boyle caught sight of Agnes at that moment and jumped to his feet.
+Walker turned to introduce him.
+
+"No need," said Boyle, striding forward to their great amazement, his
+hand outstretched. "Miss Gates and I are old friends."
+
+Agnes drew back with a frightened, shrinking start, her face very
+white.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir!" she protested with some little show of
+indignation.
+
+"This is Miss Horton," said Walker, coming to her rescue with
+considerable presence. "She's one of us."
+
+Boyle stammered, staring in amazement.
+
+"I apologize to Miss Horton," said he with something like an insolent
+emphasis upon the name. "The resemblance is remarkable, believe me!"
+
+Agnes inclined her head in cold acknowledgment, as if afraid to trust
+her tongue, and passed on into the tent. Boyle stared after her, and a
+feeling that there was something out of tune seemed to fall upon the
+party waiting there for supper in the red sunset.
+
+Boyle forgot the rest of his story, and the others forgot to ask him to
+resume it. He repeated something about remarkable resemblances, and
+seemed to have fallen into a period of abstraction, from which he roused
+himself presently with a short, grunting laugh.
+
+"I must be gettin' on," said he, arising and taking his cowboy hat from
+the table, where it lay among the plates--to the great satisfaction and
+delight of Mrs. Mann, who believed that she had met a real westerner at
+last.
+
+"Oh, stay for supper!" pleaded June.
+
+"You'll get enough of me when you come out to the ranch," he laughed,
+giving her cheek a brotherly pinch.
+
+While Mrs. Reed would have resented such familiarity with June's cheek
+on the part of Mr. Walker, or even Mr. Bentley, she took it as an act of
+condescension and compliment on the part of the Governor's son, and
+smiled.
+
+Walker went off down the street with Boyle, to speed him on his way. The
+Governor's son was to send out to the ranch, some forty miles distant,
+for a conveyance to carry Mrs. Reed and her party thither. It was to be
+there early on the morning of the second day from that time, that being,
+for that country, only an easy day's drive for a double team to a
+democrat wagon.
+
+There was an uncomfortable air of uneasiness and constraint upon them
+during supper and afterward, a period usually filled with banter and
+chatter, and shrill laughter from June. They were not able to get clear
+of the suspicion raised by Boyle's apparent recognition of Agnes and her
+denial that she was Miss Gates. The two older women especially seemed to
+believe that Agnes had been guilty of some serious misdemeanor in her
+past.
+
+"He _wasn't_ mistaken in her identity," whispered Mrs. Reed to Mrs. Mann
+when Agnes went in for a wrap as the chill of night began to settle.
+
+Mrs. Mann, charitable and romantic as she was in her mild way, shook her
+head sadly.
+
+"I'm afraid he wasn't," said she.
+
+"I'm sorry that I can't take June away from here tomorrow," lamented
+Mrs. Reed. "There's something hidden in that woman's life!"
+
+Agnes had come out silently, as anyone must have come over that
+velvet-soft earth, which much trampling only made the softer. In the
+gloom she stood just behind Mrs. Reed. That pure-minded lady did not
+know that she was there, and was unable to see the rolling warning in
+her sister's eyes.
+
+"Would you mind walking over to the stage-office with me, Mr. Bentley?"
+asked Agnes. "I want to engage passage to Meander for tomorrow."
+
+On the way to the stage-office they talked matters over between them.
+Her purpose in going to Meander was, primarily, to enlist the sheriff of
+the county in the search for Dr. Slavens, and, remotely, to be there
+when her day came for filing on a piece of land.
+
+"I made up my mind to do it after we came back from the canyon," she
+explained. "There's nothing more to be hoped for here. That story the
+police told us only strengthens my belief that a crime has been
+committed, and in my opinion that chief knows all about it, too."
+
+She said nothing of Boyle and the start that his salutation had given
+her. Whatever Bentley thought of that incident he kept to himself. But
+there was one thing in connection with Boyle's visit which he felt that
+she should know.
+
+"The Governor's son told Walker that he saw the doctor late last night
+in about the same condition as that policeman described," he said. "It
+came up when Walker asked Boyle to keep an eye open and let us know if
+he happened to run across him."
+
+"Well, in spite of the high authority, I don't believe it," said she
+with undisturbed conviction.
+
+For a little while Bentley walked on beside her in silence. When he
+spoke there was the softness of reverence in his voice.
+
+"If I had the faith of a good woman in such measure as that," said he,
+"I'd think I was next door to heaven!"
+
+"It is the being who inspires faith that is more admirable than the
+faith itself, it seems to me," she rejoined. "Faith has lived in many a
+guilty heart--faith in somebody, something."
+
+"Yes," he agreed gently. And then, after a little while: "Yes."
+
+"Will you be returning to the East soon?" she asked.
+
+"I've been thinking some of going on to Meander to get a fuller
+impression of this country and see how the boy is getting on," he
+replied.
+
+"Then go with me," she invited.
+
+"I wondered if you had faith enough in me to ask me," he laughed.
+
+There was an extra stage out the next morning, owing to the movement
+toward Meander of people who must file on their claims within the next
+ten days. Smith was to drive it. He was in the office when they
+arrived.
+
+"I think I'll assume the responsibility of taking the doctor's two bags
+with me," said Bentley.
+
+She agreed that there was little use in leaving them behind. Walker was
+to go to his ranch the next day; the others would break camp the
+following morning. There would be nobody to leave his possessions in
+charge of, except the hotel-keeper, who had a notoriously short memory,
+and who was very likely to forget all about it, even if the doctor ever
+returned.
+
+Bentley made arrangements for the transportation of that much excess
+baggage, therefore. The cost was reminiscent of freight charges in the
+days of the Santa Fe Trail.
+
+"We'll leave word for him at the hotel-office," said he.
+
+As they came out of the stage-office a man was mounting a horse before
+the stable door, a group of stage employees around him. He galloped off
+with a flourish. The man who had caparisoned his horse stood looking
+after him as he disappeared in the night.
+
+"That feller's in a hurry--he couldn't wait for the stage in the
+morning," said Smith. "He's ridin' relay to Meander tonight on our
+horses, and he'll be there long before we start. He's the Governor's
+son."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DOUBLE CROOKEDNESS
+
+
+Comanche was drying up like a leaky pail. There remained only the dregs
+of the thronging thousands who had chopped its streets to dust beneath
+their heels; and they were worked out, panned down to scant profit, and
+growing leaner picking every day.
+
+The ginger was gone out of the barker's spiel; the forced gaiety was
+dying out of the loud levees where the abandoned of the earth held their
+nightly carousals. Comanche was in the lethargy of dissolution; its
+tents were in the shadow of the approaching end.
+
+Most of the shows had gone, leaving great gaps in the tented streets
+where they had stood, their debris behind them, and many of the saloons
+were packing their furnishings to follow. It had been a seasonable
+reaping; quick work, and plenty of it while it lasted; and they were
+departing with the cream of it in their pouches. What remained ran in a
+stream too thin to divide, so the big ones were off, leaving the little
+fellows to lick up the trickle.
+
+A few gambling-joints were doing business still, for men will gamble
+when they will neither eat nor drink. Hun Shanklin had set up a tent of
+his own, the big one in which he had made his stand at the beginning
+having been taken down. To make sure of police protection, he had
+established himself on Main Street, next door to headquarters.
+
+Ten-Gallon, the chief, now constituted the entire force, all his special
+officers having been dropped to save expense to the municipality, since
+the population had begun to leak away so rapidly and the gamblers' trust
+had been dissolved.
+
+The chief slept until the middle of each afternoon. Then he went on duty
+in Hun Shanklin's tent, where he usually remained the rest of the day,
+his chair tilted back against the pole at the front end. It was
+generally understood that he had a large interest in the game, which was
+the same old one of twenty-seven.
+
+On the side there was an army-game outfit at which a pimple-faced young
+man presided, small whiskers growing between his humors where they had
+escaped the razor, like the vegetation of that harsh land in the low
+places, out of the destroying edge of the wind. For army-game was held
+so innocuous in Comanche that even a cook might run it.
+
+It was the third day after the drawing, and the middle of the afternoon.
+That short-time had seen these many changes in Comanche, and every hour
+was witnessing more. Mrs. Reed and her party had gone that morning in
+the wagon sent for them from the Governor's ranch. The Hotel Metropole,
+now almost entirely without guests for its many tents and cots, was
+being taken down.
+
+The red-nosed proprietor was loading cots into a wagon, his large wife,
+in a striped kimono with red ruffles at the sleeves and a large V of
+bare bosom showing, standing in the door of the office-tent directing
+his labors in a voice which suggested a mustache and knee-boots. A
+dangling strand of her greasy black hair swung in the wind across her
+cheek, at times lodging in the curve of it and obscuring her eye. As the
+lady's hands were both employed, one in holding up the train of her
+florescent garb, the other in supporting her weight against the
+tent-pole, she had no free fingers to tuck the blowing wisp in place.
+So, when it lodged she blew it out of the way, slewing her mouth around
+to do so, and shutting one eye as if taking aim.
+
+All these employments left her no time for the man who had approached
+within a few feet of her and stood with an inquiring poise as if asking
+permission to speak. She went on with her directing, and skirt-holding,
+and leaning against the tent-pole, and blowing, without giving him a
+full look, although she had taken his appraisement with the corner of
+her eye.
+
+The man was not of an appearance to inspire the hope of gain in the
+bosom of the hostess. His band-less slouch-hat flapped down over his
+forehead and face, partly hiding a bandage, the sanguine dye of which
+told what it concealed. A black beard of some days' growth, the dust of
+the range caught in it, covered his chin and jowls; and a greasy khaki
+coat, such as sheep-herders wear, threatened to split upon his wide
+shoulders every time he moved his arms.
+
+His trousers were torn, and streaked with the stain of rain and clay. He
+had pinned the rents about his knees together, but he seemed so
+insecurely covered that a strong wind might expose him, or a sudden
+start burst his seams and scant contrivances to shield his nakedness. He
+touched his hat in a moment when he caught the quick eye of the
+landlord's wife upon him again, and moved a little nearer.
+
+"Can you tell me, madam," said he respectfully, "what has become of the
+party that was camped in the tent around on the other side--four ladies
+and several men?"
+
+"We don't lodge either sheep-herders or sheep-shearers unless they take
+a bath first," said she, turning from him disdainfully.
+
+"But I am neither a herder nor a shearer," he protested, "although I
+may----"
+
+"May be worse," she finished, though perhaps not in the way he
+intended.
+
+"Suit yourself about it," he yielded. "I don't want lodging, anyhow."
+
+The landlord came staggering in with an armload of cheap bed-covers and
+threw them down where his dragoon of a wife directed with imperious
+gesture.
+
+"Just look at all that money invested and no return!" she lamented.
+
+The battered stranger appealed to the landlord, repeating his question.
+
+"None of your business," the landlord replied crabbedly. "But they're
+gone, if that'll do you any good."
+
+"Did they leave two grips--a suitcase and a doctor's instrument-case--with
+you?" inquired the man.
+
+"They left a pie-anno and a foldin'-bed, and a automobile and a
+safety-razor!" said the landlord, looking reproachfully at his big wife,
+who was motioning him out to his labors again.
+
+"Or any word for Dr. Slavens?" the stranger pursued with well-contained
+patience.
+
+"What do you want to know for?" asked the woman, turning upon him
+suddenly.
+
+"Because the grips belonged to me, madam; I am Dr. Slavens."
+
+The landlord looked at him sharply.
+
+"Oh, you're the feller that went off on a drunk, ain't you? I remember
+you now. Well, they didn't leave no grips here."
+
+"And no word either that I know of," added the woman.
+
+She swept Dr. Slavens with wondering eyes, for she had held a pretty
+good opinion of him before his sudden, and evidently heavy, fall.
+
+"But where in this world have you been, man?" she asked.
+
+"Nowhere in _this_ world," he answered. "I've been taking a little
+side-trip to hell!"
+
+"You cert'nly look like it, mister!" the woman shuddered, closing the
+wide V at her bosom, the flaring garment clutched in her great
+ring-encumbered hand.
+
+"Will you tell me, then, about my friends?" he asked.
+
+"Gone; that's all we know," said she.
+
+"Part went on the train, two or three days ago; some went on the stage;
+and the rest left in a wagon this morning," said the landlord.
+
+But he couldn't tell who went on the train, the stage, or the wagon. It
+was none of his business, he said. They paid their bill; that was all he
+knew, or cared.
+
+"May I take a look around the tent to see if they left any written word
+for me there?" the doctor requested.
+
+"Go on," said the woman, a little softening of sympathy coming into her
+hard eyes.
+
+Dr. Slavens went back to the tent, which stood as it had been left that
+morning when the last of the party went away. The canvas under which
+their table stood stretched there hospitably still, and the stove with
+the morning's ashes cold upon its little hearth. Inside, the cots were
+all in place, but there was not a line of writing from any friendly hand
+to tell him where they had gone, or where his property had been left.
+
+He walked toward the business part of the town and turned down Main
+Street, considering with himself what turn to make next. His head bent
+in meditation, he passed along lamely, his hands in the pockets of his
+torn trousers, where there was nothing, not even the thickness of a
+dime, to cramp his finger-room. Pausing in the aimless way of one who
+has no unfinished business ahead of him, he looked around, marking the
+changes which had come upon the street during those few days.
+
+The litter of broken camp was on every hand; broken barrels, piles of
+boxes, scattered straw, bottles sown as thickly upon the ground as if
+someone had planted them there in the expectation of reaping a harvest
+of malt liquors and ardent spirits. Here the depression of a few inches
+marked where a tent had stood, the earth where the walls had protected
+it from the beating feet showing a little higher all around; there in
+the soft ground was the mark of a bar, the vapors of spilled liquors
+rising sharply in the sun.
+
+Bands of boys and camp-dregs, of whom he might have been one from his
+appearance, scraped and dug among the debris, searching for what might
+have been dropped from careless or drunken hands and trampled out of
+sight. That they were rewarded frequently was attested by the sharp
+exclamations and triumphant cries.
+
+Across from where he stood was the site of a large place, its littered
+leavings either already worked over or not yet touched. No one scratched
+and peered among its trash-heaps or clawed over its reeking straw. Dr.
+Slavens took possession of the place, turning the loose earth and heaped
+accumulations with his feet as he rooted around like a swine. It must
+have been worked over and exhausted, he concluded, for it turned no
+glint of silver to the sun. Persisting, he worked across the space which
+the tent had covered, and sat down on a box to rest.
+
+The sun was low; the tops of two tall, round tents across the way came
+between it and his eyes when he sat down. That was the luck of some
+people, thought he, to arrive too late. The pay-dirt was all worked out;
+the pasturage was cropped; the dry sage was all gathered and burned.
+
+No matter. A man had but one moment of life to call his own, wrote
+Marcus Aurelius. The moment just passed into the score of time's count,
+the moment which the hand of the clock trembles over, a hair's breadth
+yet to go--these are no man's to claim. One is gone forever; the other
+may mark the passing of his soul. Only this moment, this throb of the
+heart, this half-drawn breath, is a living man's to claim. The beggar
+has it; the monarch can command no more. Poor as he was, Dr. Slavens
+thought, smiling as he worked his foot, into the trampled dust, he was
+as rich in life's allotment as the best.
+
+The sole of his cut and broken shoe struck some little thing which
+resisted, then turned up white beneath his eye. Broken porcelain, or
+bone fragment, it appeared. He would have pushed it aside with his toe;
+but just then it turned, showing the marking of a die.
+
+Here was a whimsical turn of circumstance, thought he. An outcast die
+for a broken man, recalling by its presence the high games of chance
+which both of them had played in their day and lost, perhaps. It was a
+little, round-cornered die, its spots marked deep and plain. As it lay
+in his hand it brought reminiscences of Hun Shanklin, for it was of his
+pattern of dice, and his size, convenient for hiding between the fingers
+of his deceptive hand.
+
+Dr. Slavens rolled it on the box beside him. It seemed a true and honest
+die, for it came up now an ace, now trey; now six, now deuce. He rolled
+it, rolled it, thinking of Hun Shanklin and Hun's long, loose-skinned
+hand.
+
+For a place of wiles, such as Comanche had been and doubtless was still,
+it was a very honest little die, indeed. What use would anybody have for
+it there? he wondered. The memory of what he had seen dice do there
+moved him to smile. Then the recollection of what had stood on that spot
+came to him; the big tent, with the living pictures and variety show,
+and Hun Shanklin's crescent table over against the wall.
+
+That must have been the very spot of its location, with the divided wall
+of the tent back of him, through which he had disappeared on the night
+that Walker lost his money and Shanklin dropped his dice. Of course.
+That was the explanation. The little cube in Slavens' palm was one of
+Shanklin's honest dice, with which he tolled on the suckers. He had lost
+one of them in his precipitate retreat.
+
+Dr. Slavens put the cube in his pocket and got up, turning the debris of
+the camp again with his foot, watching for the gleam of silver. As he
+worked, a tubby man with whiskers turned out of the thin stream of
+traffic which passed through the street and sat on one of the boxes
+near at hand. He sat there wiping his face, which was as red and
+sweat-drenched as if he had just finished a race, holding his hat in
+his hand, exclaiming and talking to himself.
+
+He was so self-centered in his overflowing indignation that he did not
+notice the man kicking among the rubbish just a few feet away. Presently
+the little man drew out a roll of money and counted it on his knee, to
+look up when he had finished, and shake his fist at the tent which stood
+shoulder-to-shoulder by the police station. The gesture was accompanied
+by maledictions upon crooks and robbers, and the force of his
+expressions made necessary the use of the handkerchief again. This the
+man took from his hat, which he held in his hand ready to receive it
+again like a dish, and scrubbed his fiery face, set over with fiery
+whiskers and adorned with a fiery nose. When he had cooled himself a bit
+he sat watching the doctor at his labor, lifting his eyebrows every time
+he blinked.
+
+"Lost something?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," replied the doctor, kicking away, not even looking at his
+questioner.
+
+"Well, if you dropped it out of your hand or through a hole in your
+pocket you're lucky!" said the little man, shaking his fist at the tent
+where his wrath appeared to center. "This place is full of crooks.
+They'll rob you when you're asleep and they'll skin you when you're
+awake, with both eyes open."
+
+The doctor had nothing to add to this, and no comment to append. The man
+on the box put on his hat, with a corner of handkerchief dangling from
+it over his ear.
+
+"You live here?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes; right now I do," the doctor replied.
+
+"Well, do you know anything about a long, lean, one-eyed man that runs a
+dice-game over there in that tent?"
+
+"I've heard of him," said the doctor.
+
+"Well, he skinned me out of two hundred dollars a little while ago,
+blast his gizzard!"
+
+"You're not the first one, and it's not likely that you'll be the last,"
+the doctor assured him, drawing a little nearer and studying the victim
+from beneath his hanging hat-brim.
+
+"No; maybe not," snapped the other. "But I'll even up with him before I
+go away from here."
+
+"Would you be willing to risk ten dollars more on a chance to get it
+back?" asked the doctor.
+
+"Show me the man who can tell me how to do it, and watch me," bristled
+the victim.
+
+"I know that man, and I know his scheme," said the doctor, "and I've got
+one that will beat it."
+
+The whiskered man put his hand into the pocket where the remainder of
+his roll was stored, and looked at the battered stranger with a
+disfavoring scowl.
+
+"How do I know you ain't another crook?" he asked.
+
+"You don't know, and maybe I am a crook in a small way. I'm in hard luck
+right now."
+
+"What's your scheme?"
+
+"That's my capital," the doctor told him. "If I had a few dollars I'd
+put it through without splitting with anybody; but I haven't a cent.
+I've been kicking this straw and trash around here for the last hour in
+the hope of turning up a dime. I'll say this to you: I'll undertake to
+recover your two hundred dollars for you if you'll put up ten. If I get
+it back, then you are to give me twenty-five of it, and if I win more
+I'm to keep all above the two hundred. And you can hold on to your ten
+dollars till we stand up to the table, and then you can hold to my coat.
+I can't get away with it, but I don't guarantee, you understand, that
+I'll win."
+
+The little man was thoughtful a spell. When he looked up there was the
+glitter of hope in his sharp scrutiny.
+
+"It'd take a crook to beat that old man's game," said he, "and maybe you
+can do it. As long as I can hold on to the money I don't see how I stand
+to lose it, and I've got a notion to go you."
+
+"Suit yourself," said the doctor, turning again to his exploration of
+the straw.
+
+"Ain't much in that," commented the gambler's victim, watching him with
+puzzled face.
+
+No comment from the searching man.
+
+"You're a funny feller, anyhow, and I got a notion to take you up.
+Crook, heh?"
+
+"Oh, a sort of a tin-horn," answered the doctor apparently indifferent
+about the whole matter.
+
+Slavens was working farther away now, so the man left his place on the
+box to draw within the range of confidential conversation.
+
+"If I was to put up the ten, would you be willing to go over there now
+and put that scheme of yours in motion?" he asked.
+
+"No; not now. There would be some preliminaries. In the first place,
+that old man knows me, although he might not spot me at the first look
+in this rig. I'd have to get a pair of goggles to hide my eyes. And then
+there would be supper."
+
+"Sure," agreed the little man. "I was going to ask you about that,
+anyhow."
+
+"Thank you. The crowd will be thicker in there about ten o'clock
+tonight, and he'll have more money on the table. It will be better for
+me and for my scheme to wait till about that time. It's a long shot,
+partner; I'll tell you that before you take it."
+
+"One in five?" asked the man, looking around cautiously, leaning
+forward, whispering.
+
+"Not one in twenty," discounted the doctor. "But if it goes, it goes as
+smooth as grease."
+
+The man stood considering it, looking as grave as a Scotch capitalist.
+Suddenly he jerked his head.
+
+"I'll take it!" said he.
+
+Over a greasy supper, in a tent away out on the edge of things, they
+arranged the details of their plot against Hun Shanklin's sure thing.
+What scheme the doctor had in mind he kept to himself, but he told
+his co-conspirator how to carry himself, and, with six small bills
+and some paper, he made up as handsome a gambler's roll as could have
+been met with in all Comanche that night. Out of the middle of its
+alluring girth the corner of a five-dollar note showed, and around the
+outside Slavens bound a strip of the red handkerchief upon which the
+little man had mopped his sweating brow. It looked bungling enough for
+any sheep-herder's hoard, and fat enough to tempt old Hun Shanklin to
+lead its possessor on.
+
+After he had arranged it, the doctor pushed it across to his admiring
+companion.
+
+"No," said the little man, shaking his head; "you keep it. You may be a
+crook, but I'll trust you with it. Anyhow, if you are a crook, I'm one
+too, I reckon."
+
+"Both of us, then, for tonight," said the doctor, hooking the smoked
+goggles behind his ears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HUN SHANKLIN'S COAT
+
+
+Several sheep-herders, who had arrived late to dip into the vanishing
+diversions of Comanche, and a few railroad men to whom pay-day had just
+supplied a little more fuel to waste in its fires, were in Hun
+Shanklin's tent when Dr. Slavens and his backer arrived.
+
+Shanklin was running off about the same old line of talk, for he was
+more voluble than inventive, and never varied it much. It served just as
+well as a new lecture for every occasion, for the memory of suckers is
+even shorter than their judgment.
+
+Gents were invited to step up and weigh the honesty of those dice,
+and gaze on the folly of an old one-eyed feller who had no more sense
+than to take such long chances. If anybody doubted that he took long
+chances, let that man step up and put down his money. Could he throw
+twenty-seven, or couldn't he? That was the question, gents, and the
+odds were five to one that he could.
+
+"I ain't in this business for my health, gents," he declared, pouring
+the dice out on his table, shaking them, and pouring them again. "I'm a
+gambler, and I'm here to make money, and make it as easy as I can; but
+if I'd been takin' my pay in sheepskins since I've been in this man's
+town I wouldn't have enough of them to make me a coat. Live and let live
+is my motto, and if you can't let 'em live let 'em die.
+
+"Five times one dollar is five dollars, and five times five is
+twenty-five. Did any of you fellers ever make that much in a minute?
+Look at them dice. Take 'em in your hand; roll 'em on the table. Don't
+they run true and straight? Twenty-seven comes up for you sometimes, and
+it comes up for me. But it comes up oftener for me than it does for you,
+because I've got it charmed. That's m' lucky number. I was borned on the
+27th of Jannewarry, in Range 27, Township 27, twenty-seven mile from
+Turkey Trail, Montaney, where the wind blows circles and the water runs
+up-hill.
+
+"You win, friend," pushing stake and winnings to a sheep-herder who had
+ventured a dollar. "Five times one is five."
+
+Interest in the game began to show rising temperature; the infection of
+easy money was working through the bystanders' sluggish blood. Shanklin
+kept the score of loss and gain a little in his own favor, as he was
+able to do from his years of practice, while still leaving the
+impression among the players that collectively they were cleaning him
+out. Some who felt sudden and sharp drains dropped out, but others took
+their places, eyes distended, cheeks flushed, money in hand.
+
+Dr. Slavens and his backer made their way to the front. Slavens noted
+that Shanklin was making an extraordinary spread of money, which he had
+beside his hand in a little valise. It was craftily disposed in the
+mouth of the half-open bag, which seemed crammed to the hinges with it,
+making an alluring bait. The long, black revolver of Shanklin's other
+days and nights lay there beside the bag asserting its large-caliber
+office of protection with a drowsy alligator look about it.
+
+Slavens was as dirty and unwashed as the foulest in that crowd. His
+khaki coat bore a varnish of grease, his hat was without band or
+binding, and the growth of beard which covered his face like the
+bristles of a brush gave him the aspect of one who had long been the
+companion and warder of sheep upon the hills. With the added disguise of
+the smoked-glass goggles, common to travelers in that glaring, dusty
+land, it would have required one with a longer and more intimate
+acquaintance with him than Hun Shanklin could claim to pick him out of a
+crowd.
+
+Slavens pulled out his roll and stood against the table, holding it in
+his hand with a loutish display of excitement and caution, as if unable
+to make up his mind whether to risk it on the game or not. When Shanklin
+saw it he began to direct his talk with a view to charming it out of the
+supposed sheep-herder's hand.
+
+With nervous fingers Slavens untied the strip of handkerchief, turned
+his back, and slipped off a dollar bill. This he put on the table with a
+cautious leaning forward and a suspicious hovering over it with the
+hand, playing the part so well that Shanklin's sharp old eye was
+entirely deceived.
+
+"You win, friend," said Shanklin, pushing five dollars across the table.
+"This is like takin' money away from a child."
+
+There was some tolling to be done on both sides in that game. Slavens
+turned his back again, with a true pastoral show of secrecy concerning
+his money, although he bungled it so that Shanklin could see him pulling
+the five-dollar note from the middle of his roll, as if searching for
+the next smallest bill. This he put on the table.
+
+There was too much under his eye that throw for old Hun to let it get
+away. So the magic twenty-seven came rattling out of the box, and Hun
+raked over his winnings with doleful face and solemn shaking of the
+head, according to his way. He predicted feelingly that his luck could
+not last, and that the next time his number came up there would be only
+two dollars on the table.
+
+From the little pile of one-dollar bills under his hand--the five which
+he had won and the one that he had first staked--the doctor counted five
+slowly, and then counted it over again, to make sure. He won.
+
+The others were watching him as he pushed the twenty-five dollars out in
+the middle of the table with a defiant snort. He crouched over his stake
+with guarding mien as old Hun took up the box and shook the dice. They
+fell near his hand, scattering a little, rolling over to the edge of his
+money as they settled down. He had won again.
+
+This extraordinary luck seemed to turn the bettor's head. He spread out
+his fingers, leaning lower over his stake, as if to prevent its being
+swept away by violence or mistake.
+
+"I won, I tell you! I won!" said he.
+
+"You won, friend," said Hun, counting out the money to him, a look of
+triumph in his greedy little eye. For, according to all the signs, the
+poison was so deep in the supposed sheep-herder's blood that nothing but
+the loss of all his hoard would cool it again.
+
+Slavens nervously counted down twenty-five dollars again, keeping the
+remainder of his winnings in his hand, as if ready to take chance on the
+jump.
+
+A man must have it given to him both ways in order to key him up to the
+right place, Hun Shanklin knew. All winning would no more do than all
+loss. So this time the loaded dice were switched into the box, and the
+charmed number came out again.
+
+"Hold on! Hold on!" protested the bettor as Shanklin started to sweep
+the money away with one hand and gather in his tricky dice with the
+other. For Hun never left those dice any longer on the board than
+necessary.
+
+Slavens threw himself forward on the table, his elbows spread,
+scrutinizing the dice as if he had not yet figured the total.
+
+"Yes; you win this time," said he grudgingly, removing his hand from his
+stake, but dropping the money which he clutched in his fist at the same
+time.
+
+With fatherly kindness Shanklin admonished him to hold on to his money,
+and helped him pick it up. And, sharp as his old eye was, he did not see
+that one of his precious dice, hidden under a bill, had changed places
+with another, which had waited that moment in the doctor's hand.
+
+The others around the table had given the game over to the amazing
+sheep-herder who seemed to have so much cash. They stood by, gaping and
+exclaiming, growing hotter and hotter with the fever all the time
+themselves, licking their dry lips, feeling of their money, getting
+ready to pitch into it as soon as the film of chance had thickened a
+little on their eyes, shutting out reason entirely.
+
+Slavens straightened up and gave his backer two gentle prods in the
+ribs, which was the signal agreed upon to let the other know that the
+scheme was in working order, and that something was due to happen. He
+counted down one hundred dollars and stood expectant, while Shanklin
+held his hand over the mouth of the dicebox and looked at him with
+contemptuous reproach.
+
+"No, you don't! No, you don't!" said Hun. "If you want to play this
+man's game you got to shove up some money of your own. That money's my
+money, and you've been shovin' it on and draggin' it off so much I'm
+afraid you'll wear it out if you keep on.
+
+"It's mine, I tell you! Every cent of it's mine! If you got any of your
+own put it up, and then I'll roll 'em. If you got a hundred to pile on
+top of that, or five hundred, or ten hundred, come on and pile it up.
+Then I'll roll 'em. But I ain't a goin' to stand here and speculate in
+my own money all night!"
+
+So there they were, caught in a blind canyon when they thought they were
+coming into the clear. That was an unlooked-for and unprepared-for turn
+that Shanklin had given to their plans. Right when they had him
+unsuspectingly loaded up so he could no more throw twenty-seven than he
+could fly, except by the tremendously long chance that the good die
+would fall right to make up the count, he sat down on his hind legs and
+balked.
+
+Slavens was at the end of his rope. There appeared nothing for it but to
+withdraw the stake and sneak off with only half of his backer's loss of
+the afternoon retrieved. He was reaching out his hand to pull the money
+away, when the little fellow with whiskers caught his arm.
+
+Slavens thought he read a signal in the touch, and turned as if to
+consult his roll again. As he did so the little man thrust a comfortable
+wad of bills into his hand, and Slavens faced the table, counting down
+five one-hundred-dollar bills.
+
+Hun Shanklin's eye was burning the backs of those aristocrats of the
+currency as he lifted his box.
+
+"That's more like it," he commended. "I can play with a _gentleman_ that
+carries them things around with him all night, even if I lose at every
+throw."
+
+"Hold on!" said the doctor as Hun was tilting the box to throw. "Cover
+that money before you throw. I've got six hundred dollars down there,
+and I want you to count out three thousand by the side of it."
+
+"Well, I've got the money, friend, if that's what you doubt," said
+Shanklin, with a lofty air of the injured gentleman.
+
+He drew a sheaf of bills from the valise and, in the stillness of awe
+which had come over the crowd, counted down the required amount.
+
+"I've won fortunes, gentlemen, and I've lost 'em," said Shanklin, taking
+up the box again. "Keep your eye on the dice."
+
+He was so certain of what would come out of the box that he reached for
+the money before the dice had settled, ready to sweep it away. But a
+change came over his face, as of sudden pain, when he saw the result of
+the throw, and with a little dry snort his hand shot out toward the
+revolver which lay beside his valise.
+
+The little man with whiskers, admirably cool, got there first. Hun
+Shanklin was looking into the end of his own gun, and unloading, through
+the vent of his ugly, flat mouth, the accumulated venom of his life. He
+was caught in his own trap by a sharper man than himself, a being that
+up to that minute he had believed the world could not produce.
+
+Dr. Slavens quickly gathered the money. The others around the table,
+blazing now in their desire to get a division of fortune's favors, put
+down their bets and called loudly for the gamekeeper to cover them.
+
+"Game's closed," Shanklin announced, shutting up his valise, into which
+he had tossed both dice and box.
+
+He made a move as if to part the tent-wall behind him.
+
+"Hold on!" said the doctor, snatching off his goggles and pushing up the
+brim of his hat. "I've got another score to settle with you, Shanklin.
+Do you know me now?"
+
+Shanklin didn't wait to reply. He dropped to his knees just as Slavens
+reached for him, catching the collar of his coat. In an instant the
+gambler was gone, but his coat was in Dr. Slavens' hand, a circumstance
+from which the assembled men drew a great deal of merriment.
+
+The chief of police, remiss in his high duty, should have been there to
+sustain Shanklin's hand, according to their gentlemanly agreement when
+the partnership was formed. He arrived too late. Shanklin was gone, and
+from the turmoil in the tent the chief concluded that he had trimmed
+somebody in his old-fashioned, comfortable way. So his duty, as he saw
+it in that moment, lay in clearing them out and dispersing them, and
+turning deaf ears to all squeals from the shorn and skinned.
+
+Dr. Slavens and his friend had nothing to linger for. They were the
+first to leave, the doctor carrying Shanklin's coat under his arm, the
+pockets of his own greasy makeshift bulging with more money than he ever
+had felt the touch of before. As they hurried along the dark street away
+from the scene of their triumph, the little man with fiery whiskers did
+the talking.
+
+"Mackenzie is my name," said he, all of the suspicion gone out of him,
+deep, feeling admiration in its place, "and if you was to happen up to
+southern Montana you'd find me pretty well known. I've got fifty
+thousand sheep on the range up there, average four dollars a head, and
+I'd hand half of 'em over to you right now if you'd show me how you
+turned that trick. That was the slickest thing I ever saw!"
+
+"It wouldn't do you any good at all to know how it was done," said
+Slavens, "for it was a trick for the occasion and the man we worked it
+on. The thing for us to do is to go to some decent, quiet place and
+divide this money."
+
+"Give me my two hundred and the stake," said Mackenzie, "and keep the
+rest. I don't need money; I've got two national banks full of it up
+there in Montana now."
+
+"Lord knows I need it!" said the doctor, beginning to sweat over the
+nearness to visions which he once believed he should never overhaul.
+
+He stepped along so fast in his eagerness to come up with and lay hands
+on them that Mackenzie was thrown into a trot to keep up.
+
+"I don't know who you are or where you came from," said Mackenzie, "but
+you're not a crook, anyhow. That money's yours; you got it out of him as
+beautiful as I ever saw a man skinned in my day. But if you don't want
+to tip it off, that's your business."
+
+"It was a chance," said the doctor, recalling a night beside the river
+and the words of Agnes when she spoke of that theme, "and I had the
+sense and the courage for once to take it."
+
+In the cafe-tent where they had taken their supper they sat with a stew
+of canned oysters between them, and made the division of the money which
+the lost die had won. Mackenzie would accept no more than the two
+hundred dollars which he had lost on Shanklin's game, together with the
+five hundred and ten advanced in the hope of regaining it.
+
+It was near midnight when they parted, Mackenzie to seek his
+lodging-place, Dr. Slavens to make the rounds of the stores in the
+hope of finding one open in which he could buy a new outfit of
+clothing. They were all closed and dark. The best that he could do
+toward improving his outcast appearance was to get shaved. This done,
+he found lodging in a place where he could have an apartment to
+himself, and even an oil-lamp to light him to his rest.
+
+Sitting there on the side of his bed, he explored the pockets of Hun
+Shanklin's coat. There were a number of business cards, advertising
+various concerns in Comanche, which Shanklin had used for recording his
+memoranda; two telegrams, and a printed page of paper, folded into small
+space. There was nothing more.
+
+The paper was an extra edition of _The Chieftain_, such as the doctor
+had grown sadly familiar with on the day of the drawing. With a return
+of the heartsickness which he had felt that day, he unfolded it far
+enough to see the date. It was the day of the drawing. He dropped the
+half-folded sheet to the floor and took up the telegrams.
+
+One, dated the day before, was from Meander. The other was evidently
+Shanklin's reply, which perhaps had not been filed, or perhaps was a
+copy. The first read:
+
+  Can close with Peterson if you are sure he will be Number One.
+  Be certain on numbers N. W. quar. 6-12-33. Repeat.
+                                                          Jerry.
+
+The reply which Shanklin had written and perhaps sent, preserving a copy
+in his crafty, cautious way, was:
+
+  Peterson is Number One. N. W. quarter 6-12-33 is right.
+
+There was neither name nor address on the telegram, but it was easy to
+see that it was for "Jerry" at Meander. Some deal was on foot, a crooked
+deal, no doubt, between Shanklin and somebody for something in which
+Peterson and Number One----
+
+Hold on! Slavens sat up with a quickening of interest in those two words
+which he thought he never should feel again. Peterson! That was the name
+of the winner of Number One. Certainly! Queer that he didn't put two and
+two together at the first glance, thought he. He wondered how much they
+were paying Peterson for his relinquishment, and what there was in the
+northwest quarter of Section Six, Township Twelve, Range Thirty-three,
+that Hun Shanklin wanted to get his hands on.
+
+Well, it was interesting, at any rate, even though he didn't draw
+himself. In a flash he thought of Agnes and of her hopes, and her high
+number, and wondered whether she had gone to Meander to file. Slavens
+held up Shanklin's coat by the collar and ran through the pockets in the
+hope of finding something that would yield further particulars.
+
+There was nothing else in the coat. It didn't matter, he reflected; his
+interest in Claim Number One was gone forever. He didn't care who had
+it, or what was done with it, or whether Hun Shanklin and the man called
+Jerry gave ten thousand dollars for it or ten cents.
+
+But that was a pretty good coat. It was a great deal better and more
+respectable than the one he had on, and it looked as if it might come
+nearer fitting. True, Shanklin was a thin man; but he was wide.
+
+The doctor put on the garment. It was a very comfortable fit; the
+sleeves were a little long, but there was room enough in the shoulders.
+Surprising, said he, how wide that old rascal was in the chest. He
+transferred his money to Hun Shanklin's pockets, chuckling at the
+thought that he was returning it whence it came. In conscience, said he,
+if conscience required such a palliative, he had made restitution.
+
+On the floor at his foot lay the extra. In falling it had presented to
+his view the other side of the fold. The ruled, double-column box, with
+the surrounding type lifted irregularly around it, attracted his
+attention. He picked it up, sat again on the edge of the bed, and read
+his own name printed there as the winner of Number One.
+
+He couldn't make it out. He turned the paper, looking again at the date.
+"Owing to a mistake in transmitting the news," he read. He got up and
+walked the length of his compartment, the paper in his hand. How was
+that? Number One--he was the winner of Number One! How was that? How
+_was_ that?
+
+There was fortune's caper for you! Number One! And the time past--or but
+a few hours between then and the limit--for stepping up and claiming it!
+And Hun Shanklin had a hand in it. Wait a minute--wait!
+
+Hun Shanklin, and a man called Jerry, and Peterson, the Swede. But
+Shanklin, who sent telegrams assuring somebody that Peterson was Number
+One--Shanklin most of all. Slavens passed his hand with tentative
+pressure over the soiled bandage which bound his brow, feeling with
+finger and thumb along the dark stain which traced what it hid from
+sight. Shanklin! That would explain some things, many things. Perhaps
+all things.
+
+He stood there, counting on his fingers like a schoolboy, frowning as he
+counted. One--two--three. The third day--that was the third day. And he
+was Number One. And he had lost!
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out in the office of the lodging-place a lamp burned smokily at the
+elbow of an old man who read a paper by its light.
+
+"This should be the twenty-eighth, according to my reckoning," said
+Slavens, appearing before him and speaking without prelude.
+
+The old man looked up, unfriendly, severe.
+
+"You're purty good at figures," said he.
+
+He bumped his bony shoulders over his paper again.
+
+Undaunted, Slavens asked him the hour. The old clerk drew out a cheap
+watch and held it close to his grizzled face.
+
+"Time for all honest men but me and you to be in bed, I reckon. It's a
+quarter to one."
+
+A quarter to one! Next morning--no; that very morning at nine o'clock,
+Peterson would step up to the window of the land-office in Meander and
+file on Claim Number One--_his_ claim--Dr. Warren Slavens' claim, the
+seed of his dead hope. That is, if the long chance that lay between him
+and that hour should be allowed to pass unimproved.
+
+"Do you want to sell that watch?" asked the doctor suddenly.
+
+The old man looked up at him sharply, the shadow of his nose falling
+long upon his slanting paper.
+
+"You go to thunder!" said he.
+
+"No," said Slavens without showing offense. "I want that watch for a few
+hours, and I'll pay you for it if you want to let me have it."
+
+He drew out a roll of money as thick as the old man's thin neck, and
+stood with it in his hand. The old man slipped the leather thong from
+his buttonhole and laid the watch on the board in front of him.
+
+"It cost me a dollar two or three years ago"--what was a year to him in
+his fruitless life, anyway?--"and if you want to give me a dollar for it
+now you can take it."
+
+Slavens took up the timepiece after putting down the required price.
+
+"I paid for my bed in advance, you remember?" said he.
+
+The old clerk nodded, his dull eye on the pocket into which all that
+money had disappeared.
+
+"Well, I'm going out for a while, and I may not be back. That's all."
+
+With that the doctor passed out into the street.
+
+Eight hours between him and the last chance at Claim Number One--eight
+hours, and sixty miles. That was not such a mighty stretch for a good
+horse to cover in eight hours--nothing heroic; very ordinary in truth,
+for that country.
+
+With a clearly defined purpose, Slavens headed for the corral opposite
+the Hotel Metropole, beside which the man camped who had horses for
+hire. A lantern burned at the closed flap of the tent. After a little
+shaking of the pole and rough shouting, the man himself appeared,
+overalled and booted and ready for business.
+
+"You must weigh a hundred and seventy?" said he, eying his customer over
+after he had been told what a horse was wanted for. "What's your hurry
+to git to Meander?"
+
+"A hundred and eighty," corrected the doctor, "and none of your
+business! If you want to hire me a horse, bring him out. If you don't,
+talk fast."
+
+"I ain't got one I'd hire you for that ride, heavy as you are," said the
+man; "but I've got one a feller left here for me to sell that I'd sell
+you."
+
+"Let me see him," said the doctor.
+
+The man came out of the straw-covered shed presently, leading a pretty
+fair-looking creature. He carried a saddle under his arm. While the
+doctor looked the beast over with the lantern the man saddled it.
+
+"Well, how much?" demanded the doctor.
+
+"Hundred and fifty," said the man.
+
+"I'll give you a hundred, and that's fifty more than he's worth," the
+doctor offered.
+
+"Oh, well, seein' you're in such a rush," the man sighed.
+
+As he pocketed the price he gave the directions asked.
+
+"They's two roads to Meander," he explained; "one the freighters use
+that runs over the hills and's solid in most all kinds of weather, and
+the stage-road, that follows the river purty much. It's shorter by a few
+miles and easier to foller; but it's got some purty loose ground here
+and there."
+
+"Much obliged," said the doctor, striking his heels to his horse's sides
+and galloping off, following the road which he had seen the stages take
+to Meander, in the days when Claim Number One was farther off even than
+eight hours and sixty miles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+NUMBER ONE
+
+
+In Meander that morning people began to gather early at the land-office,
+for it was the first day for filing, and a certain designated number,
+according to the rules laid down and understood before the drawing, must
+appear and make entry on their chosen tracts.
+
+There had been a good deal of talk and excitement over the nonappearance
+in Meander of the man who drew the first chance. The story had gone
+around, from what source nobody knew, that he would lapse, in which case
+Number Two would become Number One, and all along the line would
+advance. Number One would have to be there to file first, as Number Two
+could not be entered ahead of him, and if he did not step up to the
+window when it opened, his chance was gone forever.
+
+The United States Government would accept no excuses; the machinery of
+its vast, admirable business could not be thrown out of gear for an hour
+or a day, and stand idle while the clerks waited for the holder of Claim
+Number One to come from some distant part and step into his own. So
+there was a good deal of nervousness and talking, and speculating and
+crowding forward in the waiting line, as the hour for opening the office
+drew near.
+
+At the head of the line, holding a card with certain figures on it,
+stood Axel Peterson, a bony-faced man with lean, high shoulders,
+engineer in the flour-mill at Meander. Peterson strained his long neck
+and lifted his chin as if his loose collar bound him and choked his
+aspirations.
+
+It was a racking hour for Axel Peterson, who had been offered a sum
+which was riches to him if he would file on the land described by the
+figures on the card, pay its purchase price to the government on the
+spot with the money provided him for that purpose, and then step out.
+Already he had signed an agreement to make a deed to it. However, the
+land was yet in the mists of uncertainty just ahead, beyond his grasp.
+
+For it was stipulated in his agreement that if the-holder of the first
+choice should appear in time to file, then Peterson was to hand over the
+money which he carried in his pocket to purchase immediate title to the
+claim. In that case, Jerry Boyle, the Governor's son, who stood side by
+side with Peterson before the window and held Peterson's agreement to
+deed certain described lands in his hand; in that case Jerry Boyle would
+be free to open negotiations with the holder of the first chance.
+
+There was no secret among those gathered to file regarding what was
+going forward at the head of the line. It was generally understood,
+also, that others were on hand to grab the same piece of land as that
+which Boyle was so eager to get into his possession. Gold, some said.
+Others were strong in the statement that it was coal and oil. At any
+rate there was another man present who had been active with Peterson,
+but he had arrived too late. Boyle already had the Scandinavian down in
+writing.
+
+Milo Strong was in his place, hoping in his heart that Dr. Slavens would
+not appear, as the physician's lapse would set him one forward. Off to
+one side, among hundreds gathered to witness the filing on lands which
+would mean the development of a great stretch of country around Meander,
+and thereby add to its prosperity and importance, were William and
+Horace Bentley and Agnes.
+
+They watched the clerks in the land-office arrive and enter through the
+side door. A shelf had been arranged in one of the front windows of the
+office, past which the entrants could file without going into the
+building. At nine o'clock this window would be opened. It was before it
+that Peterson and Jerry were standing.
+
+William Bentley looked at his watch.
+
+"Seven minutes more," he announced.
+
+"He'll never come," said Agnes, shaking her head sadly. "His chance is
+slipping away."
+
+"I've hoped right up to this minute that he would come," said William,
+"but I drop out now. It would have been such easy money for him, too."
+
+"Yes; Boyle's got that fellow tied up to relinquish to him the minute
+the entry is made," Horace added. "I know the lawyer who drew up the
+papers. It's illegal all through, but they say Boyle's got such a pull
+through his father that anything he wants will go."
+
+Until that hour Agnes had kept her faith in Dr. Slavens and her hope
+that he would appear in time to save his valuable claim. Now hope was
+gone, and faith, perhaps, had suffered a tarnishment of luster.
+
+For that is the way of human judgment. When one whom we have expected to
+rise up out of the smoke of obscurity or the fog of calumniation fails in
+what we feel to be his obligation to the world and ourselves--especially
+ourselves--faith falters in its place, and gives way to reproach, bitter
+words, hot arraignments. There is no scorn like the scorn of one who has
+been a friend.
+
+And still Agnes kept her faith that Dr. Slavens was blameless for his
+unexplained disappearance and prolonged absence deep-anchored in her
+heart. But there was a surface irritation at that moment, a disposition
+to censure and scold. For nothing short of death should keep a man away
+from the main chance of his career, thought she, and she could not
+believe that he was dead.
+
+It was altogether disappointing, depressing. He should have come; he
+should have moved the encumbering obstacles out of his way, no matter
+what their bulk. Not so much for his own sake maybe, when all was
+refined to its base of thought, as for the redemption of her faith and
+trust.
+
+"I don't care to stay and see them file," said she, turning away. "I'll
+get enough of it, I suppose, when my turn comes, waiting in line that
+way in the sun."
+
+"There's a special stage out for Comanche at eleven," said William, his
+watch in his hand. "If I can get a seat I'll return on it. It's time I
+was back in the shop."
+
+"For," he might have added if he had expressed his thoughts, "no matter
+what I think of you, Agnes, I see that it would be useless for me to
+hang around and hope. Dr. Slavens has stepped into the door of your
+heart, and there is no room for anybody else to pass."
+
+But he left it unsaid, standing with his head bent as if in meditation,
+his watch in his hand.
+
+"Two minutes more," he announced.
+
+"I'm moving from the hotel," said she quickly, "to a room I've taken
+with a dear old lady in a funny little house among the trees. It's
+cheaper for me while I wait to file. I'll see you to say good-bye."
+
+She hurried away, leaving the two men standing looking after her, Horace
+smiling, for he did not altogether understand. William could see deeper.
+He knew that she was afraid lest her disappointment would burst out in
+tears if she remained to see Axel Peterson square his elbows on the
+shelf before the window and make entry on Claim Number One.
+
+A clerk within the office was pounding on the window-sash, for the paint
+which the building had been treated to in honor of the occasion had
+gummed it fast. Axel Peterson, straining his long neck, swallowing dry
+gulps, looked to the right, the left, the rear. The ends of his fingers
+were fairly on Claim Number One; nobody was pressing forward to supplant
+him and take away his chance.
+
+Of course, in case Boyle could not induce the holder of the first
+chance, in the event that he _might_ yet come, to file on the coveted
+land, then there would be a chance left for Peterson. So Peterson
+knew--Boyle had made that plain. But who could resist the amount Boyle
+was ready to give? Nobody, concluded Axel Peterson, feeling a chill of
+nervousness sweep him as the window-sash gave and the window opened,
+showing the two clerks ready, with their pens in hand.
+
+The preliminary questions were being asked; the card with Peterson's
+signature on it was taken out of the file for its identification--although
+he was personally known to everybody in the town--for no detail of caution
+and dignity could be omitted on an occasion so important as that; Axel
+Peterson was taking his breath in short bites, his hand trembling as he
+took up the pen to enter his name when that moment should arrive; his
+voice was shaking as he answered the questions put to him by the clerk.
+
+There was a stirring down the line, and a crowding forward. From the
+outer rim of the people gathered to bear witness to the important
+ceremony there rose a subdued shout, like the expression of wonder or
+surprise. The volume of this sound increased as it swept toward the
+office. Those in the line, Axel Peterson first of all, saw a movement
+in the crowd, saw it part and open a lane for a dusty man on a
+sweat-drenched horse to pass.
+
+One of the clerks arranged the detail-map of the reservation before him
+with great deliberation, his pen ready to check off the parcel of land
+when the entrant should give its description. The other spread the blank
+on the desk, dipped his pen, and asked:
+
+"What tract do you wish to file on, Mr. Peterson?"
+
+The man on horseback had forged through the crowd and brought his
+stumbling beast to a stand not a rod away from Axel Peterson's side.
+Peterson had viewed the proceeding with a disturbing qualm. Boyle, as
+talkative before as a washerwoman, now grew suddenly silent. His mouth
+stood open impotently; the gray of a sinking heart came over his face as
+he looked long at the battered man, who had dropped the reins to the
+ground and was coming toward them on unsteady legs.
+
+Then, in a flash, Boyle recovered his poise.
+
+"Quick! Quick!" he called to the clerk, thrusting an impatient hand
+through the window. "Give him the paper and let him sign; you can fill
+in the numbers afterward!"
+
+The clerk owed his appointment to Boyle's father when the latter was in
+Congress; so he was ready at heart to obey. But it was an irregularity
+which might rebound with uncomfortable result. Thus he hesitated a few
+seconds, and as he hesitated the road-stained horseman pushed in between
+Axel Peterson and the window.
+
+"You're a little hasty," said the man. "It's a few seconds until nine
+yet, according to my time. My name is Slavens, and I am Number One."
+
+The people in the crowd pressed closer, closing around the tired horse,
+which stood with its head drooping, its flaccid sides heaving. Jerry
+Boyle said nothing, but he put into his pocket the paper which he had
+been holding ready in his hand for Axel Peterson's signature the minute
+the entry should be made, and turned his back. A black-visaged man with
+shifting, greasy eyes shouldered, panting, through the press of people
+and put his hand on Slaven's arm.
+
+"I'd like to have a word with you before you file," he requested.
+
+Slavens looked at him severely from the shadow of his battered hat. The
+man lacked the bearing of one who inspires confidence; Slavens frowned
+his disapproval of the approach.
+
+"It means money to you," pressed the man, stretching out his hand and
+showing a card with numbers penciled on it.
+
+Axel Peterson had stood gaping, his card with numbers on it also in his
+hand, held up at a convenient angle for his eyes. Dr. Slavens had read
+them as he pushed Peterson aside, and the first two figures on the other
+man's card--all that Slavens could hastily glimpse--were the same. And,
+stranger still, they were the same as Hun Shanklin had recorded in
+telegraphed reply to the request from Jerry that he repeat them.
+
+That was enough to show him that there was something afoot worth while,
+and to fortify him in his determination, strong in his mind every mile
+of that long night ride, to file on that identical tract of land, come
+of it what might.
+
+"I'll talk to you after a while," said he.
+
+Boyle said nothing, although the look he gave the forward man was
+blasting and not without effect. The fellow fell back; something which
+looked like a roll of bills passed from Boyle's hand to Axel Peterson's,
+and with a jerk of the shoulder, which might have been intended as a
+defiance to his rival or as an expression of resignation, Boyle moved
+back a little into the crowd, where he stood whispering with his
+friends. Peterson's face lit up again; he swallowed and stretched his
+neck, wetting his dry lips with his tongue.
+
+The preliminaries were gone over again by the clerks with deliberate
+dignity; the card bearing the doctor's signature was produced, his
+identity established, and the chart of the reservation again drawn
+forward to check off the land as he gave the description.
+
+"What tract have you selected, Dr. Slavens?" asked the clerk with the
+blank.
+
+Dr. Slavens drew from the pocket of his coat a crumpled yellow paper,
+unfolded it, and spread it on the shelf.
+
+"The northwest quarter of Section Six, Township Twelve, Range
+Thirty-three," he replied, his eyes on Hun Shanklin's figures.
+
+Jerry Boyle almost jumped at the first word. As the doctor completed the
+description of the land he strode forward, cursing in smothered voice.
+
+"Where did you get that paper?" he demanded, his voice pitched an octave
+above its ordinary key by the tremulous heat of his anger.
+
+Dr. Slavens measured him coldly with one long, contemptuous look. He
+answered nothing, for the answer was obvious to all. It was none of
+Boyle's business, and that was as plain as spoken words.
+
+Boyle seemed to wilt. He turned his back to the winner of Number One,
+but from that moment he stuck pretty close to Axel Peterson until
+something passed between them again, this time from Peterson's hand to
+Boyle's. Peterson sighed as he gave it up, for hope went with it.
+
+Meantime a wave of information was running through the crowd.
+
+"It's Number One," men repeated to each other, passing the word along.
+"Number One got here!"
+
+Hurrying to the hotel, Agnes was skirting through the thinner edges of
+the gathering at the very moment when Dr. Slavens turned from the
+window, his papers in his hand. As he went to his weary horse and took
+up the reins, the creature greeted him with a little chuckling whinny,
+and the people gave him a loud and hearty cheer.
+
+When the cheering spread to the people around her, Agnes stopped and
+asked a man why they did that. She spoke a little irritably, for she was
+out of humor with people who would cheer one man for taking something
+that belonged to another. That was the way she looked at it, anyhow.
+
+"Why, haven't you heard?" asked the man, amazed, but enlarged with
+importance, because he had the chance of telling somebody. "It's Number
+One. He rode up on a horse just in the nick of the second and saved his
+claim."
+
+"Number One!" said she. "A horse!"
+
+"Sure, ma'am," said her informant, looking at her queerly. "Here he
+comes now."
+
+Dr. Slavens passed within a few feet of her, leading his horse toward
+the livery stable. If it had not been that the wind was blowing sharply,
+turning back the flapping brim of his old hat, she would have repudiated
+him as an impostor. But there was no mistaking him, in spite of the
+strange clothing which he wore, in spite of the bloody bandage about his
+head.
+
+And at the sight of that bandage her heart felt a strange exultation, a
+stirring leap of joy, even stronger than her pity and her pain. For it
+was his vindication; it was the badge of his honor; it was his
+credentials which put him back in the right place in her life.
+
+He had come by it in no drunken squabble, she knew; and he had arisen
+from the sickness of it to mount horse and ride--desperately, as his
+condition told--to claim his own. Through the leagues of desert he had
+come, through the unfriendly night, with what dim hope in his breast no
+man might know. Now, sparing the horse that had borne him to his
+triumph, he marched past her, his head up, like one who had conquered,
+even though he limped in the soreness of bruised body.
+
+People standing near wondered to see the tall, pale woman put out her
+hands with more than a mother's pity in her eyes, and open her lips,
+murmuring a name beneath her breath.
+
+The Bentleys, who had seen Dr. Slavens arrive, had not been able to
+force their way to him through the crowd. Now, with scores of others,
+they followed him, to have a word with him after he had stabled his
+horse. As they passed Agnes, William made his way to her.
+
+"He arrived in time!" he cried triumphantly, the sparkle of gladness in
+his honest eyes. "He has justified your faith, and your trust, and
+your----"
+
+She put out both her hands, tears in her eyes, as he halted there,
+leaving unsaid what there was no need to say.
+
+"I'll tell him where to find you," said he, passing on.
+
+In her room at the hotel Agnes sat down to wait. Peace had come into her
+soul again; its fevered alarms were quiet. Expectancy trembled in her
+bosom, where no fear foreshadowed what remained for him to say. Her
+confidence was so complete in him, now that he had come, that she would
+have been satisfied, so she believed at that hour, if he had said:
+
+"I was unable to come sooner; I am sorry."
+
+For love is content with little while it is young.
+
+Agnes thought of her prettiest dress, tucked away in the little
+steamer-trunk, and brought it out. It was not extremely gay, but it was
+light in color and fabric, and gave a softness to the lines of the body,
+and a freshness of youth. And one needs to look carefully to that when
+one is seven-and-twenty, she reflected.
+
+Her fingers fluttered over her hair; she swayed and turned before the
+glass, bringing the lines of her neck into critical inspection. There
+was the turn of youth there yet, it comforted her to see, and some
+degree of comeliness. He would come soon, and she must be at her best,
+to show him that she believed in him, and give him to understand that
+she was celebrating his triumph over the contrary forces which he had
+whipped like a man.
+
+Faith, thought she, as she sat by the window and looked down upon the
+crowd which still hung about the land-office, was a sustaining food.
+Without it the business of all the world would cease. She had found need
+to draw heavily upon it in her years, which she passed in fleeting
+review as she looked pensively upon the crowd, which seemed floundering
+aimlessly in the sun.
+
+All at once the crowd seemed to resolve into one personality, or to
+become but the incidental background for one man; a tall man with a
+slight stoop, whose heavy eyebrows met above his nose like two black
+caterpillars which had clinched in a combat to contest the passage. Here
+and there he moved as if seeking somebody, familiarly greeted,
+familiarly returning the salutations.
+
+That morning she had seen him at the head of the line of men waiting to
+file on land, close beside Peterson, who believed himself to be Number
+One. She had wondered then what his interest might be, and it was
+largely due to a desire to avoid being seen by him that she had hurried
+away. Now he turned as if her thoughts had burned upon his back like a
+sunglass, looked directly toward her window, lifted his hat, and
+smiled.
+
+As if his quest had come to an end at the sight of her, he pushed across
+the street and came toward the hotel. She left the window, closing it
+hurriedly, a shadow of fear in her face, her hand pressed to her bosom,
+as if that meeting of eyes had broken the lethargy of some old pain. She
+waited, standing in the center of the room, as if for a summons which
+she dreaded to hear.
+
+The hotel at Meander had not at that day come to such modern contrivances
+as telephones and baths. If a patron wanted to talk out on the one
+wire that connected Meander with the world and the railroad, he had to
+go to the stage-office; if he wanted a bath he must make a trip to the
+steam laundry, where they maintained tubs for that purpose. But these
+slight inconveniences were not all on one side of the house. For if a
+message came to the office for a guest in his room, there was nothing for
+the clerk to do but trot up with it.
+
+And so it came that when Agnes opened her door to the summons, her
+bearing had no touch of fear or timidity. In the hall she faced the
+panting clerk, who had leaped up the stairs and was in a hurry to leap
+down again.
+
+"Mr. Jerry Boyle asks if he may have the pleasure of seeing you in the
+parlor, Miss Horton," said the clerk.
+
+"Tell Mr. Boyle," she answered with what steadiness she could command,
+"that I have an appointment in a few minutes. I'm afraid that I shall
+not be able to see him before--before--tomorrow afternoon."
+
+That was enough for the clerk, no matter how near or how far it came to
+satisfying the desires of Jerry Boyle. He gave her a stubby bow and
+heeled it off downstairs again, kicking up quite a dust in his rapid
+flight over the carpet in the hall.
+
+As if numbed or dreaming, Agnes walked slowly about her room, touching
+here or there a familiar article of apparel, and seeking thus to
+recall herself to a state of conscious reasoning. The events of the
+morning--the scene before the land-office, her start back to the
+hotel, the passing of that worn, wounded, and jaded man--seemed to have
+drawn far into the perspective of the past.
+
+In a little while William Bentley came up for his bag--for in that hotel
+every man was his own porter--and called her to the door. He was off
+with Horace on the eleven o'clock stage for Comanche. Next morning he
+would take a train for the East. Dr. Slavens sent word that he would
+come to the hotel as soon as he could make himself presentable with a
+new outfit.
+
+"Horace will stay at Comanche a while to look around," said William,
+giving her his card with his home address. "If there's anything that I
+can do for you any time, don't wait to write if you can reach a
+telegraph-wire."
+
+If there was pain in his eyes she did not see it, or the yearning of
+hope in his voice, she did not hear. She only realized that the man who
+filled her life was coming soon, and that she must light again the fires
+of faith in her eyes to greet him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE OTHER MAN
+
+
+Dr. Slavens stood at the door of the parlor to meet her as she came
+toward him, a little tremor of weakness in her limbs, a subconscious
+confession of mastery which the active feminine mind might have denied
+with blushing show of indignation.
+
+The clothiers of Meander had fitted Slavens out with a very good serge
+suit. Tan oxfords replaced his old battered shoes. A physician had
+dressed the cut on his forehead, where adhesive plaster, neatly holding
+gauze over the cut, took away the aspect of grimness and gravity which
+the bloody bandage of the morning had imparted. For all his hard fight,
+he was quite a freshened-up man; but there was a questioning hesitation
+in his manner as he offered his hand.
+
+Her greeting removed whatever doubt that William Bentley's assurance of
+her fidelity might have left. She took his hand between both her own and
+held it so a little while, looking into his eyes without the reservation
+of suspicion or distrust.
+
+"We believed you'd come in time all along," said she.
+
+"You believed it," he replied softly, not the faintest light of a smile
+on his serious face; "and I cannot weigh my gratitude in words. There is
+an explanation to be made, and I have saved it for you. I'm a beast to
+think of food just now, perhaps, but I haven't eaten anything since
+yesterday evening."
+
+"You can tell me afterward, if you wish," she said.
+
+Through the meal they talked of the others, of who had come to Meander,
+who had gone home; of June and her mother and the miller's wife. Nothing
+was said of the cause of his absence nor of his spectacular arrival just
+in the second remaining to him to save his chance.
+
+"I noticed a road running up toward the mountain," said he when they had
+finished. "Shall we walk up that way?"
+
+Out past the little cultivated gardens, where stunted corn was growing
+in the futile hope that it might come to ear, they followed the road
+which led into the mountain gorge. A rod-wide stream came plunging down
+beside the way, bursting its current upon a thousand stones here and
+there, falling into green pools in which the trout that breasted its
+roaring torrent might find a place to pant.
+
+Here, in an acre of valley, some remnant of glacier had melted after its
+slow-plowing progress of ten million years. The smooth, round stones
+which it had dropped when it vanished in the sun lay there as thickly
+strewn as seeds from a gigantic poppy-boll. And then, as the gorge-wedge
+narrowed, there were great, polished boulders, like up-peeping skulls,
+and riven ledges against which Indian hunters had made their fires in
+the old days. And on the tipping land of the mountainside, and the
+little strips where soil lodged between the rocks, the quaking-asp grew
+thick and tall.
+
+There in a little nook among the trees, where trampling tourists
+had eaten their luncheon upon a flat stone and left the bags and
+pickle-bottles behind them, they sat down. At that altitude the
+sunshine of an afternoon in late August was welcome. A man whipping
+the stream for trout caught his tackle in some low branches not ten
+feet from where they sat, and swore as he disentangled it. He passed
+on without seeing them.
+
+"That goes to illustrate how near a man may be to something, and not
+know it," said the doctor, a smile quickening his grave face for a
+moment. "This time yesterday I was kicking over the rubbish where a
+gambling-tent had stood in Comanche, in the hope of finding a dime."
+
+He stopped, looked away down the soft-tinted gorge as if wrapped in
+reminiscent thought. She caught her breath quickly, turning to him with
+a little start and gazing at his set face, upon which a new, strange
+somberness had fallen in those unaccounted days.
+
+"Did you find it?" she asked.
+
+"No, I didn't," he answered, coming out of his dream. "At that hour I
+knew nothing about having drawn the first number, and I didn't know that
+I was the lucky man until past midnight. I had just a running jump at
+the chance then, and I took it."
+
+"And you won!" she cried, admiration in her eyes.
+
+"I hope so," said he, gazing earnestly into her face.
+
+Her eyes would not stand; they retreated, and a rush of blood spread
+over her cheeks like the reserve of an army covering its withdrawal from
+the field.
+
+"I feel like I had just begun to live," he declared.
+
+"I didn't see you arrive this morning," she told him, "for I turned and
+went away from the land-office when they opened the window. I couldn't
+stand it to see that man Peterson take what belonged to you."
+
+He looked at her curiously.
+
+"But you don't ask me where I was those two days," said he.
+
+"You'll tell me--if you want me to know," she smiled.
+
+"When I returned to the Hotel Metropole, even more ragged and
+discreditable-appearing than I was when you saw me this morning," he
+resumed, "the proprietor's wife asked me where I'd been. I told her I
+had been on a trip to hell, and the farther that experience is behind me
+the stronger my conviction that I defined it right.
+
+"When I left you that night after we came back from the river, I went
+out to look for young Walker, all blazing up, in my old-time way of
+grabbing at things like a bullfrog at a piece of flannel, over what you
+had said about a man not always having the sense and the courage to take
+hold of his chances when they presented.
+
+"Walker had talked to me about going in with him on his sheep-ranch,
+under the impression, I suppose, that I had money to invest. Well, I
+hadn't any, as you know, but I got the notion that Walker might set me
+up with a flock of sheep, like they do in this country, to take care of
+on shares. I had recovered entirely from my disappointment in failing to
+draw a claim, as I thought, knowing nothing about the mistake in
+telephoning the names over.
+
+"I used to be quick to get over things that were based on hope that
+way," he smiled, turning to her for a second and scarcely noting how she
+leaned forward to listen. "Just then I was all sheep. I had it planned
+out ten years ahead in that twenty minutes. When a man never has had
+anything to speculate in but dreams he's terribly extravagant of them,
+you know. I was recklessly so.
+
+"Well, I was going along with my head in the clouds, and I made a short
+cut to go in the back way of the biggest gambling-tent, where I thought
+Walker might be watching the games. Right there the machinery of my
+recollection jumps a space. Something hit me, and a volcano burst before
+my eyes."
+
+"Oh, I knew it! I knew it!" she cried, poignant anguish in her wailing
+voice. "I told that chief of police that; I told him that very thing!"
+
+"Did you go to that brute?" he asked, clutching her almost roughly by
+the wrist.
+
+"William Bentley and I," she nodded. "The chief wouldn't help. He told
+us that you were in no danger in Comanche."
+
+"What else?" he asked.
+
+"Go on with the story," said she.
+
+"Yes. I came back to semiconsciousness with that floating sensation
+which men had described to me, but which I never experienced before, and
+heard voices, and felt light on my closed eyes, which I hadn't the power
+to open. But the first thing that I was conscious of, even before the
+voices and the light, was the smell of whisky-barrels.
+
+"Nothing smells like a whisky-barrel. It's neither whisky nor barrel,
+but whisky-barrel. Once you have smelled it you never forget. I used to
+pass a distillery warehouse on my way to school twice a day, and the
+smell of whisky-barrels was part of my early education; so I knew.
+
+"From the noise of voices and the smell of the barrels I judged that I
+must be behind the stage of the variety-theater tent, where they kept
+the stock of whisky for the bar. In a little while I was able to pick up
+the identity of one of the voices. The other one--there were two of them
+near me--belonged to a man I didn't know. You have heard us speak, when
+we were back in camp, of Hun Shanklin, the gambler?"
+
+She nodded, her face white, her lips parted, her breath hanging between
+them as by a thread.
+
+"It was his voice that I heard; I was coming stronger every second. I
+made out that they were talking of my undesirable presence in that
+community. Shanklin owed me a grudge on account of a push that I gave
+his table one night when he was robbing a young fool with more money
+than brains by his downright crooked game. That shove laid the old
+rascal's scheme bare and kept him out of several thousand dollars that
+night.
+
+"I supposed until last night that his sole object in assaulting me in
+the dark was to pay off this score; but there was another and more
+important side to it than that. Shanklin and the fellow with him,
+whoever it was, knew that I was the winner of Number One, and they
+wanted me out of the way.
+
+"I'm not clear yet in my mind just why; but they must have had some
+inside information ahead of others in Comanche that I, and not Peterson,
+was the lucky man, as reported first. For that extra wasn't out then."
+
+"It was all a swindle, the extra," she hastened to explain. "That editor
+knew all the time who Number One was. He held your name back just so he
+might sell a lot more papers. We found out about it after we came
+here."
+
+"Of course Shanklin was in with him some way. They're all crooks," the
+doctor commented.
+
+"Perhaps the other man was that wicked chief of police," said she. "I
+wouldn't consider him above it."
+
+"Nor I," Slavens admitted. "But I don't know; I never heard him speak. I
+thought I heard that other voice this morning here in Meander, but I'm
+not sure. I'll be listening. I must get on with my yarn, and I warn you
+now that I'm going to tax your credulity and try your confidence before
+I'm through.
+
+"I lay there gathering strength while they talked about putting me away,
+like a man who had been choked. I couldn't see them when I opened my
+eyes, for they were back of me somewhere, moving the barrels and boxes
+around. There was a lantern standing on the ground near my head, and the
+thought came to me that if I could knock it over and put it out I might
+make a stagger for the outside and get clear of them. So I upset it.
+
+"The thing didn't go out. It lay on its side, burning away the same as
+ever, but the move I had made tipped it off to them that I wasn't all
+in. I heard Shanklin swearing as he came toward me, and I picked up what
+strength I had, intending to make a fight for it. I wasn't as brisk as I
+believed myself to be, unluckily, and I had only made it to my knees
+when they piled on to me from behind. I suppose one of them hit me with
+a board or something. There's a welt back there on my head, but it don't
+amount to anything."
+
+"The cowards!" she breathed, panting in indignation.
+
+"I wish we could find a name in some language that would describe them,"
+said he; "I've not been able to satisfy myself with anything that
+English offers. No matter. The next thing that I knew I was being
+drenched with icy water. It was splashing over my head and running down
+my face, and the restorative qualities of it has not been overrated by
+young ladies who write stories about fainting beauties for the
+magazines, I can hereby testify. It brought me around speedily, although
+I was almost deaf on account of a roaring, which I attributed to the
+return circulation in my battered head, and sickened by an undulating,
+swirling motion by which I seemed to be carried along.
+
+"I felt myself cramped, knees against my chin, and struggled to adjust
+my position more comfortably. I couldn't move anything but my hands, and
+exploration with them quickly showed me that I was in a box, rather
+tight on sides and bottom--one of those tongue-and-groove cases such as
+they ship dry goods in--with the top rather open, as if it had been
+nailed up with scraps. The water was splashing through it and drenching
+me, and I knew in a flash, as well as if they had told me what they were
+going to do, what they had done. They had carted me to the river and
+thrown me in."
+
+"The canyon! The canyon!" said she, shuddering and covering her face
+with her hands. "Oh, that terrible water--that awful place!"
+
+"But I am here, sitting beside you, with the sun, which I never hoped
+to see again, shining on my face," he smiled, stroking her hair
+comfortingly, as one might assuage the terror of a child.
+
+Agnes lifted her head in wondering admiration.
+
+"You can speak of it calmly!" she wondered, "and you went through it,
+while it gives me a chill of fear even to think about it! Did you--come
+to shore before you entered the canyon?"
+
+"No; I went through it from end to end. I don't know how far the river
+carried me in that box. It seemed miles. But the canyon is only two miles
+long, they say. The box floated upright mainly, being pretty well
+balanced by my weight in the bottom, but at times it was submerged and
+caught against rocks, where the current held it and the water poured in
+until I thought I should be drowned that way.
+
+"I was working to break the boards off the top, and did get one off,
+when the whole thing went to pieces against a rock. I was rolled and
+beaten and smashed about a good bit just then. Arms were useless. The
+current was so powerful that I couldn't make a swimming-stroke. My chief
+recollection of those few troubled moments is of my arms being stretched
+out above my head, as if they were roped there with the weight of my
+body swinging on them. I supposed that was my finish."
+
+"But you went through!" she whispered, touching him softly on the arm as
+if to recall him from the memory of that despairing time.
+
+"I came up against a rock like a dead fish," said he, "my head above
+water, luckily. The current pinned me there and held me from slipping
+down. That saved me, for I hadn't strength to catch hold. The pressure
+almost finished me, but a few gasps cleared my lungs of water, and that
+helped some.
+
+"There is no need for me to pretend that I know how I got on that rock,
+for I don't know. A man loses the conscious relation with life in such a
+poignant crisis. He does heroic things, and overcomes tremendous odds,
+fighting to save what the Almighty has lent him for a little while. But
+I got on that rock. I lay there with just as little life in me as could
+kindle and warm under the ashes again. I might have perished of the
+chill of that place if it hadn't been that the rock was a big one, big
+enough for me to tramp up and down a few feet and warm myself when I was
+able.
+
+"I don't know how far along the canyon I was, or how long it was after
+day broke over the world outside before the gray light sifted down to
+me. It revealed to me the fact that my rock of refuge was about midway
+of the stream, which was peculiarly free of obstructions just there. It
+seemed to me that the hand of Providence must have dashed me against it,
+and from that gleam I gathered the conviction that it was not ordained
+for me to perish there. I could not see daylight out of either end of
+the canyon, for its walls are winding, and of course I had nothing but
+a guess as to how far I had come.
+
+"There was no foothold in the cliffs on either hand that I could see,
+and the pounding of that heavy volume of water down the fall of the
+canyon seemed to make the cliffs tremble. I had to get ashore against
+the cliff-side, somehow, if I ever intended to get out, and I intended
+to get out, no two ways about it. I might drown if I plunged in, but I
+might not. And I was certain to starve if I stuck to the rock. So I took
+off my coat, which the river had spared me, and let myself down from the
+lower end of the rock. I had that rolling and thrashing experience all
+over again, still not quite so bad, for there was daylight to cheer me
+every time my head got clear of the water.
+
+"There's no use pulling the story out. I made it. I landed, and I found
+that I could work my way along the side of the cliff and over the fallen
+masses by the waterside. It wasn't so bad after that.
+
+"My hope was that I might find a place where a breach in the cliff would
+offer me escape that way, but there was none. The strip of sky that I
+could see looked no wider than my hand. I saw the light at the mouth of
+the canyon when it was beginning to fall dusk in there. I suppose it was
+along the middle of the afternoon."
+
+"We were over there about then," said she, "thinking you might have gone
+in to try for that reward. If we only had known!"
+
+"You could have come over to the other end with a blanket," said he,
+touching her hand in a little communicative expression of thankfulness
+for her interest. "There is a little gravelly strand bordering the river
+at that end. After its wild plunge it comes out quite docile, and not
+half so noisy as it goes in. I reached that strip of easy going just as
+it was growing too dark for safe groping over the rocks, and when I got
+there my legs bent like hot candles.
+
+"I crawled the rest of the way; when I got out I must have been a sight
+to see. I know that I almost frightened out of his remaining wits a
+sheep-herder who was watering his flock. He didn't believe that I came
+through the canyon; he didn't believe anything I said, not even when I
+told him that I was cold and hungry."
+
+"The unfeeling beast!"
+
+"Oh, no; he was just about an average man. He had a camp close by, and
+let me warm and dry myself by his fire; gave me some coffee and food
+when he saw that I wasn't going to hurt him, but I don't believe he shut
+an eye that entire night. He was so anxious to get rid of me in the
+morning that he gave me an old hat and coat, and that was the rig I wore
+when I returned to Comanche."
+
+"The hotel-keeper gave you the message that we left?" she asked.
+
+"He was surly and ungracious, said he didn't know where you were. I was
+of the opinion that you had turned my baggage over to him, and that he
+found it convenient to forget all about it."
+
+"We brought it here--it's in my room now; and we told him when we left
+where we were going, Mr. Bentley and I."
+
+"Well, what little money I had was in my instrument-case," said he. "So
+I was up against it right. I knew there was no use in lodging a
+complaint against Shanklin, for I had no proof against him, and never
+could convince a jury that I was in my right mind if I should tell my
+story in court. So I let that pass."
+
+"It was a miraculous deliverance from death!" Agnes exclaimed, taking
+her breath freely again. Tears mounted to her eyes as she measured Dr.
+Slavens' rugged frame as if with a new interest in beholding a common
+pattern which had withstood so much.
+
+He told her of meeting Mackenzie, and of finding the lost die; of the
+raid they had made by means of it on Shanklin's money; of his discovery
+of the midnight extra in the pockets of the gambler's coat.
+
+"So there you have it all," said he, smiling in embarrassment as if the
+relation of so much about himself seemed inexcusable. "Anyway, all of
+the first part of the story. The rest is all on dry land, and not
+interesting at all."
+
+"But you hadn't had time to look over the land; you didn't know the good
+locations from the worthless," said she. "How did you pick out the claim
+you filed on?"
+
+"Well, there's a little more of the story, it seems, after all. There
+was a plot between Shanklin and another to file Peterson on a certain
+tract and then buy him out, I suppose."
+
+He told her of the telegram signed "Jerry," and of Shanklin's reply.
+
+"So I concluded," he said, "that if the land described by their numbers
+was valuable to them it would be valuable to me. That my guess was good,
+I had proof when I filed. The chap who was piloting Peterson up to the
+window, and who I suspect was the 'Jerry' of the message, wanted to know
+where I got the figures. He wasn't a bit nice about it, either."
+
+A swift pallor overspread Agnes Horton's face; a look of fright stood in
+her eyes.
+
+"Was he a tall man, dark, with heavy eyebrows?" she inquired, waiting
+his answer with parted lips.
+
+"That fits him," said he. "Do you know him?"
+
+"It's Jerry Boyle, the Governor's son. He is Walker's friend; Walker
+brought him to camp the day after you disappeared. He had an invitation
+for Mrs. Reed and her party from his mother--you know they had been
+expecting it. And he said--he said----"
+
+"He said----"
+
+"That is, he told Walker that he saw you--_drunk_ at two o'clock that
+morning."
+
+"Hum-m," rumbled the doctor, running his hands through his hair. "Hum-m!
+I thought I knew that voice!"
+
+He got to his feet in his agitation. Agnes rose quickly, placing her
+hand on his arm.
+
+"Was he the other man?" she asked.
+
+"Well, it's a serious charge to lay against the Governor's son," he
+replied, "but I'm afraid he was the other man."
+
+There was such a look of consternation in her face that he sought to
+calm her.
+
+"He's not likely to go any further with it, though," Slavens added.
+
+"Oh, you don't know him. You don't know him!" Agnes protested
+earnestly.
+
+He searched her face with a quick glance.
+
+"Do you?" he asked, calmly.
+
+"There is something bad in his face--something hiding, it seems to me,"
+she said, without show of conscious evasion.
+
+"I'll call him, no matter what move he makes," Slavens declared, looking
+speculatively across the gorge. "Look how high the sun is up the wall
+over yonder. I think we'd better be going back."
+
+"Oh, I've kept you too long," she cried in self-reproach. "And to think
+you were in the saddle all night."
+
+"Yes; I lost the trail and rode a good many miles out of the way," said
+he. "But for that I'd have been on hand an hour sooner."
+
+"Well, you were in time, anyway."
+
+"And I've drawn blindly," he laughed. "I've got a piece of land marked
+'Grazing,' on the chart. It may be worth a fortune, and it may be worth
+twenty cents an acre. But I'm going to see it through. When are you
+going to file?"
+
+"My number comes on the fifth day, but lapses may bring me in line
+tomorrow," she answered. "Smith, the stage-driver, knows of a piece
+adjoining the one he has selected for himself, if nobody 'beats him to
+it,' as he says. He has given me the numbers, and I'm going to take his
+word for it. About half of it can be irrigated, and it fronts on the
+river. The rest is on the hills."
+
+"I hope you may get it. Smith ought to know what's good in this country
+and what isn't. When you have it you'll lead on the water and plant the
+rose?"
+
+"And plant the rose," she repeated softly.
+
+"Don't you think," he asked, taking her hand tenderly as she walked by
+his side, "that you'd better let me do the rough work for you now?"
+
+"You are too generous, and too trusting in one unknown," she faltered.
+
+The beat of hoofs around the sharp turn in the road where it led out
+into the valley in which Meander lay, fell sharp and sudden on their
+ears. There the way was close-hemmed with great boulders, among which it
+turned and wound, and they scarcely had time to find a standing-place
+between two riven shoulders of stone when the horseman swept around the
+turn at a gallop.
+
+He rode crouching in his saddle as if to reach forward and seize some
+fleeing object of pursuit, holding his animal in such slack control that
+he surely must have ridden them down if they had not given him the
+entire way. His hat was blown back from his dark face, which bore a
+scowl, and his lips were moving as if he muttered as he rode. Abreast of
+the pair he saw them where they stood, and touched his hat in salute.
+
+In the dust that he left behind they resumed their way. Dr. Slavens had
+drawn Agnes Horton's hand through his arm; he felt that it was cold and
+trembling. He looked at her, perplexity in his kind eyes.
+
+"That's the man who stood with Peterson at the head of the line," he
+said.
+
+"Yes; Jerry Boyle," she whispered, looking behind her fearfully.
+"Let's hurry on! I'm afraid," she added with the ineffectiveness of
+dissimulation, "that I've kept you from your sleep too long. Together
+with your awful experience and that long ride, you must be shattered for
+the want of rest."
+
+"Yet I could stand up under a good deal more," he rejoined, his thoughts
+trailing Jerry Boyle up the shadowy gorge. "But I was asking you, before
+that fellow broke in----"
+
+She raised her hand appealingly.
+
+"Don't, please. Please--not now!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+SENTIMENT AND NAILS
+
+
+Vast changes had come over the face of that land in a few days. Every
+quarter-section within reach of water for domestic uses had its tent or
+its dugout in the hillside or its hastily built cabin of planks. Where
+miles of unpeopled desert had stretched lonely and gray a week before,
+the smoke of three thousand fires rose up each morning now, proclaiming
+a new domain in the kingdom of husbandry.
+
+On the different levels of that rugged country, men and women had
+planted their tent-poles and their hopes. Unacquainted with its rigors,
+they were unappalled by the hardships, which lay ahead of them, dimly
+understood. For that early autumn weather was benignant, and the sun was
+mellow on the hills.
+
+Speculation had not turned out as profitable as those who had come to
+practice it had expected. Outside of the anxiety of Jerry Boyle and
+others to get possession of the apparently worthless piece of land upon
+which Dr. Slavens had filed, there were no offers for the relinquishment
+of homesteads. That being the case, a great many holders of low numbers
+failed to file. They wanted, not homes, but something without much
+endeavor, with little investment and no sweat. So they had passed on to
+prey upon the thrifty somewhere else, leaving the land to those whose
+hearts were hungry for it because it _was_ land, with the wide horizon
+of freedom around it, and a place to make home.
+
+And these turned themselves to bravely leveling with road-scrapers and
+teams the hummocks where the sagebrush grew, bringing in surveyors to
+strike the level for them in the river-shore, plotting ditches to carry
+the water to their fields. Many of them would falter before the fight
+was done; many would lose heart in the face of such great odds before
+the green blessing of alfalfa should rise out of the sullen ground.
+
+Many a widow was there, whose heart was buried in a grave back East, and
+many a gray man, making his first independent start. Always the West has
+held up its promise of freedom to men, and the hope of it has led them
+farther than the hope of gold.
+
+About midway between Meander and Comanche, Agnes Horton was located on
+the land which Smith had selected for her. Smith had retired from
+driving the stage and had established a sort of commercial center on his
+homestead, where he had a store for supplying the settlers' needs. He
+also had gone into the business of contracting to clear lands of
+sagebrush and level them for irrigation, having had a large experience
+in that work in other parts of the state.
+
+Agnes had pitched her tent on the river-bank, in a pleasant spot where
+there was plenty of grazing for her horse. Just across her line, and
+only a few hundred yards up-stream, a family was encamped, putting up a
+permanent home, making a reckless inroad among the cottonwoods which
+grew along the river on their land. Across the stream, which was
+fordable there, a young man and his younger wife, with the saddle-marks
+of the city on them, had their white nest. Agnes could hear the bride
+singing early in the morning, when the sun came up and poured its melted
+gold over that hopeful scene, with never a cloud before its face.
+
+Twenty miles farther along, toward Comanche, Dr. Slavens had pitched his
+tent among the rocks on the high, barren piece of land which he had
+selected blindly, guided by Hun Shanklin's figures. He was not a little
+surprised, and at the same time cheered and encouraged, to find, when he
+came to locating it, that it was the spot where they had seen Shanklin
+and another horseman on the afternoon of their stage excursion, when the
+two had been taken by Smith as men of evil intent, and the doctor had
+been called to the box to handle the lines.
+
+His neighbors in the rich valley below him regarded him with doubt of
+his balance, and that was a current suspicion up and down the river
+among those who did not know the story. But the politicians in Meander,
+and those who were on hand before the filing began, who knew how Jerry
+Boyle had nursed Axel Peterson, and how he had dropped the Scandinavian
+when the stranger rode up unexpectedly and filed on Number One, believed
+that the doctor had held inside information, and that his claim was
+worth millions.
+
+But if the quarter-section contained anything of value, there was no
+evidence of it that Dr. Slavens could find. It was about the crudest and
+most unfinished piece of earth that he ever had seen outside the
+Buckhorn Canyon. It looked as if the materials for making something on a
+tremendous pattern had been assembled there, thrown down promiscuously,
+and abandoned.
+
+Ledges of red rock, which seemed as if fires had scorched them for ages,
+stood edgewise in the troubled earth, their seamed faces toward the sky.
+It was as if nature had put down that job temporarily, to hurry off and
+finish the river, or the hills beyond the river, and never had found
+time to come back. Tumbled fragments of stone, huge as houses, showing
+kinship with nothing in their surroundings, stood here thickly in a
+little cup between the seared hills, and balanced there upon the sides
+of buttes among the streaks of blue shale.
+
+A little grass grew here and there in carpet-size splotches, now yellow
+and dry, while that in the valley was at its best. Spiked plants, which
+looked tropical, and which were as green during the rigors of winter as
+during the doubtful blessings of summer, stood on the slopes, their
+thousand bayonets guarding against trespass where only pressing
+necessity could drive a human foot. Sheep-sage, which grew low upon the
+ground, and unostentatious and dun, was found here, where no flocks came
+to graze; this was the one life-giving thing which sprang from that
+blasted spot.
+
+The lowest elevation on the doctor's claim was several hundred feet
+above the river, from which he hauled the water which he drank and used
+for culinary purposes. If there was wealth in the land and rocks, nature
+had masked it very well indeed. The pick and the hammer revealed
+nothing; long hours of prying and exploring yielded no gleam of metal to
+confirm his fast-shrinking belief that he had pitched on something
+good.
+
+His only comfort in those first days was the thought of the money which
+he had taken from Shanklin, with the aid of the gambler's own honest
+little die. That cash was now safe in the bank at Meander. There was
+enough of it, everything else failing, to take him--and somebody--back
+to his own place when she was ready to go; enough to do that and get the
+automobile, take the world on its vain side, and pull success away from
+it. He was able for it now; no doubt of his ability to climb over any
+obstacle whatever remained after his wrestling match with the river in
+the Buckhorn Canyon. There was no job ahead of him that he could even
+imagine, as big as that.
+
+Nobody had come forward to make him an offer for his place. Jerry Boyle
+had not appeared, nothing had been seen of the man who accosted him at
+the window the morning he filed. Although he had remained in Meander two
+days after that event, nobody had approached him in regard to the land
+which so many had seemed anxious to get before it came into his
+ownership. Boyle he had not seen since the evening Dr. Slavens and Agnes
+met him in the gorge riding in such anxious haste.
+
+Perhaps the value of the claim, if value lay in it, was the secret of a
+few, and those few had joined forces to starve out his courage and hope.
+If nobody came forward with a voluntary offer for the land, it never
+would be worth proving up on and paying the government the price asked
+for it. All over that country there was better land to be had without
+cost.
+
+As the days slipped past and nobody appeared with ten thousand dollars
+bulging his pockets, Slavens began to talk to himself among the
+solitudes of his desert. He called himself a foremost example of
+stupidity and thick-headedness for not giving ear to the man who wanted
+to talk business the day he filed on that outcast corner of the earth.
+Then, growing stubborn, he would determine to pay the government the
+purchase price, clean up on it at once, and take title to it. Then, if
+it _had_ the stuff in it, they might come around with some sort of offer
+in time.
+
+No matter; he would stick to it himself until winter. That always was
+his final conclusion, influenced, perhaps, by a hope that the roughness
+of winter would speedily convince "somebody" that roses and dreams of
+roses belonged to the summer. He would have nothing more to pay on the
+homestead for a year. And much could happen in a year, in a day; even an
+hour.
+
+Slavens had a good tent in a sheltered place, which he believed he could
+make comfortable for winter, and he meant to send for some books.
+Meantime, he had tobacco to smoke and a rifle to practice with, and
+prospects ahead, no matter which way the cat might jump.
+
+The doctor's target practice was a strong contributing force to the
+general belief among his neighbors that he was deranged. They said he
+imagined that he was repelling invaders from his claim, which would be
+valuable, maybe, to a man who wanted to start a rattlesnake farm. But
+Slavens had a motive, more weighty than the pastime that this seemingly
+idle pursuit afforded. There was a time of settlement ahead between him
+and Jerry Boyle for the part the Governor's son had borne in his
+assault. When the day for that adjustment came, Slavens intended to seek
+it.
+
+Concerning Shanklin, he was in a degree satisfied with what he had done.
+The loss of that much money, he believed, was a greater drain on the old
+crook than a gallon of blood. Slavens felt that it hurt Shanklin in the
+gambler's one sensitive spot. There was a great deal owing to him yet
+from that man, in spite of what he had forced Shanklin to pay, and he
+meant to collect the balance before he left that state.
+
+So the rifle practice went ahead, day by day, supplemented by a turn now
+and then with Hun Shanklin's old black pistol, which Mackenzie had
+turned over to Slavens as part of his lawful spoil.
+
+While Dr. Slavens banged away among his rocks, not knowing whether he
+was a victim of his own impetuosity or the peculiarly favored son of
+fortune, Agnes Horton, in her tent beside the river, was undergoing an
+adjustment of vision which was assisting her to see startlingly things
+exactly as they were. The enchantment of distance had fallen away. When
+she came to grips with the land, then its wild unfriendliness was
+revealed, and the magnitude of the task ahead of her was made
+discouragingly plain.
+
+All over her cultivable strip of land which lay between the river and
+the hills, the gray sage grew in clumps, each cluster anchoring the soil
+around it in a little mound. Through many years the earth had blown and
+sifted around the sapless shrubs until they seemed buried to the ears,
+and hopeless of ever getting out again, but living on their gray life in
+a gray world, waiting for the best.
+
+All of this ground must be leveled before it could receive the benefits
+of irrigation, and the surprising thing to her was how much wood the
+land yielded during this operation. Each little sagebrush had at least
+twenty times as much timber under the earth as it had above, and each
+thick, tough root was a retarding and vexatious obstacle in the way of
+scraper and plow. Smith said it was sometimes necessary in that country
+to move three acres of land in order to make one.
+
+But Smith was enthusiastically for it. He kept asserting that it paid,
+and pointed to the small bit of agricultural land that there was in the
+whole expanse of that reservation, for an example, to prove his point.
+There was room for other industries, such as mining and grazing, but the
+man who could grow food and forage for the others was the one who would
+take down the money from the hook. That was Smith's contention.
+
+He told Agnes that she could lift enough water with a wheel in the river
+to irrigate a garden and more, but there was no need of putting in the
+wheel until spring. The rains of that season would bring up the seed,
+and while it was making the most of the moisture in the ground she could
+be setting her wheel.
+
+"A person's got to plan ahead in this country," said Smith. "You must
+know to a skinned knuckle just what you'll need a year, or five years,
+ahead here, if you ever make it go worth havin'. It ain't like it is
+back where you come from. There you can go it more or less hit-or-miss,
+and hit about as often as you miss. Here you've got to know."
+
+Smith was moving to organize the settlers along the river into a company
+to put in a canal which would water all their land, the chief capital to
+be elbow-grease; the work to be done that fall and winter. Smith was
+indeed the head and inspiration of all enterprise in that new place.
+People to whom that country was strange, and that included nearly all of
+them, looked to him for advice, and regarded with admiration and wonder
+his aptness in answering everything.
+
+Agnes was doubtful of the future, in spite of her big, brave talk to Dr.
+Slavens in the days before the drawing. Now that she had the land, and a
+better piece of it than she had hoped for, considering her high number,
+she felt weakly unfit to take it in hand and break it to the condition
+of docility in which it would tolerate fruit-trees, vines, and roses.
+
+It cheered her considerably, and renewed her faith in her sex, to see
+some of the women out with their teams, preparing their land for the
+seeding next spring. More than one of them had no man to lean on, and no
+money to hire one to take the rough edge off for her. In that respect
+Agnes contrasted her easier situation with theirs. She had the means,
+slender as they might be, indeed, to employ somebody to do the work in
+the field. But the roses she reserved for her own hands, putting them
+aside as one conceals a poem which one has written, or a hope of which
+he is afraid.
+
+In the first few days of her residence on her land, Agnes experienced
+all the changes of mercurial rising and falling of spirits, plans,
+dreams. Some days she saddled her horse, which she had bought under the
+doctor's guidance at Meander, and rode, singing, over the hills, exalted
+by the wild beauty of nature entirely unadorned. There was not yet a
+house in the whole of what had been the Indian Reservation, and there
+never had been one which could be properly called such.
+
+Here was a country, bigger than any one of several of the far eastern
+states, as yet unchanged by the art of man. The vastness of it, and the
+liberty, would lay hold of her at such times with rude power, making her
+feel herself a part of it, as old a part of it as its level-topped
+buttes and ramparts of riven stone.
+
+Then again it frightened her, giving her a feeling such as she
+remembered once when she found herself alone in a boat upon a great
+lake, with the shore left far behind and none in sight beyond the misty
+horizon. She seemed small then, and inadequate for the rough struggle
+that lay ahead.
+
+Smith noted this, and read the symptoms like a doctor.
+
+"You've got to keep your nerve," he advised, bluntly kind, "and not let
+the lonesomeness git a hold on you, Miss Horton."
+
+"The lonesomeness?" she echoed. It seemed a strange-sounding phrase.
+
+"It's a disease," Smith proceeded, "and I suppose you git it anywhere;
+but you git it harder here. I've seen men take it, and turn gray and
+lose their minds, runnin' sheep. After you once git over it you're
+broke. You wouldn't leave this country for a purty on a chain."
+
+"I hope I'll not get it," she laughed. "How do people act when they take
+the lonesomeness?"
+
+"Well, some acts one way and some acts another," said Smith. "Some mopes
+and run holler-eyed, and some kicks and complains and talk about 'God's
+country' till it makes you sick. Just like this wasn't as much God's
+country as any place you can name! It's all His'n when you come down to
+the p'int, I reckon. But how a woman acts when she takes it I can't so
+much say for I never knew but one that had it. She up and killed a
+man."
+
+"Oh, that was terrible! Did she lose her mind?"
+
+"Well, I don't know but you could say she did. You see she married a
+sheepman. He brought her out here from Omaha, and left her up there on
+the side of the mountain in a little log cabin above Meander while he
+went off foolin' around with them sheep, the way them fellers does. I
+tell you when you git sheep on the brain you don't eat at home more than
+once in three months. You live around in a sheep-wagon, cuttin' tails
+off of lambs, and all such fool things as that."
+
+"Why, do they cut the poor things' tails off?" she asked, getting the
+notion that Smith was having a little fun at her expense.
+
+"They all do it," he informed her, "to keep the sand and burrs out of
+'em. If they let 'em grow long they git so heavy with sand it makes 'em
+poor to pack 'em, they say, I don't know myself; I'm not a sheepman."
+
+"But why did she shoot a man? Because he cut off lambs' tails?"
+
+"No, she didn't," said Smith. "She went out of her head. The feller she
+shot was a storekeeper's son down in Meander, and he got to ridin' up
+there to talk to her and cheer her up. The lonesomeness it had such a
+hold on her, thinkin' about Omaha and houses, and pie-annos playin' in
+every one of 'em, that she up and run off with that feller when he
+promised to take her back there. They started to cut across to the U.P.
+in a wagon--more than a hundred miles. That night she come to her head
+when he got too fresh, and she had to shoot him to make him behave."
+
+"Her husband should have been shot, it seems to me, for leaving her that
+way," Agnes said.
+
+"A man orto stick to his wife in this country, specially if she's new to
+it and not broke," said Smith; "and if I had one, ma'am, I'd _stick_ to
+her."
+
+Smith looked at her as he said this, with conviction and deep
+earnestness in his eyes.
+
+"I'm sure you would," she agreed.
+
+"And I'd be kind to her," he declared.
+
+"There's no need to tell me that," she assured him. "You're kind to
+everybody."
+
+"And if she didn't like the name," Smith went on significantly, "I'd
+have it changed!"
+
+"I'm sure she'd like it--she'd be very ungrateful if she didn't," Agnes
+replied, somewhat amused by his earnestness, but afraid to show it. "I'm
+going to order lumber for my house in a day or two."
+
+Smith switched from sentiment to business in a flash.
+
+"Let me sell you the nails," he requested. "I can give 'em to you as
+cheap as you can git 'em in Meander."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"LIKE A WOLF"
+
+
+Agnes had been on her homestead almost a week. She was making a brave
+"stagger," as Smith described all amateurish efforts, toward cutting up
+some dry cottonwood limbs into stove-lengths before her tent on the
+afternoon that Jerry Boyle rode across the ford.
+
+While she had not forgotten him, she had begun to hope that he had gone
+back to Comanche, and his sudden appearance there gave her an unpleasant
+shock. He drew up near her with a friendly word, and dismounted with a
+cowboy swing to his long body and legs.
+
+"Well, Agnes, you dodged me in Meander," said he. "You've located quite
+a piece up the river and off the stage-road, haven't you?"
+
+"But not far enough, it seems," she answered, a little weariness in her
+voice, as of one who turns unwillingly to face at last something which
+has been put away for an evil day.
+
+"No need for us to take up old quarrels, Agnes," he chided with a show
+of gentleness.
+
+"I don't want to quarrel with you, Jerry; I never did quarrel with you,"
+she disclaimed.
+
+"'Misunderstandings' would be a better word then, I suppose," he
+corrected. "But you could have knocked me over with a feather when you
+repudiated me over there at Comanche that day. I suppose I should have
+known that you were under an alias before I made that break, but I
+didn't know it, Agnes, believe _me_."
+
+"How could you?" she said, irritably. "That was nothing; let it rest.
+But you understand that it was for the sake of others that the alias
+was--and is--used; not for my own."
+
+"Of course, Agnes. But what do you want to be wasting yourself on this
+rough country for? There are more suitable places in Wyoming for you
+than this lonesome spot. What's the object, anyhow?"
+
+"I am building here the City of Refuge," said she, "and its solitude
+will be its walls."
+
+"Ready for the time when _he_ comes back, I suppose?"
+
+She nodded assent slowly, as if grudging him that share of the knowledge
+of her inner life.
+
+"Poor old kid, you've got a job ahead of you!" he commiserated.
+
+A resentful flush crept into her face, but she turned aside, gathering
+her sticks as if to hide her displeasure. Boyle laughed.
+
+"Pardon the familiarity--'vulgar familiarity' you used to call
+it--Agnes. But 'what's bred in the bone,' you know."
+
+"It doesn't matter so much when there's no one else around, but it's
+awkward before people."
+
+"You wouldn't marry me on account of my tongue!" said he with sour
+reminiscence.
+
+"It wasn't so much that, Jerry," she chided, "and you know it perfectly
+well."
+
+"Oh, well, if a man does take a drink now and then----" he discounted.
+
+"But many drinks, and frequently, are quite different," she reproved.
+
+"We'll not fuss about it."
+
+"Far from it," she agreed.
+
+"I didn't come down to open old matters, although I suppose you thought
+that was my intention when you dodged me and stuck so close to that
+tin-horn doctor up at Meander."
+
+"It's comforting to know you haven't come for--_that_," said she,
+ignoring his coarse reference to Slavens.
+
+"No; things change a good deal in four years' time, even sentiment--and
+names."
+
+"But it wouldn't be asking too much to expect you to respect some of the
+changes?"
+
+"I don't suppose," he mused, "that many people around here care whether
+a man's name is the one he goes by, or whether it's the one he gets his
+mail under at the post-office at Comanche. That's generally believed to
+be a man's own business. Of course, he might carry it too far, but
+that's his own lookout."
+
+"Are you on your way to Comanche?" she asked.
+
+Boyle motioned her to the trunk of the cottonwood whose branches she had
+been chopping into fuel, with graceful and unspoken invitation to sit
+down and hear the tale of his projected adventures.
+
+"I've been wearing a pair of these high-heeled boots the past few days
+for the first time since I rode the range," he explained, "and they make
+my ankles tired when I stand around."
+
+He seated himself beside her on the fallen log.
+
+"No, I'm not going to Comanche," said he. "I came down here to see you.
+They gave me the worst horse in the stable at Meander, and he'll never
+be able to carry me back there without a long rest. I'll have to make
+camp by the river."
+
+She glanced at his horse, on the saddle of which hung, cowboy fashion, a
+bag of grub which also contained a frying-pan and coffeepot, she knew,
+from having seen many outfits like it in the stores at Comanche. A
+blanket was rolled behind the high cantle. As for the horse, it seemed
+as fresh and likely as if it had come three miles instead of thirty. She
+believed from that evidence that Jerry's talk about being forced to make
+camp was all contrived. He had come prepared for a stay.
+
+"I got into the habit of carrying those traps around with me when I was
+a kid," he explained, following her eyes, "and you couldn't drive me two
+miles away from a hotel without them. They come in handy, too, in a
+pinch like this, I'm here to tell you."
+
+"It's something like a wise man taking his coat, I suppose."
+
+"Now you've got it," commended Boyle.
+
+"But Smith, who used to drive the stage, could have fixed you up all
+right," she told him. "He's got a tent to lodge travelers in down by his
+new store. You must have seen it as you passed?"
+
+"Yes; and there's another crook!" said Boyle with plain feeling on the
+matter. "But I didn't come down here to see Smith or anybody else but
+you. It's business."
+
+He looked at her with severity in his dark face, as if to show her that
+all thoughts of tenderness and sentiment had gone out of his mind.
+
+"I'm listening," said she.
+
+"There's a man down here a few miles spreadin' himself around on a piece
+of property that belongs to me," declared Boyle, "and I want you to help
+me get him off."
+
+She looked at him in amazement.
+
+"I don't understand what you mean," said she.
+
+"Slavens."
+
+"Dr. Slavens? Why, he's on his own homestead, which he filed upon
+regularly. I can't see what you mean by saying it belongs to you."
+
+"I mean that he stole the description of that land at the point of a
+gun, that's what I mean. It belongs to me; I paid money for it; and I'm
+here to take possession."
+
+"You've got your information wrong," she denied indignantly. "Dr.
+Slavens didn't steal the description. More than that, he could make it
+pretty uncomfortable for certain people if he should bring charges of
+assault and intended murder against them, Mr. Jerry Boyle!"
+
+"Oh, cut out that high-handshake stuff, Miss Agnes Horton-Gates, or
+Gates-Horton, and come down to brass tacks! The time was when you could
+walk up and down over me like a piece of hall carpet, and I'd lie there
+and smile. That day's gone by. I've got wool on me now like a
+bellwether, and I'm shaggy at the flanks like a wolf. I can be as mean
+as a wolf, too, when the time comes. You can't walk up and down over me
+any more!"
+
+"Nobody wants to walk up and down over you!" she protested. "But if you
+want to put Dr. Slavens off that homestead, go and do it. You'll not
+draw me into any of your schemes and murderous plots, and you'll find
+Dr. Slavens very well able to take care of himself, too!"
+
+"Oh, sure he can!" scoffed Boyle. "You didn't seem to think so the time
+you turned Comanche inside out hunting him, when he was layin' drunk
+under a tent. I don't know what kind of a yarn he put up when he came
+back to you, but I've got the goods on that quack, I'll give you to
+understand!"
+
+Boyle was dropping his polish, which was only a superficial coating at
+the best. In the bone he was a cowboy, belonging to the type of those
+who, during the rustlers' war, hired themselves out at five dollars a
+day, and five dollars a head for every man they could kill. Boyle
+himself had been a stripling in those days, and the roughness of his
+training among a tribe of as desperate and unwashed villains as ever
+disgraced the earth underlay his fair exterior, like collar-welts on a
+horse which has been long at pasture.
+
+"I'm not under obligations to keep anybody's secrets in this country
+when it comes to that," Boyle reminded her.
+
+"It couldn't be expected of you," she sighed.
+
+"You're close to that feller," he pursued, "and he's as soft as cheese
+on you. All right; pool your troubles and go on off together for all I
+care, but before you turn another wheel you'll put the crowbar under
+that man that'll lift him off of that land; savvy? Well, that's what
+you'll do!"
+
+"You can spread it all up and down the river that I'm living here under
+an assumed name, and you may tell them anything else--all that is
+true--that you think you ought to tell, just as soon as you want to
+begin," she said, rising and moving away from him in scorn. "I'll not
+help you; I couldn't help you if I would."
+
+Boyle got up, his face in a scowl, and as she retreated toward her tent,
+followed her in his peggy, forward-tilting cowboy walk.
+
+"Say," he hailed, unveiling at once all the rudeness of his character,
+"come back here a minute and take your medicine!"
+
+She paused while he came up.
+
+"Jerry," said Agnes gently, turning upon him eyes full of sadness and
+lost hope, "get on your horse and go away. Don't force me to think worse
+of you than I have thought. Go away, Jerry; go away!"
+
+Boyle's face was flushed, and his naturally pop-eyed expression was
+greatly aggravated by his anger. It seemed that his eyes were straining
+to leap out, and had forced themselves forward until the whites showed
+beyond the lids.
+
+"Yes, that Slavens is one of these men that'd eat hot rocks for the
+woman he loves," he sneered. "Well, it's up to him to show how far he'll
+go for you."
+
+"It's unworthy of even you, Jerry, to talk like that," she reproved. "As
+far as I know, I am nothing more to Dr. Slavens than any other friend.
+If you want his claim, why don't you go down there and buy it, as you
+were ready to buy it from Peterson if you could have filed him on it?"
+
+"Because I can get it cheaper," said Boyle. "I'll not give him ten cents
+for it. It's your job to go and tell him that I want him to go over to
+Meander and pay up on that land, and I'll furnish the money for it, but
+before he pays he must sign a relinquishment to me."
+
+"I'll not do it!" she declared.
+
+"If you won't lead, I'll have to try spurs, and I don't like to do that,
+Agnes, for the sake of old days."
+
+"Forget the old days."
+
+"I'll go you," said he.
+
+"There's nothing that you can tell these people about me that will lower
+me much in their estimation. None of them, except Smith, knows me very
+well, anyhow. I don't care so much for their opinion, for I'm not here
+to please them."
+
+Boyle placed his hand on her shoulder and looked gravely into her face.
+
+"But if I was to show proof to the land commissioner that you'd got
+possession of a homestead here through fraud and perjury, then where
+would you land?" he asked.
+
+"It isn't true!" she cried, fear rising within her and driving away the
+color of courage which to that moment had flown in her face.
+
+"It is true, Agnes," he protested. "You registered under the name of
+Agnes Horton and made affidavit that it was your lawful name; you
+entered this land under the same name, and took title to it in the
+preliminaries, and that's fraud and perjury, if I know anything about
+the definition of either term."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me, Jerry," she faltered, "that I'd have to go to
+prison if Dr. Slavens wouldn't consent to save me by giving up his claim
+to you?"
+
+"Well, the disgrace of it would amount to about the same, even if a jury
+refused to send you up," said he brutally, grinning a little over the
+sight of her consternation. "You'd be indicted, you see, by the Federal
+grand jury, and arrested by the United States marshal, and locked up.
+Then you'd be tried, and your picture would be put in the papers, and
+the devil would be to pay all around. You'd lose your homestead anyhow,
+and your right to ever take another. Then where would the City of Refuge
+be?"
+
+"But you wouldn't do it," she appealed, placing her hand on his arm,
+looking into his face beseechingly, the sudden weight of her trouble
+making her look old. "You wouldn't do it, Jerry, would you?"
+
+"Wouldn't I?" he mocked disdainfully. "Well, you watch me!"
+
+"It's a cowardly way to use an advantage over a woman!"
+
+"Never mind," grinned Boyle. "I'll take care of that. If that tin-horn
+doctor wants to toe the line and do what I say to keep you out of a
+Federal pen, then let him step lively. If he does it, then you can stay
+here in peace as long as you live, for anything I'll ever say or do.
+You'll be Agnes Horton to me as long as my tongue's in workin' order,
+and I'll never know any more about where you came from or what passed
+before in your history than Smith down there."
+
+Agnes stood with her head drooping, as if the blackmailer's words had
+taken away the last shoring prop of her ambition and hope. After a while
+she raised her white, pained face.
+
+"And if I refuse to draw the doctor into this to save myself?" she
+asked.
+
+"Then I guess you'll have to suffer, old kid!" said he.
+
+Boyle saw the little tremor which ran over her shoulders like a chill,
+and smiled when he read it as the outward signal of inward terror. He
+had no doubt in the world that she would lay hold of his alternative to
+save herself and her plans for others, as quickly as he, coward at
+heart, would sacrifice a friend for his own comfort or gain.
+
+Yet Agnes had no thought in that moment of sacrificing Dr. Slavens and
+his prospects, which the unmasking of Boyle's hand now proved to be
+valuable, to save herself. There must be some other way, she thought,
+and a few hours to turn it in her mind, and reflect and plan, might show
+her the road to her deliverance. She did not doubt that the penalty for
+what she had done would be as heavy as Boyle threatened.
+
+"So it's up to you, handle first," exulted Boyle, breaking her
+reflections. "I'll ride off down the river a little piece and go into
+camp, and tomorrow evening I'll come up for your answer from Slavens.
+It's about twenty miles from here to his claim, and you can make it
+there and back easy if you'll start early in the morning. So it's all up
+to you, and the quicker the sooner, as the man said."
+
+With that, Boyle rode away. According to her newly formed habit, Agnes
+gathered her wood and made a fire in the little stove outside her tent,
+for the day was wasting and the shadow of the western hills was reaching
+across the valley.
+
+Life had lost its buoyancy for her in that past unprofitable hour. It
+lay around her now like a thing collapsed, which she lacked the warm
+breath to restore. Still, the evening was as serene as past evenings;
+the caress of the wind was as soft as any of the south's slow breathings
+of other days. For it is in the heart that men make and dismantle their
+paradises, and from the heart that the fountain springs which lends its
+color to every prospect that lies beyond.
+
+Boyle's dust had not settled before Smith came by, jangling a
+road-scraper behind his team. He was coming from his labor of leveling a
+claim, skip one, up the river. He drew up, his big red face as refulgent
+as the setting sun, a smile on it which dust seemed only to soften and
+sweat to illumine. He had a hearty word for her, noting the depression
+of her spirit.
+
+After passing the commonplaces, a ceremony which must be done with Smith
+whether one met him twice or twenty times a day, he waved his hand down
+the river in the direction that Boyle had gone.
+
+"Feller come past here a little while ago?" he asked, knowing very well
+that Boyle had left but a few minutes before.
+
+"He has just gone," she told him.
+
+"Jerry Boyle," nodded Smith; "the Governor's son. He ain't got no use
+for me, and I tell you, if I had a woman around the place----"
+
+Smith hung up his voice there as if something had crossed his mind. He
+stood looking down the valley in a speculative way.
+
+"Yes?" she inquired, respectfully recalling him.
+
+"Yes," repeated Smith. "If I had a woman around the house I'd take a
+shot at that feller as quick as I would at a lobo-wolf!"
+
+Smith jangled on, his scraper making toadish hops and tortoise-like tips
+and amblings over the inequalities in the way. She looked after him, a
+new light shining from her eyes, a new passion stirring her bosom, where
+his words had fallen like a spark upon tinder.
+
+So that was the estimation in which men held Jerry Boyle--men like
+Smith, who moved along the lower levels of life and smoothed over the
+rough places for others to pass by and by! It must be but the reflection
+of thought in higher planes--"If I had a woman around the place!" Such
+then was the predatory reputation of Jerry Boyle, who was capable of
+dishonorable acts in more directions than one, whose very presence was a
+taint.
+
+And he would ride back there tomorrow evening, perhaps after the sun had
+set, perhaps after darkness had fallen, to receive the answer to his
+dishonorable proposal that she sacrifice her friend to save herself from
+his spite, and the consequences of her own misguided act.
+
+"If I had a woman around the place!"
+
+The spark in the tinder was spreading, warming, warming, glowing into a
+fierce, hot flame. Like a wolf--like a wolf--Smith would take a shot at
+him--like a wolf! Smith had compared him to a wolf; had said he could be
+as mean as a wolf--and if there was a woman around the place!
+
+She went into the tent, the blood rising hot to her temples, beating,
+singing in her ears. The revolver which she had brought with her on the
+doctor's advice hung at the head of her cot. With it strapped around her
+she went back to her stove, which she fed with a wild vigor, exulting in
+seeing the flames pour out of the pipe and the thin sides grow red.
+
+"Like a wolf--like a wolf!"
+
+The words pounded in her mind, leaped through her circulation like
+quickening fire.
+
+"Like a wolf--if there was a woman around the house----"
+
+And a man like that was coming back, perhaps when the darkness had let
+down over that still valley, expecting her to say that she had killed
+the hope of her dearest friend to shield herself from his smirched and
+guilty hand!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+AN ARGUMENT ENDS
+
+
+Morning found Agnes only the more firmly determined to bear her troubles
+alone. Smith came by early. He looked curiously at the revolver, which
+she still carried at her waist, but there was approval in his eyes. The
+sight of the weapon seemed to cheer Smith, and make him easier in his
+mind about something that had given him unrest. She heard him singing as
+he passed on to his work. Across the river the bride was singing also,
+and there seemed to be a song in even the sound of the merry axes among
+the cottonwoods, where her neighboring settler and his two lank sons
+were chopping and hewing the logs for their cabin. But there was no song
+in her own heart, where it was needed most.
+
+She knew that Jerry Boyle had camped somewhere near the stage-road,
+where he could watch her coming and going to carry the demand on Dr.
+Slavens which he had left with her. He would be watching the road even
+now, and he would watch all day, or perhaps ride up there to learn the
+reason when he failed to see her pass. She tied back the flaps of her
+tent to let the wind blow through, and to show any caller that she was
+not at home, then saddled her horse and rode away into the hills. It
+needed a day of solitude, she thought, to come to a conclusion on the
+question how she was to face it out with Jerry Boyle. Whether to stay
+and fight the best that she was able, or to turn and fly, leaving all
+her hopes behind, was a matter which must be determined before night.
+
+In pensive mood she rode on, giving her horse its head, but following a
+general course into the east. As her wise animal picked its way over the
+broken ground, she turned the situation in her mind.
+
+There was no doubt that she had been indiscreet in the manner of taking
+up her homestead, but she could not drive herself to the belief that she
+had committed a moral crime. And the doctor. He would drop all his
+prospects in the land that he held if she should call on him, she well
+believed. He was big enough for a sacrifice like that, with never a
+question in his honest eyes to cloud the generosity of the act. If she
+had him by to advise her in this hour, and to benefit by his wisdom and
+courage, she sighed, how comfortable it would be.
+
+Perhaps she should have gone, mused she, pursuing this thought, to his
+place, and put the thing before him in all its ugliness, with no
+reservations, no attempts to conceal or defend. He could have told her
+how far her act was punishable. Perhaps, at the most, it would mean no
+more than giving up the claim, which was enough, considering all that
+she had founded on it. Yes, she should have ridden straight to Dr.
+Slavens; that would have been the wiser course.
+
+Considering whether she would have time to go and return that day,
+wasted as the morning was, she pulled up her horse and looked around to
+see if she could estimate by her location the distance from her camp.
+That she had penetrated the country east of the river farther than ever
+before, was plain at a glance. The surroundings were new to her. There
+was more vegetation, and marks of recent grazing everywhere.
+
+She mounted the hill-crest for a wider survey, and there in a little
+valley below her she saw a flock of sheep grazing, while farther along
+the ridge stood a sheep-wagon, a strange and rather disconcerting figure
+striding up and down beside it.
+
+Doubtless it was the shepherd, she understood. But a queer figure he
+made in that place; and his actions were unusual, to say the least, in
+one of his sedate and melancholy calling. He was a young man, garbed in
+a long, black coat, tattered more or less about the skirts and open in
+front, displaying his red shirt. His hair was long upon his collar, and
+his head was bare.
+
+As he walked up and down a short beat near his wagon, the shepherd held
+in his hand a book, which he placed before his eyes with a flourish now,
+and then with a flourish withdrew it, meantime gesticulating with his
+empty hand in the most extravagant fashion. His dog, sharper of
+perception than its master, lay aside from him a little way, its ears
+pricked up, its sharp nose lifted, sniffing the scent of the stranger.
+But it gave no alarm.
+
+Agnes felt that the man must be harmless, whatever his peculiarities.
+She rode forward, bent on asking him how far she had strayed from the
+river. As she drew near, she heard him muttering and declaiming,
+illustrating his arguments of protestation with clenched fist and
+tossing head, his long hair lifting from his temples in the wind.
+
+He greeted her respectfully, without sign of perturbation or surprise,
+as one well accustomed to the society of people above the rank of
+shepherd.
+
+"My apparent eccentric behavior at the moment when you first saw me,
+madam, or miss, perhaps, most likely I should say, indeed----"
+
+Agnes nodded, smiling, to confirm his penetration.
+
+"So, as I was saying, my behavior may have led you into doubt of my
+balance, and the consequent question of your safety in my vicinity," he
+continued.
+
+"Nothing of the kind, I assure you," said she. "I thought you might be
+a--a divinity student by your dress, or maybe a candidate for the legal
+profession."
+
+"Neither," he disclaimed. "I am a philosopher, and at the moment you
+first beheld me I was engaged in a heated controversy with Epictetus,
+whose _Discourses_ I hold in my hand. We are unable to agree on many
+points, especially upon the point which he assumes that he has made in
+the discussion of grief. He contends that when one is not blamable for
+some calamity which bereaves him or strips him of his possessions, grief
+is unmanly, regret inexcusable.
+
+"'How?' say I, meeting him foot to foot on the controversy, 'in case I
+lose my son, my daughter, my wife--the wife of my soul and heart--shall
+I not grieve? shall I not be permitted the solace of a tear?'
+
+"And Epictetus: 'Were you to blame for the disease which cut them off?
+Did you light the fire which consumed them, or sink the ship which
+carried them down?'
+
+"'No,' I answer; 'but because I'm blameless shall I become inhuman, and
+close my heart to all display of tenderness and pain?'
+
+"And there we have it, miss, over and over again. Ah, I am afraid we
+shall never agree!"
+
+"It is lamentable," Agnes agreed, believing that the young man's life in
+the solitudes had unsettled his mind. "I never agree with him on that
+myself."
+
+The philosopher's hollow, weathered face glowed as she gave this
+testimony. He drew a little nearer to her, shaking the long, dark, loose
+hair back from his forehead.
+
+"I am glad that you don't think me demented," said he. "Many, who do not
+understand the deeper feelings of the soul, do believe it. The
+hollow-minded and the unstable commonly lose their small balance of
+reason in these hills, miss, with no companionship, month in and month
+out, but a dog and the poor, foolish creatures which you see in the
+valley yonder. But to one who is a philosopher, and a student of the
+higher things, this situation offers room for the expansion of the soul.
+Mine has gone forth and enlarged here; it has filled the universe."
+
+"But a man of your education and capabilities," she suggested, thinking
+to humor him, "ought to be more congenially situated, it seems to me.
+There must be more remunerative pursuits which you could follow?"
+
+"Remuneration for one may not be reward for another," he told her. "I
+shall remain here until my mission is accomplished."
+
+He turned to his flock, and, with a motion of the arm, sped his dog to
+fetch in some stragglers which seemed straying off waywardly over the
+crest of the opposite hill. As he stood so she marked his ascetic
+gauntness, and noted that the hand which swung at his side twitched and
+clenched, and that the muscles of his cleanly shaved jaws swelled as he
+locked his teeth in determination.
+
+"Your mission?" she asked, curious regarding what it might be, there in
+the solitude of those barren hills.
+
+"I see that you are armed," he observed irrelevantly, as if the subject
+of his mission had been put aside. "I have a very modern weapon of that
+pattern in the wagon, but there is little call for the use of it here.
+Perhaps you live in the midst of greater dangers than I?"
+
+"I'm one of the new settlers over in the river bottom," she explained.
+"I rode up to ask you how far I'd strayed from home."
+
+"It's about seven miles across to the river, I should estimate," he told
+her. "I graze up to the boundary of the reservation, and it's called
+five miles from there."
+
+"Thank you; I think I'll be going back then."
+
+"Will you do me the favor to look at this before you go?" he asked,
+drawing a folded paper from the inner pocket of his coat and handing it
+to her.
+
+It was a page from one of those so-called _Directories_ which small
+grafters go about devising in small cities and out-on-the-edge
+communities, in which the pictures of the leading citizens are printed
+for a consideration. The page had been folded across the center; it was
+broken and worn.
+
+"You may see the person whose portrait is presented there," said he,
+"and if you should see him, you would confer a favor by letting me
+know."
+
+"Why, I saw him yesterday!" she exclaimed in surprise. "It's Jerry
+Boyle!"
+
+The sheep-herder's eyes brightened. A glow came into his brown face.
+
+"You do well to go armed where that wolf ranges!" said he. "You know
+him--you saw him yesterday. Is he still there?"
+
+"Why, I think he's camped somewhere along the river," she told him,
+unable to read what lay behind the excitement in the man's manner.
+
+He folded the paper and returned it to his pocket, his breath quick upon
+his lips. Suddenly he laid hold of her bridle with one hand, and with
+the other snatched the revolver from her low-swinging holster.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," said he; "but I want to know. Tell me true--lean
+over and whisper in my ear. Is he your friend?"
+
+"No, no! Far from it!" she whispered, complying with his strange order
+out of fear that his insanity, flaming as it was under the spur of some
+half-broken memory, might lead him to take her life.
+
+He gave her back the revolver and released the horse.
+
+"Go," said he. "But don't warn him, as you value your own life! My
+mission here is to kill that man!"
+
+Perhaps it was a surge of unworthiness which swept her, lifting her
+heart like hope. The best of us is unworthy at times; the best of us is
+base. Selfishness is the festering root of more evil than gold. In that
+flash it seemed to her that Providence had raised up an arm to save her.
+She leaned over, her face bright with eagerness.
+
+"Has he wronged you, too?" she asked.
+
+He lifted his hand to his forehead slowly, as if in a gesture of pain.
+The blood had drained from his face; his cheek-bones were marked white
+through his wind-hardened skin.
+
+"It's not a subject to be discussed with a woman, sir," said he
+absently. "There was a wife--somewhere there was a wife! This man came
+between us. I was not then what I am today--a shepherd on the hills....
+But I must keep you here; you will betray me and warn him if I let you
+go!" he cried, rousing suddenly, catching her bridle again.
+
+"No, I'll not warn him," Agnes assured him.
+
+"If I thought you would"--he hesitated, searching her face with his
+fevered eyes, in which red veins showed as in the eyes of an angry
+dog--"I'd have to sacrifice you!"
+
+Agnes felt that she never could draw her weapon in time, in case the
+eccentric tried to take it away again, and her heart quailed as she
+measured the distance she would have to ride before the fall of the
+ground would protect her, even if she should manage to break his hold on
+the bridle, and gallop off while he was fetching his pistol from the
+wagon.
+
+"I'll not warn him," said she, placing her hand on his arm. "I give you
+my sincere word that I'll do nothing to save him from what I feel to be
+your just vengeance."
+
+"Go, before I doubt you again!" he cried, slapping her horse with his
+palm as he let go the bridle.
+
+From the tip of the hill she looked back. He had disappeared--into the
+wagon, she supposed; and she made haste to swerve from the straight
+course to put another hill between them, in case he might run after her,
+his mad mind again aflame with the belief that she would cheat him of
+his revenge.
+
+Agnes arrived in camp full of tremors and contradictory emotions. One
+minute she felt that she should ride and warn Boyle, guilty as he might
+be, and deserving of whatever punishment the hand of the wronged man
+might be able to inflict; the next she relieved herself of this impulse
+by arguing that the insane sheep-herder was plainly the instrument of
+fate--she lacked the temerity, after the first flush, to credit it to
+Providence--lifted up to throw his troubles between her and her own.
+
+She sat in the sun before her tent thinking it over, for and against,
+cooling considerably and coming to a saner judgment of the situation.
+Every little while she looked toward the hills, to see if the shepherd
+had followed her. She had seen no horse in the man's camp; he could not
+possibly make it on foot, under two hours, even if he came at all, she
+told herself.
+
+Perhaps it was an imaginary grievance, based upon the reputation which
+Boyle had earned for himself; maybe the poor, declaiming philosopher had
+forgotten all about it by now, and had returned to his discourses and
+his argument. She brewed a pot of tea, for the shadows were marking
+noonday, and began to consider riding down the river to find Boyle and
+tell him of the man's threat, leaving him to follow his own judgment in
+the matter. His conscience would tell him whether to stand or fly.
+
+Strong as her resentment was against the man who had come into her plans
+so unexpectedly and thrown them in a tangle, she felt that it would be
+wrong to her own honesty to conceal from him the knowledge of his
+danger. Perhaps there remained manliness enough in him to cause him to
+withdraw his avaricious scheme to oust Dr. Slavens in return for a
+service like that. She determined at last to seek Boyle in his camp.
+
+She brought up her horse and saddled it, took a look around camp to see
+that everything was in shape--for she liked to leave things tidy, in
+case some of the neighbors should stop in--and was about to mount, when
+a man's head and shoulders appeared from behind her own cottonwood log.
+A glance showed her that it was the sheep-herder. His head was bare, his
+wild hair in his eyes.
+
+He got to his feet, his pistol in his hand.
+
+"I watched you," said he, sheathing the weapon, as if he had changed his
+mind about the use of it. "I knew you'd go!"
+
+"But I didn't intend to when I parted from you up there on the hill,"
+she declared, greatly confused over being caught in this breach of faith
+with even a crazy man.
+
+"I considered that, too," said the philosopher. "But I watched you. I'll
+never be fool enough to entirely trust a woman again. You all lie!"
+
+She wondered how he had arrived there so quickly and silently, for he
+gave no evidence of fatigue or heat. She did not know the dry endurance
+which a life like his builds up in a man. Sheep-herders in that country
+are noted for their fleetness. It is a common saying of them that their
+heels are as light as their heads.
+
+But there he was, at any rate, and her good intentions toward Boyle must
+be surrendered. Conscience had a palliative in the fact that she had
+meant to go.
+
+"Heaven knows I have as little reason to wish him well as you!" said
+she, speaking in low voice, as if to herself, as she began to undo the
+saddle girth.
+
+"Stay here, then," said the sheep-herder, watching her with glistening
+eyes. "I'll kill him for both of us! Where is his camp?"
+
+"I don't know," she replied, shuddering.
+
+The demented shepherd's way of speaking of taking a human life, even
+though a worthless one, or a vicious one, was eager and hungry. He
+licked his lips like a dog.
+
+"You said he was camped on the river. Where?"
+
+"I don't know," she returned again.
+
+"I'll tell you," said he, staying her hand as she tugged on a strap.
+"Both of us will go! You shall ride, and I'll run beside you. But"--he
+bent over, grinding his teeth and growling between them--"you sha'n't
+help kill him! That's for me, alone!"
+
+She drew back from his proposal with a sudden realization of what a
+desperately brutal thing this unstrung creature was about to do,
+with a terrible arraignment of self-reproach because she had made no
+effort to dissuade him or place an obstacle in the way of accomplishing
+his design. It was not strange, thought she, with a revulsion of
+self-loathing, that he accepted her as a willing accomplice and
+proposed that she bear a hand. Even her effort to ride and find Boyle
+had been half-hearted. She might have gone, she told herself, before
+the herder arrived.
+
+"No, no! I couldn't go! I couldn't!" she cried, forgetting that she was
+facing an unbalanced man, all the force of pleading in her voice.
+
+"No, you want to kill him yourself!" he charged savagely. "Give me that
+horse--give it to me, I tell you! I'll go alone!"
+
+He sprang into the saddle, not waiting to adjust the stirrups to his
+long legs. With his knees pushed up like a jockey's, he rode off, the
+pointer of chance, or the cunning of his own inscrutable brain,
+directing him the way Boyle had gone the evening before.
+
+His going left her nerveless and weak. She sat and watched him out of
+sight beyond the cottonwoods and willows, thinking what a terrible thing
+it was to ride out with the cold intention of killing a man. This man
+was irresponsible; the strength of his desire for revenge had
+overwhelmed his reason. The law would excuse him of murder, for in the
+dimness of his own mind there was no conception of crime.
+
+But what excuse could there be for one who sat down in deliberation----
+
+Base Jerry Boyle might be, ready to sacrifice unfeelingly the innocent
+for his own pleasure and gain, ready to strike at their dearest hopes,
+ready to trample under his feet the green gardens of their hearts'
+desire; yet, who should sit in judgment on him, or seek a justification
+in his deeds to--to---- Even then she could not bring her thoughts to
+express it, although her wild heart had sung over it less than
+twenty-four hours before.
+
+A shiver of sickness turned her cold. With quick, nervous fingers she
+unbuckled the belt which held her revolver and cartridges; she carried
+the weapon into the tent and flung it to the ground.
+
+At dusk the sheep-herder returned, with the horse much blown.
+
+"He had been there, but he's gone," he announced. "I followed him
+eastward along the stage-road, but lost his trail."
+
+He dismounted and dropped the reins to the ground. Agnes set about to
+relieve the tired animal of the burden of the saddle, the sheep-herder
+offering no assistance. He stood with his head bent, an air of dejection
+and melancholy over him, a cloud upon his face. Presently he walked
+away, saying no more. She watched him as he went, moodily and unheeding
+of his way, until he passed out of view around a thicket of tangled
+shrubs which grew upon the river-bank.
+
+While her horse was relieving his weariness in contented sighs over his
+oats, Agnes made a fire and started her evening coffee. She had a
+feeling of cleanness in her conscience, and a lightness of heart which
+she knew never could have been her own to enjoy again if the crazed
+herder had come back with blood upon his hands.
+
+There was no question about the feeling of loneliness that settled down
+upon her with aching intensity when she sat down to her meal, spread on
+a box, the lantern a yellow speck in the boundless night. A rod away its
+poor, futile glimmer against such mighty odds was understood, standing
+there with no encompassing walls to mark the boundary of its field. It
+was like the struggle of a man who stands alone in the vastness of life
+with no definite aim to circumscribe his endeavor, wasting his feeble
+illumination upon a little rod of earth.
+
+We must have walls around us, both lanterns and men, rightly to fill the
+sphere of our designed usefulness; walls to restrain our wastrel forces;
+walls to bind our lustful desires, our foolish ambitions, our outwinging
+flights. Yet, in its way, the lantern served nobly, as many a man serves
+in the circle which binds his small adventures, and beyond which his
+fame can never pass.
+
+From the door of her tent Agnes looked out upon the lantern, comparing
+herself with it, put down there as she was in that blank land, which was
+still in the night of its development. Over that place, which she had
+chosen to make a home and a refuge, her own weak flame would fall dimly,
+perhaps never able to light it all. Would it be worth the struggle, the
+heart-hunger for other places and things, the years of waiting, the toil
+and loneliness?
+
+She went back to her supper, the cup which she had gone to fetch in her
+hand. The strength of night made her heart timid; the touch of food was
+dry and tasteless upon her lips. For the first time since coming to that
+country she felt the pain of discouragement. What could she do against
+such a great, rough thing? Would it ever be worth the labor it would
+cost?
+
+Feeble as her light was against the night, it was enough to discover
+tears upon her cheeks as she sat there upon the ground. Her fair hair
+lay dark in the shadows, and light with that contrast which painters
+love, where it lifted in airy rise above her brow. And there were the
+pensive softness of her chin, the sweep of her round throat, the profile
+as sharp as a shadow against the mellow glow. Perhaps the lantern was
+content in its circumscribed endeavor against the night, when it could
+light to such good advantage so much loveliness.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"If I'd have put my hands over your eyes, who would you have named?"
+asked a voice near her ear, a voice familiar, and fitted in that moment
+with old associations.
+
+"I'd have had no trouble in guessing, Jerry, for I was expecting you,"
+she answered, scarcely turning her head, although his silent manner of
+approach had startled her.
+
+"Agnes, I don't believe you've got any more nerves than an Indian," he
+said, dropping down beside her.
+
+"If one wanted to make a facetious rejoinder, the opening is excellent,"
+she said, fighting back her nervousness with a smile. "Will you have
+some supper?"
+
+"I'd like it, if you don't mind."
+
+She busied herself with the stove, but he peremptorily took away from
+her the office of feeding the fire, and watched her as she put bacon on
+to fry.
+
+"Agnes, you ought to have been frying bacon for me these four years
+past--figuratively, I mean," he remarked, musingly.
+
+"If you don't mind, we'll not go back to that," she said.
+
+Boyle made no mention of the purpose of his visit. He made his supper
+with ambassadorial avoidance of the subject which lay so uneasily on her
+mind. When he had finished, he drew out his tobacco-sack and rolled a
+cigarette, and, as it dangled from his lip by a shred of its wrapping,
+he turned to her.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+She was standing near the lantern, removing the few utensils--the bacon
+had been served to him in the pan--from her outdoor table. When she
+answered him she turned away until her face was hidden in the shadow.
+
+"I didn't carry your message to Dr. Slavens as you ordered, Jerry."
+
+"I know it," said he. "What next?"
+
+"I guess it's 'up to you,' as you put it. I'm not going to try to save
+myself at the expense of any of my friends."
+
+Boyle got up. He took a little turn away from the box whereon the
+lantern stood, as if struggling to maintain the fair front he had worn
+when he appeared. After a little he turned and faced her, walking back
+slowly until only the length of the little stove was between them.
+
+"Have you considered your own danger?" he asked.
+
+"It wouldn't help you a great deal here, among these rough, fair-minded
+people, to take an advantage like that of a woman, especially when her
+transgression is merely technical and not intentional," she rejoined.
+
+"I wouldn't have to appear in it," he assured her.
+
+"Well, set the United States marshal after me as soon as you want to;
+I'll be here," she said, speaking with the even tone of resignation
+which one commands when the mind has arrived at a determined stand to
+face the last and worst.
+
+"Agnes, I told you yesterday that I was all over the old feeling that I
+had for you."
+
+Boyle leaned forward as he spoke, his voice earnest and low.
+
+"But that was a bluff. I'm just as big a fool as I ever was about it. If
+you want to walk over me, go ahead; if you want to--oh, rats! But I'll
+tell you; if you'll come away with me I'll drop all of this. I'll leave
+that tin-horn doctor where he is, and let him make what he can out of
+his claim."
+
+"I couldn't marry you, Jerry; it's impossible to think of that," she
+told him gently.
+
+"Oh, well, that's a formality," he returned, far more in his voice than
+his words. "I'll say to you----"
+
+"You've said too much!" she stopped him, feeling her cheeks burn under
+the outrage which he had offered to her chaste heart. "There's no room
+for any more words between you and me--never! Go now--say no more!"
+
+She walked across the bright ring of light toward the tent, making a
+little detour around him, as if afraid that his violent words might be
+followed by violent deeds.
+
+Boyle turned where he stood, following her with his eyes. The light of
+the lantern struck him strongly up to the waist, leaving his head and
+shoulders in the gloom above its glare. His hands were in the pockets of
+his trousers, his shoulders drooping forward in that horseback stoop
+which years in the saddle had fastened on him.
+
+Agnes had reached the tent, where she stood with her hand on the flap,
+turning a hasty look behind her, when a shot out of the dark from the
+direction of the river-bank struck her ears with a suddenness and a
+portent which seemed to carry the pain of death. She was facing that
+way; she saw the flash of it; she saw Jerry Boyle leap with lithe
+agility, as if springing from the scourge of flames, and sling his
+pistol from the hostler under his coat.
+
+In his movement there was an admirable quickness, rising almost to the
+dignity of beauty in the rapidity with which he adjusted himself to meet
+this sudden exigency. In half the beat of a heart, it seemed, he had
+fired. Out of the dark came another leap of flame, another report. Boyle
+walked directly toward the point from which it came, firing as he went.
+No answer came after his second shot.
+
+Agnes pressed her hand over her eyes to shut out the sight, fearing to
+see him fall, her heart rising up to accuse her. She had forgotten to
+warn him! She had forgotten!
+
+Boyle's voice roused her. There was a dry harshness in it, a hoarseness
+as of one who has gone long without water on the lips.
+
+"Bring that lantern here!" he commanded.
+
+She did not stand to debate it, but took up the light and hurried to the
+place where he stood. A man lay at his feet, his long hair tossed in
+disorder, his long coat spread out like a black blotch upon the ground.
+Boyle took the lantern and bent over the victim of his steady arm,
+growled in his throat, and bent lower. The man's face was partly hidden
+by the rank grass in which he lay. Boyle turned it up to the light with
+his foot and straightened his back with a grunt of disdain.
+
+"Huh! _That_ rabbit!" said he, giving her back the light.
+
+It did not require that gleam upon the white face to tell Agnes that the
+victim was the polemical sheep-herder, whose intention had been steadier
+than his aim.
+
+Boyle hesitated a moment as if to speak to her, but said nothing before
+he turned and walked away.
+
+"You've killed him!" she called after him sharply. "Don't go away and
+leave him here like this!"
+
+"He's not dead," said Boyle. "Don't you hear him snort?"
+
+The man's breathing was indeed audible, and growing louder with each
+labored inspiration.
+
+"Turn him over on his face," directed Boyle. "There's blood in his
+throat."
+
+"Will you go for Smith?" she asked, kneeling beside the wounded man.
+
+"He's coming; I can hear the sauerkraut jolt in him while he's half a
+mile away. If anybody comes looking for me on account of this--coroner
+or--oh, anybody--I'll be down the river about a quarter below the
+stage-ford. I'll wait there a day longer to hear from you, and this is
+my last word."
+
+With that Boyle left her. Smith came very shortly, having heard the
+shots; and the people from up the river came, and the young man from the
+bridal nest across on the other side. They made a wondering, awed ring
+around the wounded man, who was pronounced by Smith to be in deep
+waters. There was a bullet through his neck.
+
+Smith believed there was life enough left in the sheep-herder to last
+until he could fetch a doctor from Meander.
+
+"But that's thirty miles," said Agnes, "and Dr. Slavens is not more than
+twenty. You know where he's located--down by Comanche?"
+
+Smith knew, but he had forgotten for the minute, so accustomed to
+turning as he was to the center of civilization in that section for all
+the gentle ministrants of woe, such as doctors, preachers, and
+undertakers.
+
+"I'll have him here before morning," said Smith, posting off to get his
+horse.
+
+The poor sheep-herder was too sorely hurt to last the night out. Before
+Smith had been two hours on his way the shepherd was in the land of
+shades, having it out face to face with Epictetus--if he carried the
+memory of his contention across with him, to be sure.
+
+The neighbors arranged him respectably upon a board, and covered him
+over with a blanket, keeping watch beside him in the open, with the
+clear stars shining undisturbed by this thing which made such a turmoil
+in their breasts. There he lay, waiting the doctor and the coroner, and
+all who might come, his earthly troubles locked up forever in his cold
+heart, his earthly argument forever at an end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A PROMISE
+
+
+Dr. Slavens rode in before dawn, more concerned about Agnes than about
+the person in whose behalf he had been summoned. On the way he asked
+Smith repeatedly how the tragedy affected her; whether she was
+frightened or greatly disturbed.
+
+"She's as steady as a compass," said Smith; and so he found her.
+
+Somewhat too steady, in fact. It was the steadiness of a deep and
+settled melancholy, through which his best efforts could do no more than
+strike a feeble, weary smile.
+
+Immediately upon the death of the herder, one of the men had ridden to
+Meander and carried word to the coroner. That official arrived in the
+middle of the forenoon, bringing with him the undertaker and a wagon.
+After some perfunctory inquiries, the coroner concluded that an inquest
+was not necessary. He did not go to the trouble to find Boyle and
+question him, but he looked with a familiar understanding in his piggish
+eyes at Agnes when she related the circumstances of the tragedy.
+
+Coroners, and others who knew the Governor's son, had but one measure
+for a woman who entertained Jerry Boyle alone in her tent, or even
+outside it, at night. Boyle's associations had set the standard of his
+own morality, as well as that of his consorts. The woman from up the
+river, and the little bride from across the ford, drew off together,
+whispering, after Agnes had told her story. Presently they slipped away
+without a word.
+
+Even Dr. Slavens, cool and just-minded as he was, felt the hot stirring
+of jealous suspicion. It brought to his mind unpleasantly the
+ruminations of his solitary days in camp among the rocks, when he had
+turned over in his mind the belief that there was something of the past
+between Agnes and Boyle.
+
+He had not convicted her in his own judgment of any wrong, for the
+sincerity of her eyes had stood between him and the possibility of any
+such conclusion. Now the thought that, after all his trust, she might be
+unworthy, smote painfully upon his heart.
+
+When the others had gone away, after a little standing around,
+hitch-legged and wise, in close discussion of the event, the doctor
+sitting, meantime, with Agnes in front of the tent, he spoke of the
+necessity of getting back to his claim. She was pale after the night's
+strain, although apparently unconscious of the obloquy of her neighbors.
+Nevertheless, she pressed him to remain for the midday meal.
+
+"I've not been very hospitable, I'm afraid," said she; "but this thing
+has stunned me. It seems like it has taken something away from the
+prospect of life here."
+
+"Yes, it has taken something away," he responded, gravely thoughtful,
+his look bent upon the ground.
+
+She sprang up quickly, a sharp little cry upon her lips as if from the
+shock of a blow from a hand beloved.
+
+"I saw it in their eyes!" she cried. "But you--but you! Oh--oh--I
+_trusted_ you to know!"
+
+"Forgive me," he begged. "I did not mean to hurt you. Perhaps I was
+thinking of the romance and the glamour which this had stripped away
+from things here. I think my mind was running on that."
+
+"No," she denied. "You were thinking like that little woman across the
+river with the fright and horror in her big eyes. You were thinking that
+I am guilty, and that there can be but one answer to the presence of
+that man in my camp last night. His notorious name goes before him like
+a blight."
+
+"You'll have to move your camp now," as if seeking delicately to avoid
+the ghost that seemed to have risen between them; "this place will have
+unpleasant associations."
+
+"Yes; it cannot be reconsecrated and purified."
+
+He stood as if prepared to leave. Agnes placed her hand upon his
+shoulder, looking with grieved eyes into his face.
+
+"Will you stay a little while," she asked, "and hear me? I want to part
+from you with your friendship and respect, for I am entitled to both, I
+am worthy of both--if ever."
+
+"Let me move your stool out into the sun," he suggested. "There's a
+chill in the wind today. Of course I'll stay, and we'll have some more
+of that excellent coffee before I go. You must teach me how you make it;
+mine always turns out as muddy as a bucket of Missouri River water."
+
+His cheerfulness was like that which a healthy man displays at the
+bedside of a dying friend--assumed, but helpful in its way. He placed
+her folding canvas stool in the sun beyond the shadow of the tent and
+found a box for himself. Thus arranged, he waited for her to speak.
+
+"Still, I am not sure of what I protested in regard to your friendship
+and respect," said she after a little brooding silence. "I am a fraud,
+taken at the best, and perhaps a criminal."
+
+Dr. Slavens studied her face as she paused there and looked away, as if
+her thoughts concentrated beyond the blue hills in the west.
+
+"My name is not Horton," she resumed, facing him suddenly. "It is Gates,
+and my father is in the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth."
+
+"But there was no call for you to tell me this," he protested softly.
+
+"Yes, every reason for it," she averred. "The fabric of all my troubles
+rests on that. He was president of a bank--you remember the scandal,
+don't you? It was nation-wide."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I spoke to you once of the ghosts of money. They have worried me for
+four years and more, for nothing but the ghosts are left when one loses
+place and consequence before the world. It was a national bank, and the
+charge was misapplication of funds. He had money enough for all the sane
+uses of any man, but the pernicious ambition to be greater assailed him,
+even old as he was.
+
+"He never said, and I never have held it so, that his punishment was
+unjust. Only it seemed to us unfair when so many greater evildoers
+escape or receive pardons. You will remember, perhaps, that none of the
+depositors lost anything. Wild as his schemes appeared, they turned out
+sound enough after a while, and everything was liquidated.
+
+"We gave up everything of our own; mother and I have felt the rub of
+hardship before today. The hardest of all was the falling away of those
+whom we believed to be friends. We learned that the favors of society
+are as fickle as those of fortune, and that they walk hand in hand.
+
+"No matter. Father's term will expire in less than one month. He is an
+old, broken, disgraced man; he never will be able to lift up his face
+before the world again. That is why I am here. Mother and I concluded
+that we might make a refuge for him here, where he would be unknown. We
+planned for him to leave his name, and as much of his past as he could
+shake off, behind him at the prison door.
+
+"It was no sacrifice for me. All that I had known in the old life was
+gone. Sneers followed me; the ghosts of money rose up to accuse. I was a
+felon's daughter; but, worse than that--I was poor! This country held
+out its arms to me, clean and undefiled. When I got my first sight of
+it, and the taste of its free air in my nostrils, my heart began to
+unfold again, and the cramped wrinkles fell out of my tired soul."
+
+The sunshine was around them, and the peace of the open places. They sat
+for the world to see them, and there was nothing to hide in the sympathy
+that moved Dr. Slavens to reach out and take the girl's hand. He
+caressed it with comforting touch, as if to mitigate the suffering of
+her heart, in tearing from it for his eyes to see, her hoarded sorrow
+and unearned shame.
+
+"There is that freedom about it," said he, "when one sees it by day and
+sunlight."
+
+"But it has its nights, too," she shuddered, the shadow of last night in
+her eyes.
+
+"Yet they all pass--the longest of them and the most painful," he
+comforted her.
+
+"And leave their scars sometimes. How I came here, registered, drew a
+claim, and filed on it, you know. I did all that under the name of
+Horton, which is a family name on mother's side, not thinking what the
+consequence might be. Now, in payment for this first breach of the law,
+I must at least give up all my schemes here and retreat. I may be
+prosecuted; I may even go to prison, like my father did."
+
+"Surely not!" he protested. "Who is there to know it, to lay a charge
+against you?"
+
+"Such person is not wanting in the miserable plot of my life," she
+answered. "I will reach him soon in my sorry tale."
+
+"Boyle!" Slavens said, as if thinking aloud. "He's the man!"
+
+"You take the name from my mouth," she told him. "He has threatened me
+with prosecution. Perjury, he says it would be called, and prison would
+be the penalty."
+
+"It might be so here," he admitted.
+
+"I met Jerry Boyle about five years ago, when father was in Congress.
+His father was at that time Senator from this state. We lived in
+Washington, and Jerry Boyle was then considered a very original and
+delightful young man. He was fresh in from the range, but he had the
+polish of a university education over his roughness, and what I know now
+to be inborn coarseness was then accepted for ingenuousness. He passed
+current in the best society of the capital, where he was coddled as a
+butterfly of new species. We met; he made love to me, and I--I am afraid
+that I encouraged him to do it at first.
+
+"But he drank and gambled, and got into brawls. He stabbed an attache of
+the Mexican Legation over a woman, and the engagement to marry him which
+I had entered into was broken. I was foolish in the first instance, but
+I plead the mitigation of frivolity and youth. My heart was not in it. I
+beg you to believe, Dr. Slavens, that my heart was not in it at all."
+
+She looked at him with pleading sincerity, and from her eyes his heart
+gathered its recesses full of joy.
+
+"I need no further assurance of that," he smiled.
+
+"You are generous. It was on the afternoon of the day that followed your
+disappearance from Comanche that Boyle came into camp there. I had not
+forgotten him, of course, nor his influential position in this state;
+but I never thought of meeting him there. It was a sickening shock to
+me. I denied his protestations of acquaintanceship, but it passed off
+poorly with all of them who were present, except William Bentley,
+generous gentleman that he is."
+
+"He is so," testified Slavens.
+
+"I left Comanche because I was afraid of him, but he rode post the night
+that I engaged passage and beat me to Meander; but he wasn't hurrying on
+my account, as you know. He tried to see me there in Meander, but I
+refused to meet him. The day before yesterday he came here and solicited
+my help in carrying out a scheme. I refused. He threatened me with
+exposure and arrest on account of false entry and affidavit."
+
+Agnes told then of her ride into the hills, the meeting with the herder,
+and subsequent events up to the shooting. But she said nothing of
+Boyle's base proposal to her, although her face burned at the
+recollection, giving Slavens more than half a guess what was behind that
+virtuous flame.
+
+"And so, you poor little soul, all your plans for your City of Refuge
+are shattered because you refuse to sacrifice somebody to keep them
+whole," said he.
+
+"No matter," she returned in that voice of abnegation which only a long
+marching line of misfortunes can give a woman or a man command over. "I
+have decided, anyway, to give it up. It's too big and rough and lonesome
+for me."
+
+"And that person whom you put up your heart and soul to shield," he went
+on, looking steadily into her face and pursuing his former thought, "has
+something in his possession which this man Boyle covets and thinks he
+must have? And the cheapest and easiest way to get it is to make you pay
+for it in the violation of your honest principles, if he can drive you
+to it in his skulking way?"
+
+She bowed assent, her lips tightly set.
+
+"Yes," said he. "Just so. Well, why didn't Boyle come to me with his
+threats, the coward!"
+
+"No, no!" she cried in quick fright. "Not that; it is something--something
+else."
+
+"You poor dissembler!" he laughed. "You couldn't be dishonest if you
+wanted to the worst way in the world. Well, don't you worry; I'll take
+it up with him today."
+
+"You'll _not_ give it up!" she exclaimed vehemently. "All your hopes are
+there, and it's yours, and _you'll not_ give it up!"
+
+"Never mind," he soothed, again taking her hand, which she had withdrawn
+to aid in emphasizing her protest. "I don't believe he'd carry out his
+threats about the United States marshal and all that."
+
+"You'll not give it up to him unless he pays you for it," she
+reiterated, ignoring her own prospect of trouble. "It's valuable, or he
+wouldn't be so anxious to get it."
+
+"Perhaps," Slavens assented.
+
+"I'm going to leave here," she hurriedly pursued. "It was foolish of me
+to come, in the first place. The vastness of it bewildered me, and 'the
+lonesomeness,' as Smith calls it, is settling in my heart."
+
+"Well, where will you go?" he asked bewilderedly.
+
+"Somewhere--to some village or little farm, where we can raise poultry,
+mother and I."
+
+"But I haven't planned it that way," Slavens smiled. "If you leave, what
+am I going to do?"
+
+"I don't know," she acknowledged, "unless--unless you come some time."
+
+"Look here, Agnes," said he, taking the matter entirely in hand. "When
+we leave this place, we'll leave together. I've arranged that all in my
+mind and intention. It's all disposed of and settled. Here comes Boyle
+now, I think."
+
+Boyle left his horse standing a few rods distant and came over to where
+they sat.
+
+"You look comfortable," he commented, as serene and unperturbed as if
+the load of one more human life on his soul were a matter too light to
+be felt with inconvenience.
+
+"Very comfortable," answered Slavens, rising stiffly. "We have nothing
+on our hands that common water will not wash off."
+
+"Oh, that nut!" depreciated Boyle. "He'd talked around for a year or two
+about getting me. I only beat him to it when he tried; that's all."
+
+"But there was another occasion--another attempt that didn't turn out
+quite like you intended," said Slavens. "Do you remember me?"
+
+"Yes; you're the tin-horn doctor that held a man up in Comanche and
+stole the coat off of his back," Boyle retorted with easy insolence.
+
+Agnes looked at the doctor imploringly, plainly begging him not to
+provoke Boyle to another outbreak of violence. She was standing beside
+him, the fear and loathing which Boyle's presence aroused undisguised in
+her frank face.
+
+"It was an outrage against one of the honest men who tried to murder
+me," said the doctor. "But, vicious as it was, neither Shanklin nor you,
+his side-partner, has ever made a squeal. If it was a holdup, why
+haven't you sent one of your little sheriffs out after me?"
+
+"I'm no partner of Hun Shanklin's!" denied Boyle.
+
+"Maybe you've parted company since the night you slugged me and nailed
+me up in that box for the river to hide your work."
+
+"I'll make you prove that charge!" threatened Boyle hotly.
+
+"I can't prove it," admitted the doctor. "If I could, I'd have you in
+court tomorrow. But you were one of them, and I want you to understand
+fully that I know it, and will treat you accordingly in any private
+dealings that may come up between you and me."
+
+"If you keep spoutin' it around that I ever slugged you, I'll pull you
+into court and make you prove it! It'll either be put up or shut up with
+you, mister!"
+
+"Whenever you're ready," invited Slavens.
+
+With somewhat more of ostentation than the simple act seemed to warrant,
+Boyle unbuttoned his coat, displaying his revolver as he made an
+exploration of his vest-pockets for a match to light his cigarette.
+
+"Well, I guess you know what I'm here for?" Boyle suggested, passing his
+glance significantly from one to the other of them.
+
+"Dr. Slavens is acquainted with your proposal," said Agnes; "and it
+ought to be needless for me to say that I'll not permit him to make any
+concession to shield myself."
+
+"Fine! fine!" said Boyle in mock applause, throwing his head back and
+snorting smoke.
+
+"In the first place," said Slavens, "your bluff don't go. Miss Gates has
+not broken any law in registering and entering this land under an
+_alias_. There's no crime in assuming a name, and no felony in acquiring
+property under it, unless fraud is used. She has defrauded nobody, and
+you could not make a case against her in a thousand years!"
+
+"I can get an indictment--that's a cinch!" declared Boyle.
+
+"Go ahead," said the doctor. "We've got some new blood in this country
+now, and we can find a jury that you don't own and control when it comes
+to trial."
+
+"And after the indictment comes arrest and jail," Boyle continued,
+overlooking the doctor's argument in the lofty security of his position.
+"It would make a lot of noisy talk, considering the family reputation
+and all that."
+
+"And the outcome of it might be--and I doubt even that--that Miss Gates
+would lose her homestead," Slavens supplied.
+
+"You don't know the Federal judge in this district," Boyle grinned.
+"Jail's what it means, and plenty of it, for the judge has to approve a
+bond, if you know what that means."
+
+"Why don't you pay Dr. Slavens for his homestead, as you were ready to
+pay that man Peterson if you could have filed him on it?" Agnes asked.
+
+"Because it's mine already," said Boyle. "This man stole the description
+of that land, as I have told you before, at the point of a gun."
+
+"Then you lied!" Slavens calmly charged.
+
+Boyle hitched his hip, throwing the handle of his pistol into sight.
+
+"You can say that," said he, "because I've got to have your name on a
+paper."
+
+"I'll never permit Dr. Slavens to sign away his valuable claim to you,"
+declared Agnes. "I'll not allow----"
+
+Slavens lifted his hand for silence.
+
+"I'll do the talking for this family from now on," said he, smiling
+reassuringly as he held her eyes a moment with his own.
+
+He turned abruptly to Boyle.
+
+"And the fighting, too, when necessary. You keep that little gun in its
+place when you're around me, young man, or you'll get hurt! One more
+break like that to show me that you've got it, and you and I will mix.
+Just put that down in your book."
+
+"Oh, all right, pardner!" returned Boyle with that jerky insolence which
+men of his kind assume when they realize that they have been called, and
+called hard. He buttoned his coat.
+
+"And as far as Miss Gates is concerned, consider her out of this case,"
+said Slavens. "But I want to have some private talk with you."
+
+They walked over to the place where Boyle's horse stood, and there, out
+of the hearing of Agnes, Slavens sounded Jerry sharply on his
+intentions. It was plain that there was no bluff in Boyle; he meant what
+he threatened, and he was small enough to carry it through.
+
+As an illustration of his far-reaching influence, Boyle pointed out to
+Slavens that nobody had approached the physician with an offer to buy
+him out, although one had appeared anxious enough to open negotiations
+the day he filed.
+
+"When we tell a man to lay down in this part of the country, he lays
+down," said Boyle; "and when we order him to walk on his hind legs, he
+walks. Nobody will offer you any money for that place; it isn't worth
+anything to a soul on earth but me. You couldn't sell out in a century.
+You'll get that through your nut if you hang around here long enough."
+
+For a little while Slavens thought it over, walking away a few paces and
+appraising the situation studiously. Suddenly he wheeled and confronted
+Boyle, leveling his finger at his face.
+
+"Your bluff don't go, Boyle!" said he. "You'd just as well get on your
+horse and light out; and if you want to bring it to a fight, then let it
+be a fight. We'll meet you on any ground you pick."
+
+"You're a fool!" snarled Boyle.
+
+"Then I'll be a bigger one--big enough to call you to account before
+another day has passed over your head for your part in that dirty work
+in Comanche that night. And I want to lay it off to you right now that
+all the influence you can command in this state isn't going to save you
+when I go after you!"
+
+Boyle picked up his bridle-reins and threaded his arm through them,
+standing so, legs wide apart, while he rolled a cigarette. As it dangled
+between his lips and the smoke of it rose up, veiling his eyes, he
+peered narrowly through it at the doctor.
+
+"There's a man in the graveyard up at Cheyenne that made a talk like
+that one time," he said.
+
+"I'll have to take your word for that," returned Slavens, quite unmoved.
+"I'll meet you at the hotel in Meander tomorrow morning at nine o'clock
+for a settlement, one way or the other."
+
+"One way or the other," repeated Boyle.
+
+He mounted his horse and rode away toward Meander, trailing a thin line
+of smoke behind him.
+
+Agnes hurried forward to meet Slavens as he turned toward her. Her face
+was bloodless, her bosom agitated.
+
+"I heard part of what you said," she told him. "Surely you don't mean to
+go over there and fight him on his own ground, among his friends?"
+
+"I'm going over there to see the county attorney," said he. "He's from
+Kansas, and a pretty straight sort of chap, it seemed to me from what I
+saw of him. I'm going to put this situation of ours before him, citing a
+hypothetical case, and get his advice. I don't believe that there's a
+shred of a case against you, and I doubt whether Boyle can bluff the
+government officials into making a move in it, even with all his
+influence."
+
+"And you'll come back here and tell me what he says, no matter what his
+opinion may be, before you act one way or another?"
+
+"If you wish it, although--Well, yes--if you wish it."
+
+"I do, most earnestly," she assured him.
+
+"You need a good sleep," he counseled. "Turn in as soon as I'm gone, and
+don't worry about this. There's a good deal of bluff in Boyle."
+
+"He's treacherous, and he shoots wonderfully. He killed that poor fellow
+last night without ever seeing him at all."
+
+"But I'm not going to take a shot at him out of the dark," said he.
+
+"I know. But I'll be uneasy until you return."
+
+"There's too much trouble in your face today for one of your years," he
+said, lifting her chin with rather a professional rebuke in his eyes.
+"You'll have to put it down, or it will make you old. Go right on
+dreaming and planning; things will come out exactly as you have
+designed."
+
+"Perhaps," she agreed, but with little hope in her voice.
+
+Slavens saddled his horse after they had refreshed themselves with
+coffee. Agnes stood by, racked with an anxiety which seemed to grind her
+heart. The physician thought of the pioneer women of his youth, of those
+who lived far out on the thin edge of prairie reaches, and in the gloom
+of forests which groaned around them in the lone winds of winter nights.
+There was the same melancholy of isolation in Agnes' eyes today as he
+had seen in theirs; the same sad hopelessness; the same hunger, and the
+longing to fly from the wilderness and its hardships, heart-weariness,
+and pain.
+
+Her hand lay appealingly upon his shoulder for a moment before he
+mounted, and her face was turned up to him, unspoken yearning on her
+lips.
+
+"Promise me again before you go that you will come back here before you
+relinquish your homestead to Boyle," she demanded. "Promise me that, no
+matter what the lawyer's opinion may be, you'll return here before you
+do anything else at all."
+
+"I promise you," said he.
+
+When he had ridden a little way he halted his horse and turned in his
+saddle to look back. She was sitting there in the sun, her head bowed,
+her hands clasped over her face, as if she wept or prayed. A little
+while he waited there, as if meditating a return, as if he had forgotten
+something--some solace, perhaps, for which her lips had appealed to his
+heart dumbly.
+
+Yet a sincere man seldom knows these things, which a trifler is so quick
+to see. He did not know, perhaps; or perhaps he was not certain enough
+to turn his horse and ride back to repair his omission. Presently he
+rode on slowly, his head bent, the bridle-reins loose in his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A PLAN
+
+
+The man who had supplied the horse-blanket for covering the dead
+sheep-herder had taken it away, but the board upon which they had
+stretched him still lay under the tree where they had left it. There was
+blood on it where the wound had drained, a disturbing sight which
+persisted in meeting Agnes' eye every time she came out of the tent. She
+was debating in her mind whether to throw the board in the river or
+split it up and burn it in the stove, when Smith came along and claimed
+it.
+
+"Scarce as wood's goin' to be in this valley six months from now," Smith
+remarked, rubbing dust over the stain which did not appear to give him
+any qualms, "a man's got to take care of it. That's a shelf out of my
+store."
+
+"I don't suppose you'll ever put goods on it again."
+
+"Sure. Why not?"
+
+"Well, not groceries, at any rate," she ventured.
+
+"It won't hurt canned goods," Smith told her, turning it stain downward.
+"Doctor gone back?"
+
+"He's gone on to Meander on some business."
+
+"Smart feller," commended Smith. "If I had to have my leg took off I'd
+just as lief have that man do it as any doctor I ever saw."
+
+"I'm sure he would appreciate your confidence," she smiled.
+
+"Been acquainted with him a good while?" he wanted to know.
+
+"Only since I've been in this country. We met on the train coming to
+Comanche."
+
+Smith sighed as if oppressed by a secret trouble, and cast his wise eye
+about the camp.
+
+"I wouldn't leave them things around out here at night," he advised,
+indicating some boxes of supplies with which she was rather liberally
+provided. "Animals might git at 'em."
+
+"You don't mean bears?" she asked with lively concern.
+
+"No; not likely bears," said he. "Badgers, more like. They're awful
+thieves."
+
+"Thank you for the advice. I meant to put them in today, but I've been
+so distracted by last night's awful events----"
+
+"Yes, I know," Smith nodded. "I'll put 'em in for you."
+
+Smith stored the boxes within the tent. The exertion brought out the
+sweat on his red face. He stood wiping it, his hat in his hand, turning
+his eyes to see how she regarded his strength.
+
+"I tell you, a woman needs a man to do the heavy work for her in a place
+like this," he hinted.
+
+"I'm finding that out," she laughed.
+
+Smith sat down comfortably on the box lately occupied by Dr. Slavens. He
+buckled his hands over a knee and sat with that foot raised from the
+ground in a most ungainly, but perhaps refreshing, attitude.
+
+"Thinkin' about marryin'?" he asked.
+
+The frankness of the question relieved her of embarrassment. She
+smiled.
+
+"I suppose every woman thinks of that, more or less," she admitted.
+
+Smith nodded, and slowly lowered his foot, looking up at her with sly
+confidence, as if discovering to her a mighty secret which he had just
+become convinced she was worthy to share.
+
+"Well, so am I," said he.
+
+It began to look like dangerous ground, but she didn't know how to turn
+him. Thinking to try a show of abstract interest, she told him she was
+glad to hear it.
+
+"There's money to be made in this country," he continued, warming up to
+his argument, "and I know how to make it. Inside of five years I'll be
+able to put up a house with a cupola on it, and a picket fence in front,
+and grass in the yard, for the woman that marries me."
+
+"I believe you will," she agreed. "What kind of a noise does a bear
+make?"
+
+"Dang bears!" said Smith, disconcerted by having his plans thrown out of
+joint in such an abrupt way.
+
+"I thought I heard one the night before last," she went on. "I was
+afraid."
+
+"No need to be," he assured her. "Bears don't come down here any more.
+What could a bear live on down here, I'd like to know? Snakes? Well,
+bears don't eat snakes."
+
+"Oh!" said she, enlightened.
+
+"There's not a bear in a hundred miles of here," he told her.
+
+"That's comforting knowledge," she said. "You've never told me about the
+big grizzly that you killed. Was it long ago?"
+
+"Not so very long," Smith replied, sighing as he saw himself led so far
+away from the subject nearest his heart, and despairing of working his
+courage up to it again that day.
+
+"It was a big one, wasn't it?"
+
+"Well, I got fifty dollars off of a feller for the hide."
+
+"Tell me about it," she requested.
+
+Inwardly she wished that Smith would go, so she might take a sleep, but
+she feared lest he might get back to the subject of houses and wives if
+she allowed him to depart from bears, and the historic grizzly in
+particular.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you. I didn't kill that bear on purpose," he began. "I
+didn't go out huntin' him, and I didn't run after him. If he'd minded
+his own business like I minded mine, he'd be alive today for all I'm
+concerned."
+
+"Oh, it was an accident?" she asked.
+
+"Part accident," Smith replied. "I was a deputy game-warden in them
+days, and a cowboy on the side, up in the Big Horn Valley. A gang of
+fellers in knee-pants and yeller leggings come into that country,
+shootin' everything that hopped up. Millionaires, I reckon they must 'a'
+been, countin' their guns and the way they left game to rot on the
+ground. They killed just to kill, and I tracked 'em by the smell of the
+carcasses behind 'em. They made a sneak and got into Yellowstone Park,
+and there's where I collared 'em. They was all settin' around a fire one
+night when I come up to 'em, their guns standin' around. I throwed down
+on 'em, and one fool feller he made a grab for a gun. I always was sorry
+for that man."
+
+"What did you do to him?" she asked.
+
+"Busted a diamond he had in a ring," said Smith. "Well, they got fines,
+them fellers did, when I marched 'em out of there, I'm here to tell you!
+If it'd been me that was judge I'd 'a' sent 'em all to jail for life.
+
+"When I was comin' back to the ranch from that trip I met that bear
+you've heard so much talk and mostly lies, about. That bear he's the
+most slandered bear that ever lived."
+
+"Slandered?"
+
+"That's it. He wasn't wallered to death, choked to death, pounded to
+death, nor run down. He was just plain shot in the top of the head."
+
+"What a queer place to shoot a bear! How did you manage it?"
+
+"He managed it. He come under the tree where I was at."
+
+"Oh, I see."
+
+"And that's all there is to _that_ yarn, ma'am. I got a man today that I
+can put on that work of levelin' off for you in the morning, if you want
+me to."
+
+"I think we'll let it stand a day or two," she told him. "I'll let you
+know when to take it up again. I've got so much to think about right now
+that I just stand turning round and round."
+
+"Yes, you do feel that way in a new place, sometimes," Smith allowed.
+"Well, I guess I'll have to be goin' on down to the store. Business is
+pickin' up so fast I'll have to keep open all the time, not only
+evenin's like I have been doin'."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," said she.
+
+"Yes; I'll have to hire a clerk, because I've got to 'tend to my outside
+work. I've been paintin' a sign to go over the front, and I tell you
+that name don't look so bad when it's in print, neither."
+
+"It isn't a name to be ashamed of, I'm sure," she cheered. "It's just as
+good as any other name, as far as I can see."
+
+"Phogenphole has got a good many shanks to it when you come to write it,
+though," reflected Smith. "It looks a lot better printed out. I think
+I'll git me one of these here typewritin'-machines. But say! Stop in and
+take a look at that sign the first time you're passin'; will you?"
+
+Agnes assured him that she would. Smith upended his board as if to go.
+
+"That feller, Boyle, he's gone," said he, nodding as if to confirm his
+own statement. "I saw him ride off up the river an hour or so ago."
+
+"Yes; I believe he went to Meander also."
+
+"He's a bad egg," Smith continued, "and he comes out of a basket of bad
+eggs. His old man, he's doin' more to keep this state down than anything
+you can name. He's got millions--and when I say millions, ma'am, I
+_mean_ millions--of acres of government land fenced and set off to his
+own use, and school lands, and other lands belongin' to you and me and
+the high-minded citizens of this country, and he don't pay a cent for
+the use of 'em, neither. Taxes? That man don't know what taxes is."
+
+"Why do the people permit him to do it?"
+
+"People! Huh! He's got rings in their noses, that's why. What he don't
+own he's got cowed. I tell you, I know of a town with three or four
+thousand people in it, and a schoolhouse as big as one of them
+old-country castles up on a hill, that ranchers has to go forty miles
+around to git to. Can't put a road through Boyle's land--government
+land, every inch of it. What do you think of that?"
+
+"I think a stop ought to be put to it, somehow."
+
+"Sure it had! All of it's subject to homestead entry, but it's got a
+five-wire fence around it, and thousands of sheep and cattle that the
+people of this country feed and bring up and fatten for nothing, for the
+Hon. Mr. Boyle. More than one man's been shot by Boyle's fence-riders
+for tryin' to homestead a piece of land he claims he's got a lease on.
+He ain't got no lease, but that don't matter.
+
+"There's men settled here in this reservation that's run up and down
+this state till they turned gray tryin' to locate on a piece of land.
+They've been hustled and humped along till they've lost heart, most of
+'em, and I reckon they doubt now whether they're goin' to be let stay
+here from one day to another.
+
+"Cattlemen's kicked 'em out of one place, sheepmen out of another, till
+this state ain't got no farms--the only thing that it needs. Yes, I tell
+you, when a man sets up ag'in' a Boyle or any of that crowd in this
+state, he's due to lose. Well, say, don't forgit to stop in and see that
+sign; will you?"
+
+Agnes promised again to do so, and Smith departed, the sheep-herder's
+cooling-board under his arm.
+
+With Smith's going, the temperature of her spirits, which had risen a
+little to help her through with him, suffered a recession. She looked
+about with the thought of finding another location for her camp, feeling
+that the disturbing associations of the previous night never would allow
+her to spend a comfortable hour there again.
+
+Her homestead did not offer another spot with the advantages which she
+enjoyed right where she was. There the river-bank was low, coming down
+as the stream did to a gravelly, fordable place, and there the trees
+offered shelter against the summer sun, the thick-matted willows a break
+for the winter winds. There was a home look about it, too, such as
+nature sometimes contrives in uninhabited places, upon which the
+traveler lights with satisfaction and restful delight.
+
+She spent the remainder of the afternoon up and down her half-mile of
+river-bank, trying to choose between the next likeliest spots, but she
+hadn't much heart in the hunt. Perhaps it would be unwise to allow any
+affection to grow for the place, one location or another, or for any
+hope to take deeper root than the sickly sprigs which she had planted at
+the beginning.
+
+Drooping and weary, she returned to her tent when the sun was low, for
+the thought of sleep had left her with Smith's discussion of the blight
+of the Boyles upon that land. There appeared little use in trying to
+stand out against the son of this great obstructionist who, with a few
+friends and servitors, had kept the state for years as another man might
+keep his field. Others might look into the enclosure and see the
+opportunities which were being wasted, but none might touch.
+
+If the gang were deprived of their chief weapon of menace, namely, the
+hold which the Federal laws had upon her, Dr. Slavens might be able to
+withstand their covetous attempt to dispossess him of his valuable
+holdings. She knew that Slavens would not stand by and see her indicted
+by the creatures of the Boyles, nor any more nearly threatened with the
+disgrace of prison than she was at that hour. He would put down
+everything to save her, even now when the fruition of his hard-lived
+years was at hand.
+
+She sat in the failing sun, scooping a little furrow with the heel of
+her boot as she reflected. She still wore the divided riding-skirt which
+she had worn the day before on her excursion into the hills, and with
+her leather-weighted hat she looked quite like any other long-striding
+lady of the sagebrush. Sun and wind, and more than a week of bareheaded
+disregard of complexion had put a tinge of brown on her neck and face,
+not much to her advantage, although she was well enough with it.
+
+How was it, she wrangled in her mind, that the lines of their lives had
+crossed in that place, this physician's and hers? Perhaps it was only
+the trick of chance, or perhaps it was the fulfilment of the plan drawn
+for them to live by from the first. But it seemed unfair to Dr. Slavens,
+who had made a discouraging beginning, that he must be called upon to
+surrender the means of realizing on his ambition when he held them in
+his hand, and for no other purpose than to save her, a stranger.
+
+It was unfair of fate to lay their lines so, and it would be doubly
+ignoble and selfish of her to permit him to make the sacrifice. Dr.
+Slavens cared enough for her to ask her to marry him, and to expect her
+to marry him, although she had given him no word to confirm such
+expectation. He had taken hold of that matter to shape it for himself,
+and he intended to marry her, that was plain.
+
+Her heart had jumped and turned warm with a softness toward him when he
+spoke of "this family" so naturally and frankly to Jerry Boyle. It
+seemed to her that those words gave her a dignity and a standing before
+the world which all the shadows of her troubled life could not dim.
+
+But there were the shadows, there were the ghosts. She felt that it
+would be exceedingly burdensome to him to assume the future of two aged
+people, besides that of her own. Marrying her would be marrying a
+family, indeed, for she had wasted on that desert hope much of the small
+bit of money which the scraping and cleaning of their once great
+properties had yielded. And there lay the scheme prostrate, winded, a
+poor runner in a rugged race.
+
+Of course, she might come clear of the tangle by permitting Dr. Slavens
+to surrender his homestead to Boyle; she might do that, and impoverish
+him, and accept that sacrifice as the price of herself. For after the
+doctor had given up his claim she could marry him and ride off
+complacently by his side, as heartless and soulless as anything which is
+bought and sold.
+
+That's all it would amount to--a downright sale, even though she did not
+marry the doctor. She would be accepting immunity at the shameful price
+of a man's biggest chance in all his days. It was too much. She couldn't
+do it; she never intended to do it; she couldn't bring it around so that
+it would present an honorable aspect from any angle.
+
+Evening came over the hills with a chill, which it gave to the
+cottonwoods as it passed them on the river-bank. Their leaves trembled
+and sighed, and some were so frightened by the foreboding of winter in
+that touch that they lost their hold upon the boughs and came circling
+down. In the tall grass which thrived rankly in that sub-irrigated spot
+the insects of summer were out of voice. The choristers of the brushwood
+seemed to be in difficulties over the beginning, also. They set out in
+shivering starts, and left off with jerky suddenness, as if they had no
+heart for singing against this unmistakable warning that their summer
+concert season had come to its end.
+
+Agnes fired up her stove and sat by it, watching the eager sparks make
+their brave plunge into the vast night which so soon extinguished them,
+as the world engulfs and silences streams and clouds of little men who
+rush into it with a roar. So many of them there are who go forth so day
+by day, who avail, with all their fuss and noise, no more against it
+than the breath of an infant against a stone.
+
+Sitting there with the night drawing in around her, she felt the cold
+truth in her heart about that place, and the acknowledgment of it, which
+she had kept away from her up to that hour. It wasn't worth while; she
+did not care for it. Then and there she was ready to give it up and
+leave it to whoever might come after her and shape its roughness into a
+home.
+
+There was a heaviness upon her, and a weight of sadness such as comes
+out of the silent places of the night. It was such a wide and empty land
+for a young heart, and its prospect was such a waste of years! The
+thought of refuge and peace was sweet, but there is refuge to be found
+and peace to be won among men and the works of men; among books, and the
+softer ways of life.
+
+At that hour she was ready to give it up, mount her horse, and ride
+away. If giving it up would save Dr. Slavens his hard-won claim, she
+would not hesitate, she told herself, to ride to Comanche that night and
+take the first train for the East. But flight would not put her out of
+the reach of the Federal officials, and if she should fly, that would
+only bring the spite of Boyle down upon her more swiftly and sharply
+than remaining there, facing him, and defying him to do his worst.
+
+No; flight would be useless, because Jerry Boyle knew exactly where she
+would go. There was but one place; they would follow her to it and find
+her, and that would be carrying trouble to a home that had enough of it
+as it stood. There must be some other way. Was there no bond of
+tenderness in that dark man's life which she could touch? no soft
+influence which she might bring to bear upon him and cause him to
+release his rapacious hold?
+
+None. So far as she could fit the pieces of the past together she could
+fashion no design which offered relief.
+
+Agnes brought up her horse and gave it a measure of oats near the tent
+for the sake of the companionship of its noise, and large presence in
+the lantern light. She thought that even after she had gone to sleep
+there would be comfort in the sense of the animal's nearness.
+
+And so, beside her stove, the lonely night around her, the dread ache of
+"the lonesomeness" in her heart, she sat watching the sparks run out of
+the stovepipe like grains of sand running in a glass. Distance and hope
+alike have their enchantments, she owned, which all the powers of reason
+cannot dispel. Hand to hand this land was not for her. It was empty of
+all that she yearned for; it was as crude as the beginning.
+
+And out of the turmoil of this thought and heartache there came tears
+which welled copiously and without a sob, as one weeps for things which
+have not been and cannot be; as one weeps for hopelessness. And the
+whisperings of memory stirred in her heart, and the soft light of
+recollection kindled like a flame. Out of the past there rose a
+face--and flash!
+
+A plan!
+
+There was something to be done now; there was hot blood in the heart
+again. In one moment the way had straightened before her, and resolution
+had taken firm captaincy. With a pang of hunger she remembered that for
+a day she had subsisted principally on coffee.
+
+After a hasty supper, sleep was necessary, and rest. The horse had
+finished its oats, and was now watching her sudden activity with
+forward-thrown ears, its bright eyes catching the lantern-gleam as it
+turned its head. Satisfied, apparently, that the bustle included no
+immediate plans for itself, the animal lounged easily on three legs and
+went to sleep.
+
+Agnes stopped to give it a caressing pat as she went in. Sleep was the
+important thing now, for her plan called for endurance and toil. But
+there was one little thing to be done tonight for which the early light
+of morning, in which she must be stirring, might not suffice--just a
+little writing. It was quickly done, her suitcase held across her knees
+serving for a desk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE STRANGE TENT
+
+
+"Do nothing until I return," ran her letter, which Dr. Slavens read by
+the last muddy light of day. "I will hold you to a strict account of
+your promise to me that you would not act in this matter without first
+returning here."
+
+There was no word of where she had gone, no time fixed for her to
+return. He had found the envelope pinned to the tent-cloth when he rode
+up, weary and grim, from his journey to Meander.
+
+Inside the tent all was in order. There stood her boxes of canned goods
+and groceries against the wall. There was her cot, its blanket folded
+over the pillow and tucked in neatly to keep out the dust. She had not
+left hastily, it appeared, although the nervous brevity of her note
+seemed to indicate the contrary. She had contrived herself a broom of
+greasewood branches, with which she swept the space between stove and
+tent, keeping it clean down to hard earth. It stood there as she had
+left it, handle down, as carefully placed as if it were a most expensive
+and important utensil.
+
+Slavens smiled as he lifted it. Even in the wilderness a true woman
+could not live without her broom, a greater civilizing influence, he
+thought, than the sword.
+
+He did not go inside the tent, but stood holding up the flap, looking
+around the dim interior. Her lantern stood on a box, matches beside it,
+as if it had been left there ready to his hand in the expectation that
+he would come in and make himself at home.
+
+It was not likely, he thought, that any of the neighbors could tell him
+where she had gone when she had not felt like giving him that much of
+her confidence. But he went down to Smith's, making casual inquiry,
+saying nothing about the note which she had left, not taking that to be
+any of Smith's concern.
+
+As always, Smith had been astir at an early hour. He had seen her pass,
+going in the direction of Comanche. She was riding briskly, he said, as
+if she had only a short journey ahead of her, and was out of hail before
+he could push the pan of biscuits he was working over into the oven and
+open the door. It was Smith's opinion, given with his usual volubility
+and without solicitation, that she had gone out on one of her
+excursions.
+
+"More than likely," said the doctor. "I think I'll go back up there and
+kind of keep an eye on her stuff. Somebody might carry some of it off."
+
+This unmalicious reflection on the integrity of the community hurt
+Smith. There was evidence of deep sorrow in his heart as he began to
+argue refutation of the ingenuous charge. It was humiliating, he
+declared, that a man should come among them and hold them in such low
+esteem.
+
+"In this country nobody don't go around stealin' stuff out of houses and
+tents," he protested. "You can put your stuff down on the side of the
+road and leave it there, and go back in a month and find it. Sheepmen
+leave supplies for their herders that way, and I've known 'em to leave
+their pay along with 'em. Maybe it'd be a week or two before them
+fellers got around to it, but it'd be there when they got there. There's
+no such a thing as a tramp in this country. What'd a tramp live on
+here?"
+
+"I don't question your defense of conditions as they were," the doctor
+rejoined; "but I'm looking at things as they are. There are a lot of new
+people in here, the country is becoming civilized; and the more
+civilized men grow the more police and battle-ships and regiments of
+soldiers they need to keep things happy and peaceful between them, and
+to prevent their equally civilized and cultured neighbors from stepping
+in from across the seas and booting them out of their comfortable homes.
+You've got to keep your eyes on your suitcase and your hand on your
+wallet when you sit down among civilized people, Smith."
+
+"Say, I guess you're right about that," admitted Smith after some
+reflection. "I read in the paper the other day that they're goin' to
+build three new battle-ships. Yes, I reckon things'll change here in
+this part of Wyoming now. It'll be so in a year or two that a man can't
+leave his pants hangin' out on the line overnight."
+
+"Yes, you'll come to that," the doctor agreed.
+
+"Pants?" pursued Smith reminiscently. "Pants? Well, I tell you. There
+was a time in this country, when I drove stage from Casper to Meander,
+that I knew every pair of pants between the Chugwater and the Wind
+River. If one man ever had come out wearin' another feller's pants, I'd
+'a' spotted 'em quick as I would a brand on a stray horse. Pants wasn't
+as thick in them days as they are now, and crooks wasn't as plentiful
+neither. I knew one old sheepman back on the Sweetwater that wore one
+pair of pants 'leven years."
+
+"That's another of the inconveniences of civilization."
+
+"Pants and pie-annos," said Smith. "But I don't care; I'll put in a
+stock of both of 'em just as soon as folks get their houses built and
+their alfalfa in."
+
+"That's the proper spirit," commended Slavens.
+
+"And insurance and undertakin'," added Smith. "I'll ketch 'em comin' and
+goin'."
+
+"If you had a doctor to hitch in with you on the deal," suggested
+Slavens.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" grinned Smith.
+
+"I'll be cutting a streak out of here before long, I think."
+
+"Soon as you sell that claim?"
+
+Slavens nodded.
+
+"Don't let 'em bluff you on the price," advised Smith. "They're long on
+that game here."
+
+Slavens answered as Smith doubtless expected, and with a show of the
+deepest confidence in his own sagacity, no matter what feeling lay in
+the well of his conscience at that hour. He left Smith and went back to
+Agnes' camp, hoping to see a light as he drew near. There was none. As
+he carried no food with him, he was forced to draw on her stores for
+supper.
+
+For a long time he lay upon his saddle, smoking beside the stove,
+turning over in his mind a thousand conjectures to account for her
+sudden and unexplained absence. He was not worried for her safety, for
+he believed that she had gone to Comanche, and that was a ride too long
+for her to attempt in a day. Doubtless she would set out on the return
+early in the morning, and reach home about noon.
+
+It was well in the turn of the following afternoon when Slavens decided
+that he would wait in camp for her no longer. Fears were beginning to
+rise in him, and doubt that all was with her as it should be. If she
+went toward Comanche, she must return from Comanche; he might meet her
+on the way to his own camp. If not, in the morning he would go on to
+Comanche in search of her.
+
+His horse, fresh and eager, knowing that it was heading for home,
+carried him over the road at a handsome gait. At the first stage-station
+out of Comanche, a matter of twenty-five miles, and of fifteen beyond
+his camp, he made inquiry about Agnes.
+
+She had passed there the morning before, the man in charge said,
+measuring Slavens curiously with his little hair-hedged eyes as he stood
+in the door of his shanty, half a cabbage-head in one hand, a
+butcher-knife in the other. Slavens thanked him and drew on the reins.
+
+"I'm breaking in on your preparations for supper."
+
+"No; it's dinner," the man corrected.
+
+"I didn't know that you'd come to six-o'clock dinners in this part of
+the country," the doctor laughed.
+
+"Not as I know of," the cook-horse-wrangler said. "This dinner that I'm
+gittin' ready, stranger, is for tomorrow noon, when the stage comes by
+from Comanche. I always cook it the day before to be sure it'll be ready
+on time."
+
+With that the forehanded cook turned and went back to his pot. As
+Slavens rode away he heard the cabbage crunching under the cook's knife
+as he sliced it for the passengers of the Meander stage, to have it hot
+and steaming, and well soaked with the grease of corned beef, when they
+should arrive at noon on the morrow.
+
+Dusk was settling when the doctor reached his tent. Before he dismounted
+he rode to a little clear place among the bewilderment of stones which
+gave him a view of half a mile, and he sat there looking a while down
+the stage-trail toward Comanche. Beyond him a few hundred yards another
+tent had been planted. In front of it a man sat cooking his supper over
+a little blaze.
+
+"Boyle lost no time in getting here," muttered the doctor, turning to
+his own shelter and kindling a fire on the ashes of other days.
+
+Ashes were graying again over the embers long after he had boiled his
+pot of coffee and put away his can of warmed-over beans. Night was
+charged with a threat of frost, as is not uncommon in those altitudes at
+the beginning of September. It was so chilly that Slavens had drawn a
+blanket over his back as he sat before his dying fire, Indian fashion,
+on the ground, drawing what solace he could from his pipe.
+
+A sound of scrambling hoofs laboring up the sharp hill from the
+direction of Meander came to him suddenly, startling him out of his
+reflections. His thought leaped to the instant conclusion that it was
+Agnes; he laid light fuel to the coals, blowing it to quicken a blaze
+that would guide and welcome her.
+
+When the rider appeared an eager flame was laving the rocks in the
+yellow light, and Slavens was standing, peering beyond its radius. A
+glance told him that it was not she for whom he had lighted his guiding
+fire. It was a man. In a moment he drew up on the other side of the
+blaze and leaned over, looking sharply into Slavens' face.
+
+"Hello!" he hailed loudly, as if shouting across a river.
+
+Slavens returned his bellowed hail with moderation, recognizing in the
+dusty traveler Comanche's distinguished chief of police, Ten-Gallon, of
+the diamond rings. Slavens never had been able to feel anything but the
+most lively contempt for the fellow; now, since learning of Ten-Gallon's
+treatment of Agnes, and his undoubted hand in the plot of Hun Shanklin
+and Boyle against himself, the doctor held him to be nothing short of an
+open enemy.
+
+"I'm lookin' for a man by the name of Boyle," announced Ten-Gallon. "Are
+you holdin' down camp for him?"
+
+"He's on down the road a little way."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Ten-Gallon, "I know you now. You're the feller that beat
+him to it. Well, I had a complaint ag'in' you for stealin' a man's coat
+over in Comanche."
+
+"I'm out of your jurisdiction right now, I guess; but I'll go down to
+Comanche and give you a chance at me if you want to take it," the doctor
+told him, considerably out of humor, what with his own disappointment
+and the fellow's natural insolence.
+
+The police chief of Comanche laughed.
+
+"I'd be about the last man to lay hands on you for anything you done to
+that feller, even if you'd 'a' took his hide along with his coat," said
+he.
+
+"Then the crime trust of Comanche must be dissolved?" sneered Slavens.
+
+"I don't git you, pardner," returned Ten-Gallon with cold severity.
+
+"Oh, never mind."
+
+"You're the feller that beat Boyle to it, too," added the chief; "and I
+want to tell you, pardner, I take off my katy to you. You're one smart
+guy!"
+
+"You'll find your man on down the road about a quarter," directed
+Slavens, on whose ear the encomiums of Ten-Gallon fell without savor.
+
+"I heard in Meander today that you'd sold out to Boyle," said
+Ten-Gallon.
+
+"Well, you got it straight," the doctor told him.
+
+Ten-Gallon slued in his saddle, slouching over confidentially.
+
+"Say, it ain't any of my business, maybe, but how much did you git out
+of this pile of rocks?"
+
+"It isn't any of your business, but I'll tell you. I got more out of it
+than this whole blasted country's worth!" Slavens replied.
+
+Ten-Gallon chuckled--a deep, fat, well-contented little laugh.
+
+"Pardner," said he admiringly, "you certainly are one smart guy!"
+
+Ten-Gallon rode on in his quest of Boyle, while Slavens sat again beside
+his fire, which he allowed to burn down to coals.
+
+Slavens could not share the fellow's jubilation over the transfer of
+the homestead to Boyle, for he had surrendered it on Boyle's own
+terms--the terms proposed to Agnes at the beginning. As he filled
+his big, comforting pipe and smoked, Slavens wondered what she would
+say concerning his failure to return to her before signing the
+relinquishment. There would be some scolding, perhaps some tears,
+but he felt that he was steering the boat, and the return merely to
+keep his word inviolate would have been useless.
+
+He reviewed the crowded events of the past two days; his arrival at
+Meander, his talk with the county attorney. While that official appeared
+to be outwardly honest, he was inwardly a coward, trembling for his
+office. He was candid in his expression that Boyle would make a case
+against Agnes if he wanted it made, for there was enough to base an
+action upon and make a public showing.
+
+When it came to guarding that part of the people's heritage grandiloquently
+described as "the public domain," the Boyles were not always at the front,
+to be sure. They had entered hundreds of men on the public lands, paid
+them a few dollars for their relinquishment, and in that way come into
+illegal ownership of hundreds of thousands of acres of grazing land. But
+all the big fish of the Northwest did it, said the county attorney; you
+couldn't draw a Federal grand jury that would find a true bill in such a
+case against a big landowner, for the men in shadow always were drawn on
+the juries.
+
+Of course, when one of them turned against somebody else that would be
+different. In the case of the person whose entry of lands was covered by
+the doctor's hypothetical statement, and whose name was not mentioned
+between them, the crime had been no greater than their own--not so great
+from a moral interpretation of the law. Cupidity prompted them; the
+desire for a home the other. Still, that would have no weight. If Boyle
+wanted to make trouble, said the county attorney, he could make it, and
+plenty of it.
+
+Seeing how far the shadow of the Boyles fell over that land, Slavens at
+once dismissed the notion that he had carried to Meander with him of
+bringing some legal procedure against Boyle and Boyle's accomplices on
+account of the assault and attempted murder which they had practiced
+upon him. There could be no hope of an indictment if brought before the
+grand jury; no chance of obtaining a warrant for the arrest of Shanklin
+and Boyle by lodging complaint with the county attorney.
+
+Yet he took up that matter with the little lawyer, whose blond hair
+stood out in seven directions when Slavens told him of the felonious
+attack and the brutal disposition of what they had doubtless believed to
+be his lifeless body. The county attorney shook his head and showed an
+immediate disposition to get rid of Slavens when the story was done. It
+was plain that he believed the doctor was either insane or the tallest
+liar that ever struck that corner of the globe.
+
+"You couldn't make a case stick on that," said he, shifting his feet and
+his eyes, busying his hands with some papers on his desk, which he took
+up in assumed desire to be about the duties of his office without
+further loss of time. "All I can say to you on that is, when you get
+ready to leave the country, take a shot at them. That's about the only
+thing that's left open for you to do if you want to even it up. This
+office can't help you any."
+
+And that was his advice, lightly offered doubtless, with no thought that
+it would be accepted and carried out; but strange advice, thought
+Slavens, for the protector of the people's peace and dignity to give. In
+case he should take it, he would have to be ready to leave, that was
+certain.
+
+At his meeting with Boyle in the hotel at Meander on the appointed hour,
+Slavens found the Governor's son more arrogant and insistent than
+before. Boyle set a limit of noon for Slavens to meet his demand.
+
+"I've got everything greased," he boasted, "and I'll cut the string if
+you don't come up to the lick-log then."
+
+He offered to take Slavens to interview the official in charge of the
+land-office if the doctor doubted that things had not been set in motion
+to cause trouble for Agnes in the event of Slavens' refusal to yield.
+While Slavens believed this to be pure bluff, knowing that whatever
+influence Boyle might have with the person in question, the official
+would be too wise to show his subserviency in any such manner, at the
+same time the doctor was well enough convinced of Boyle's great and
+pernicious influence without a further demonstration. He saw nothing to
+be gained by holding out until he could return to Agnes and place the
+situation before her, if Boyle had been willing to forego moving against
+her that long.
+
+They went to the land-office together, Boyle advancing the money to
+Slavens for the outright purchase of the land under the provision of the
+act of Congress under which the reservation had been opened. Slavens
+immediately transferred title to Boyle, drew the money which he had on
+deposit in the bank at Meander, and rode away with the intention of
+quitting the state as soon as might be. How soon, depended upon the
+readiness of someone to go with him.
+
+Boyle had told him that he might take his own time about removing his
+possessions from the land; but it was his intention, as he gloomed there
+by his low fire, to get them off the next day. In the morning, he
+intended to go to Comanche, which was only ten miles distant, and try to
+find out what had become of Agnes. From there he would send out a wagon
+to bring in his tent and baggage.
+
+He turned again in his mind every reason, tenable and untenable, that he
+could frame to account for Agnes' sudden and unexplained trip. He
+thought she probably had gone for her mail, or to send a telegram and
+receive a reply, or for money, or something which she needed in camp.
+More than once he took up the probability that she had gone off on some
+forlorn scheme to adjust their mutual affairs; but there was not a hook
+of probability to sustain the weight of this conjecture, so with little
+handling it had to be put down as profitless.
+
+At the best she was gone, and had been gone now two days--a long time
+for a trip to Comanche. He wondered if anything had happened to her on
+the way; whether she had fled the state in precipitation, so that his
+homestead might be saved from Boyle. She was generous enough to do it,
+but not so thoughtless, he believed, knowing as she must know the
+concern and worry to which he would be subject until he could have word
+from her.
+
+But for Agnes' return to round it out, Slavens' adventure in that
+country had come to a close. Without Agnes it would be incomplete, as
+without her there would be missing a most important part in the future
+pattern of his life. He could not go without Agnes, although he had
+nothing yet of success to offer her.
+
+But that was on the way. The knocks which he had taken there in those
+few weeks had cracked the insulation of hopelessness which the frost of
+his profitless years had thickened upon him. Now it had fallen away,
+leaving him light and fresh for the battle.
+
+Agnes had said little about the money which Dr. Slavens had taken from
+Shanklin at the gambler's own crooked game. Whether she countenanced it
+or not, Slavens did not know. Perhaps it was not honest money, in every
+application of the term, but it was entirely current, and there was a
+most comfortable sense in the feel of it there bulked in the inner
+pocket of his coat. He had no qualms nor scruples about it at all. Fate
+had put it in his hands for the carrying out of his long-deferred
+desires. If it hadn't worked honestly for Shanklin, it was about to set
+in for a mighty reformation.
+
+But there was the trouble of Agnes' absence, which persisted between him
+and sleep when he arranged himself in his blankets. He turned with it,
+and sighed and worked himself into a fever of anxiety. Many times he got
+up and listened for the sound of hoofs, to go back to his tent and tell
+himself that it was unreasonable to think that she would ride by night
+over that lonely road.
+
+When morning began to creep in it brought with it a certain assurance
+that all was well with her, as daylight often brings its deceptive
+consolation to a heart that suffers the tortures of despair in the dark.
+Sleep caught him then, and held him past the hour that he had set for
+its bound. When he awoke the sun was shining over the cold ashes of his
+last night's fire.
+
+Slavens got up with a deeper feeling of resentment against Boyle than he
+ever had felt for any man. It seemed to come over him unaccountably,
+like a disagreeable sound, or a chill from a contrary wind. It was not a
+pettish humor, but a deep, grave feeling of hatred, as if the germ of it
+had grown in the blood and spread to every tissue of his body. The
+thought of Boyle's being so near him was discordant. It pressed on him
+with a sense of being near some unfit thing which should be removed.
+
+Dr. Slavens never had carried arms in his life, and he had no means of
+buckling Hun Shanklin's old revolver about him, but he felt that he must
+take it with him when he left the tent. Big and clumsy as it was, he
+thrust it under the belt which sustained his trousers, where it promised
+to carry very well, although it was not in a free-moving state in case
+an emergency should demand its speedy use.
+
+There would be no time for breakfast. Even then he should have been in
+Comanche, he told himself with upbraidings for having slept so long. His
+horse had strayed, too. Slavens went after it in resentful mood. The
+creature had followed the scant grazing to the second bench, an
+elevation considerably above its present site.
+
+Slavens followed the horse's trail, wondering how the animal had been
+able to scramble up those slopes, hobbled as it was. Presently he found
+the beast and started with it back to camp. Rounding the base of a great
+stone which stood perched on the hillside as if meditating a tumble,
+Slavens paused a moment to look over the troubled slope of land which
+had been his two days before.
+
+There was Boyle's tent, with a fire before it, but no one in sight; and
+there, on the land which adjoined his former claim on the south, was
+another tent, so placed among the rocks that it could not be seen from
+his own.
+
+"It wasn't there when I left," Slavens reflected. "I wonder what he's
+after?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+CROOK MEETS CROOK
+
+
+Slavens was saddling his horse before his tent, his mind still running
+on the newcomer who had pitched to the south of him, evidently while he
+was away. He was certain that he would have seen the tent if it had been
+there before he left, for it was within plain view of the road.
+
+Well, thought the doctor, whoever the stranger was, whatever he hoped or
+expected of that place, he was welcome to, for all that Slavens envied
+him. As for Slavens himself, he had run his race and won it by a nose;
+and now that he was putting down the proceeds to appease what he held as
+blackmail, he had no very keen regrets for what he was losing. He had
+passed through that. There would be the compensation----
+
+But of that no matter; that must come in its time and place, and if
+never, no matter. He would have the ease of conscience in knowing that
+he had served her, and served her well.
+
+His horse was restive and frisky in the cool of the morning, making a
+stir among the stones with its feet. Slavens spoke sharply to the
+animal, bending to draw up the girth, the stirrup thrown across the
+saddle.
+
+"Now, you old scamp, I'll take this friskiness out of you in a minute,"
+said he, giving the horse a slap under the belly as he reached to pull
+the stirrup down.
+
+He drew back with a start as his eyes lifted above the saddle, and his
+hand dropped to the butt of the revolver which he carried so clumsily in
+his belt. Hun Shanklin was standing there facing him, not above a dozen
+feet away, grinning dubiously, but with what he doubtless meant for an
+expression of friendliness.
+
+The old gambler threw out his hands with a sidewise motion eloquent of
+emptiness, lifting his shoulders in a quick little jerk, as if to say,
+"Oh, what's the use?"
+
+"Kind of surprised you; didn't I, Doc?" he asked, coming nearer.
+
+"What do you want here?" demanded Slavens harshly.
+
+"Well, not trouble," replied Shanklin lightly. "If I'd come over for
+that, I guess I could 'a' started it before now."
+
+"Yes, I suppose you could," admitted Slavens, watching him distrustfully
+and feeling thankful, somehow, that the horse was between them.
+
+"I saw you up on the hill after your horse, so I thought I'd come over
+and let you know I was around," said Shanklin. "Thought I'd tell you
+that I ain't holdin' any grudges if you ain't."
+
+"I don't see where you've got any call to. I never took a crack at you
+with a blackjack in the dark!"
+
+"No, you didn't, friend," Shanklin agreed in his old easy, persuasive
+way. "And I never done it to you. You owe the honorable Mr. Jerry Boyle
+for the red mark you've got on your forrid there. I'll own up that I
+helped him nail you up and dump you in the river; but I done it because
+I thought you was finished, and I didn't want the muss around."
+
+"Well, it will all come out on the day of reckoning, I suppose," said
+Slavens, not believing a word the old scamp said.
+
+He knew that minute, as he had known all the time, that no other hand
+than Shanklin's had laid him low that night. Of this he was as certain
+in his own mind as if he had seen the gambler lift hand for the blow.
+Boyle had no motive for it up to that time, although he had been quick
+to turn the circumstance to his advantage.
+
+"I thought Boyle'd dickered you out of this claim before now," said
+Shanklin, looking around warily.
+
+"He's down the road here a little piece," replied Slavens testily, "in
+company of another friend of yours. You could have seen his tent as you
+came over if you'd looked."
+
+"I just put up my tent last night," Shanklin explained.
+
+Slavens took hold of his saddle-horn as if to mount, indicating by his
+action that the visit should come to an end. Shanklin, who was not in
+the least sensitive on the matter of social rebuffs, did not appear to
+be inclined to accept the hint. He shifted his legs, thrusting one of
+them forward in a lounging attitude, and dug in his trousers pockets
+with his long, skinny hands.
+
+"Well, spit it out and have it over with!" snapped Slavens, feeling that
+there was something behind the man's actions to which he had not given
+words.
+
+"That was a purty good coat I left with you that night," suggested
+Shanklin, looking up without the slightest stirring of humor in his dry
+face.
+
+"You're welcome to it, if that's all," said Slavens.
+
+"That's all. I was kind of attached to that coat."
+
+Slavens left him standing there and entered the tent, feeling that
+Shanklin was as irresponsible morally as a savage. Evidently the
+inconsequential matter of an attempt at murder should not be allowed to
+stand between friends, according to the flat-game man's way of viewing
+life. It appeared that morning as if Shanklin had no trace of malice in
+him on account of the past, and no desire to pursue further his
+underhanded revenge. Conscience was so little trouble to him that he
+could sit at meat with a man one hour and stick a knife in his back the
+next.
+
+The coat was under a sack of oats, somewhat the worse for wrinkles and
+dust. Slavens gave it a shake, smoothed the heaviest of the creases with
+his hand, and went out to deliver it to its owner.
+
+Shanklin was facing the other way, in the direction of his own camp. His
+attitude was in sharp contrast with the easy, lounging posture of a few
+moments before. He was tense and alert, straining forward a little, his
+lean body poised as if he balanced for a jump. There was a clattering on
+the small stones which strewed the ground thickly there, as of somebody
+approaching, but the bulk of the horse was between Slavens and the view,
+as the doctor stopped momentarily in the door of the low tent.
+
+Clearing the tent and standing upright, Slavens saw Boyle and Ten-Gallon
+coming on hurriedly. They had been to Shanklin's camp evidently, looking
+for him. From the appearance of both parties, there was something in the
+wind.
+
+Boyle was approaching rapidly, Ten-Gallon trailing a bit, on account of
+his shorter legs perhaps, or maybe because his valor was even briefer
+than his wind. Boyle seemed to be grinning, although there was no mirth
+in his face. His teeth showed between his parted lips; he carried his
+right arm in front, crooked at the elbow, his fingers curved.
+
+Slavens saw that all thought of the coat had gone but of Shanklin's
+mind. The old gambler did not so much as turn his head. Slavens threw
+the coat across his saddle as Boyle came up.
+
+"Well, what have you got to say to it, you dirty old thief?" demanded
+Boyle, plunging into the matter as if preliminaries were not needed
+between him and Shanklin.
+
+"You seem to be doin' the talkin'," returned Shanklin with a show of
+cold indifference, although Slavens saw that he watched every movement
+Boyle made, and more than once in those few seconds the doctor marked
+Hun's sinewy right arm twitch as if on the point of making some swift
+stroke.
+
+Boyle stopped while there was yet a rod between them, so hot with anger
+that his hands were trembling.
+
+"That don't answer me!" he growled, his voice thick in his constricted
+throat. "What have you got to say to the way you double-crossed me, you
+old one-eyed hellion?"
+
+"Talk don't hurt, Jerry, unless a man talks too much," Shanklin answered
+mildly. "Now, if I wanted to talk, I could mighty near talk a rope
+around your little white neck. I know when to talk and when to keep
+still."
+
+"And I know how to jar you loose!" threatened Boyle.
+
+Shanklin leaned toward the Governor's son never so little, his left hand
+lifted to point his utterance, and opened upon Boyle the most withering
+stream of blasphemous profanity that Slavens had ever heard. If there
+ever was a man who cursed by note, as they used to say, Hun Shanklin was
+that one. He laid it to Boyle in a blue streak.
+
+"What do I owe you?" he began.
+
+Then he swung off into the most derogatory comparisons, applications,
+insulting flagellations, that man ever stood up and listened to. His
+evident motive was to provoke Boyle to some hostile act, so that
+twitching right arm might have the excuse for dealing out the death
+which lay at its finger-ends. Every little while the torrent of abuse
+broke upon the demand, "What do I owe you?" like a rock in the channel,
+and then rushed on again without laying hold of the same epithet twice.
+If a man were looking for a master in that branch of frontier learning,
+a great opportunity was at hand.
+
+Boyle leaned against the torrent of abuse and swallowed it, his face
+losing its fiery hue, blanching and fading as if every word fell on his
+senses like the blow of a whip to the back. The Governor's son watched
+every muscle of Shanklin's face as if to read the gambler's intention in
+his eye, while his hand, stiff-set and clawlike, hovered within three
+inches of his pistol-butt.
+
+Presently Shanklin stopped, panting like a lizard. Both men stooped a
+little lower, leaning forward in their eager watchfulness. Neither of
+them seemed to be conscious that the world held any other object than
+his enemy, crouching, waiting, drawing breath in nostril-dilating
+gasps.
+
+Boyle moved one foot slightly, as if to steady himself for a supreme
+effort. A little stone which he dislodged tumbled down the side of a
+four-inch gully with a noise that seemed the sound of an avalanche. With
+that alarm Shanklin's arm moved swiftly. Like a reflection in a glass,
+Boyle's arm moved with it.
+
+Two shots; such a bare margin between them that the ear scarcely could
+mark the line. Then one.
+
+Shanklin, his hands half lifted, his arms crooked at the elbow and
+extended from his sides, dropped his pistol, his mouth open, as if to
+utter the surprise which was pictured in his features. He doubled limply
+at the knees, collapsed forward, fell upon his face.
+
+Boyle put his hand to his breast above his heart, pressing it hard; took
+it away, turned about in his tracks as if bewildered; swayed sickly,
+sank to his knees, and fell over to his side with the silent, hopeless,
+huddling movement of a wild creature that has been shot in the woods.
+
+Ten-Gallon came from behind the tent, where he had been compressing
+himself into a crevice between two boulders. His face was white, and
+down it sweat was pouring, drawn from the agony of his base soul. He
+went to the place where Dr. Slavens knelt beside Boyle.
+
+"Cra-zy Christmas!" gasped he, his mouth falling open. Then again:
+
+"Cra-zy Christmas!"
+
+Slavens had gone to Boyle first, because there was something in the
+utter collapse of Shanklin which told him the man was dead. As he
+stripped Boyle's clothing off to bare the wound, Slavens ordered
+Ten-Gallon to go and see whether the old gambler had paid his last
+loss.
+
+"I won't touch him! I won't lay a hand on him!" Ten-Gallon refused,
+drawing back in alarm.
+
+Boyle was not dead, though Shanklin's bullet had struck him perilously
+near the heart and had passed through his body. With each feeble intake
+of breath blood bubbled from the blue mark, which looked like a little
+bruise, on his chest.
+
+"Well, see if you can make a fire, then, and hurry about it! Get some
+water on to boil as fast as you can!" Slavens directed the nerveless
+chief of police.
+
+Ten-Gallon set about his employment with alacrity while Slavens went
+over to Shanklin, turning his face up to the sky. For a little while he
+stooped over Hun; then he took the gambler's coat from the saddle and
+spread it over his face. Hun Shanklin was in need of no greater service
+that man could render him.
+
+Dr. Slavens took off his coat and brought out his instrument-case. He
+gave Boyle such emergency treatment as was possible where the
+gun-fighter lay, and then called Ten-Gallon to help take him into the
+tent.
+
+"Lord, he's breathin' through his back!" said Ten-Gallon. "He'll never
+live till we git him to the tent--never in this world, Doc! I knew a
+feller that was knifed in the back one time till he breathed through his
+ribs that way, and he----"
+
+"Never mind," said Slavens. "Take hold of him."
+
+Ten-Gallon's fire burned briskly, and the water boiled. Dr. Slavens
+sterilized his instruments in a pan of it, and set about to establish
+the drainage for the wound upon which the slender chance of Boyle's life
+depended. Boyle was unconscious, as he had been from the moment he fell.
+They stretched him on the doctor's cot. With the blankets spread
+underfoot to keep down the dust, the early sun shining in through the
+lifted flap, Slavens put aside whatever animosity he held against the
+man and went to work earnestly in an endeavor to save his life.
+
+Ten-Gallon showed a nervous anxiety to get away. He wanted to go after
+his horse; he wanted to go to Boyle's tent and get breakfast for
+himself; and then he pressed the necessity of his presence in Comanche
+to keep and preserve the peace. But Slavens would not permit him to quit
+the tent until he could no longer be of assistance.
+
+It was not the wounded body of Jerry Boyle that the pot-bellied peace
+officer feared, but the stiffening frame of Hun Shanklin, lying out
+there in the bright sun. Every time he looked that way he drew up on
+himself, like a snail. At length Slavens gave him permission to leave,
+charging him to telephone to Meander for the coroner the moment that he
+arrived in Comanche, and to get word to Boyle's people at the earliest
+possible hour.
+
+There seemed to be nothing for Slavens to do but to forego his trip in
+quest of Agnes, and sit there in the hope that she would come. Boyle
+could not be left alone, and Shanklin's body must be brought up out of
+the gully and covered.
+
+This ran through his mind in erratic starts and blanks as he bent over
+the wounded man, listening to his respiration with more of a humane than
+professional fear that the next breath might tell him of the hemorrhage
+which would make a sudden end of Boyle's wavering and uncertain life.
+
+Ten-Gallon had been gone but a little while when Slavens heard him
+clattering back in his heel-dragging walk over the rocks. He appeared
+before the doctor with a lively relief in his face.
+
+"Some people headin' in here," he announced. "Maybe they'll be of some
+help to you. I hated to go and leave you here alone with that
+feller"--jerking his head toward Shanklin's body--"for I wouldn't trust
+him dead no more than I would alive!"
+
+"All right," said Slavens, scarcely looking up.
+
+Ten-Gallon appeared to be over his anxiety to leave. He waited in front
+of the tent as the sound of horses came nearer.
+
+"Stop them off there a little way," ordered the doctor. "We don't want
+any more dust around here than we can help."
+
+He looked around for his hat, put it on, and went out, sleeves up, to
+see that his order was enforced. Agnes was alighting from a horse as he
+stepped out. A tall, slight man with a gray beard was demanding of
+Ten-Gallon what had happened there.
+
+Relief warmed the terror out of her eyes as Agnes ran forward and caught
+Dr. Slavens' hand.
+
+"You're safe!" she cried. "I feared--oh, I feared!"
+
+A shudder told him what words faltered to name.
+
+"It wasn't my fight," he told her.
+
+"This is Governor Boyle," said Agnes, presenting the stranger, who had
+stood looking at them with ill-contained impatience, seeing himself
+quite forgotten by both of them in that moment of meeting.
+
+"I am sorry to tell you, sir, that your son is gravely wounded," said
+Dr. Slavens, driving at once to the point.
+
+"Where is he?" asked the Governor, his face pale, his throat working as
+if he struggled with anguish which fought to relieve itself in a cry.
+
+Dr. Slavens motioned to the tent. The old man went forward, stopping
+when he saw his unconscious son and the bloody clothing beside the cot.
+He put his hand to his forehead and stood a moment, his eyes closed.
+Then he went in and bent over the wounded man.
+
+A sob of pity rose in Agnes' throat as she watched him and saw the pain
+and affection upon his face. Presently Governor Boyle turned and walked
+to the spot where Hun Shanklin's body lay. Without a word, he lifted the
+coat from the gambler's face, covered it again, and turned away.
+
+"Bad company! Bad company!" said he, sadly shaking his head. "How did it
+happen, Doctor? You were here? First"--he held up his hand, as if to
+check the doctor's speech--"will he live?"
+
+"Men have recovered from worse wounds," responded the doctor. "There's a
+chance for him, at least."
+
+He related, then, the circumstance of the meeting, the brief quarrel,
+and the fight, Ten-Gallon putting in a word here and there, although his
+testimony was neither asked nor welcomed.
+
+"I don't know what the cause of the quarrel was," concluded the doctor.
+"Two days ago I relinquished this claim to your son. He came here
+immediately and took possession."
+
+"You--you relinquished!" exclaimed Agnes, disappointment in her voice,
+reproach in her eyes.
+
+"I am sorry that you relinquished it," said the Governor. "This brave
+young woman rode all the way to my ranch--almost a hundred miles--to
+save it to you. I was absent when she arrived, but I set out with her at
+the earliest possible moment upon my return. We rode all night last
+night, sir, changing horses in Comanche this morning."
+
+"I am grateful to you, both of you, for the trouble and fatigue you have
+undergone in my behalf. But the case, as your son urged it, sir, was
+beyond temporizing. Perhaps Miss Gates has told you?"
+
+The Governor nodded curtly, a look of displeasure on his face.
+
+"I can't believe that Jerry meant it," he protested. "It must have been
+one of his jokes."
+
+"I am sorry, then, that my idea of humor is so widely divergent from
+his!" said Dr. Slavens with deep feeling.
+
+"Well, he's paid for it. The poor boy has paid for his indiscretion,"
+said the old man sadly.
+
+He turned away and went a little space, where he stood as if in
+meditation.
+
+"You promised me that you'd do nothing until you returned and saw me,"
+Agnes charged. "And I had saved it for you! I had saved it!"
+
+"You would have been too late," returned the doctor sharply. "The
+machinery for your humiliation was already in motion. I doubt whether
+even the Governor could have stopped it in another day without a great
+deal of unpleasant publicity for you. Boyle meant to have this piece of
+land, and he got it. That's all."
+
+Ten-Gallon was fooling around the fire. He drew over toward the group as
+the Governor came back.
+
+"Can my son be removed from here?" the old man asked.
+
+The doctor said that he could not, without practically throwing away his
+slender chance for life.
+
+"Do for him what you can; you seem to be a capable man, sir; you inspire
+confidence in me," said the Governor, laying his hand appealingly on the
+doctor's shoulder; "and if you can save him, I'll pay you twice what
+this infernal claim was worth to you!"
+
+"I've done all that can be done for him, without hope or expectation of
+reward," said the doctor; "and I'll stick by him to the end, one way or
+another. We can care for him here as long as this weather holds, just as
+well as they could in a hospital."
+
+"Well, as far as what this claim's worth goes," put in Ten-Gallon,
+edging into the conversation, "you don't need to lose any sleep over
+that."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Slavens, turning upon him sharply.
+
+Ten-Gallon stirred the dust with his toe, stooped and picked up an empty
+revolver-cartridge.
+
+"It ain't worth that!" said he, presenting it in the palm of his hand.
+
+"I don't know what you're driving at," said the doctor, inclined to walk
+away and leave him.
+
+"I mean that Hun Shanklin queered all of you," said Ten-Gallon. "You had
+the wrong figgers, and you filed on the wrong claim!"
+
+Pressed for an explanation of how he knew, Ten-Gallon told them that he
+had been Shanklin's partner at the beginning, and that Shanklin had
+deceived and cheated both him and Boyle.
+
+"Ah, then he did double-cross my son!" cried the Governor triumphantly,
+seizing this vindication for the young man's deed with avid eagerness.
+
+"He sure did," Ten-Gallon agreed; "and he done it right! I know all
+about you"--nodding to the doctor--"and what happened to you back of
+that tent in Comanche that night. Shanklin had it in for you ever since
+you showed up his game the night that sucker feller was goin' to put
+down that wad of money. He'd been layin' for you, one way and another,
+for a couple of days or so. You walked right into his hand that night."
+
+"I seemed to," admitted Slavens with bitter recollection.
+
+"Shanklin knew about copper in these rocks over here----"
+
+"So it's copper?" said Slavens, unable to restrain his words.
+
+"Copper; that's what it is," nodded Ten-Gallon. "But it ain't on this
+claim, and I'll show that in a minute, too. Hun had been writin' to
+Jerry about it, tryin' to git up a company to pay him for what he knew,
+so they could locate the man that drawed Number One there, see? Well,
+Hun, he'd known about that copper a long time; he could go to it with
+his eyes shut. So he got the description of the land as soon as the
+survey maps was out, and he offered to sell the location for five
+thousand dollars. He had samples of the ore, and it run rich, and it
+_is_ rich, richest in this state, I'm here to tell you, gentlemen.
+
+"But Jerry wouldn't give him no five thousand for what he knew. So Hun
+he got some other fellers on the string, and him and me was partners on
+the deal and was goin' to split even on account of some things I knew
+and was to keep under my katy.
+
+"Well, Hun sold the figgers of that land to Jerry for five hundred
+dollars in the end, and he sold it to them other fellers for the same.
+When it come out that you was Number One, Doc--and us fellers knew that
+in the morning of the day of the drawin', for we had it fixed with
+Mong--Hun he tells Jerry that you'll never sell out for no reasonable
+price.
+
+"'We'll have to soak that feller,' he says, 'and git him out of the
+way.' Jerry he agreed to it, and they had men out after you all that day
+and night, but they didn't git a chance at you. Then you walked right
+into old Hun's hand. Funny!" commented Ten-Gallon stopping there to
+breathe.
+
+"Very!" said the doctor, putting his hand to the tender scar on his
+forehead.
+
+He pushed back his hat and turned to the Governor.
+
+"Very funny!" said he.
+
+"Of course, Jerry, he was winded some when you put in your bill there
+ahead of him and Peterson that morning and filed on the claim he had it
+all framed up to locate the Swede feller on. Jerry telephoned over to
+Comanche and found out from Shanklin how you got the numbers, and then
+he laid out to start a fire under you and git you off. Well, he done it,
+didn't he?"
+
+Ten-Gallon leered up at Slavens with some of his old malevolence and
+official hauteur in his puffy face.
+
+"Go on with your story, and be careful what charges you lay against my
+son!" commanded the Governor sharply.
+
+Ten-Gallon was not particularly squelched or abashed by the rebuke. He
+winked at Agnes as if to express a feeling of secret fellowship which he
+held for her on account of things which both of them might reveal if
+they saw fit.
+
+"Shanklin, he closed up his game in Comanche three or four days ago and
+went over to Meander," Ten-Gallon resumed. "He never had split with me
+on that money he got for the numbers of this claim out of Jerry and that
+other crowd. So I follered him. Yesterday morning, you know, the land
+left over from locatin' them that had drawed claims was throwed open to
+anybody that wanted to file on it.
+
+"Well, the first man in the line was that old houn' that's layin' over
+there with his toes turnin' cold. He filed on something, and when I
+collared him about the money, he throwed me down. He said he sold the
+numbers of land that didn't have no more copper on it than the palm of
+his hand, and he said he'd just filed on the land that had the mines. He
+showed me the papers; then he hopped his horse and come on down here."
+
+"Incredible!" exclaimed the Governor.
+
+"It was like him," Slavens corroborated. "He was a fox."
+
+"I was goin' to take a shot at him," bragged Ten-Gallon, "but he was too
+fur ahead of me. He had a faster horse than mine; and when I got here
+last night he was already located on that claim. The copper mine's over
+there where the old feller's tent stands, I tell you. They ain't enough
+of it on this place to make a yard of wire."
+
+"And you carried the story of Shanklin's deception and fraud to my son,"
+nodded the Governor, fixing a severe eye on Ten-Gallon, "and he sought
+the gambler for an explanation?"
+
+"Well, he was goin' to haul the old crook over the fire," admitted
+Ten-Gallon, somewhat uneasy under the old man's eye.
+
+The Governor walked away from them again in his abstracted, self-centered
+way, and stood looking off across the troubled landscape. Dr. Slavens
+stepped to the tent to see how the patient rested, and Ten-Gallon gave
+Agnes another wink.
+
+"Comanche's dwindlin' down like a fire of shavin's," said he. "Nobody
+couldn't git hurt there now, not even a crawlin' baby."
+
+Indignation flushed her face at the man's familiarity. But she reasoned
+that he was only doing the best he knew to be friendly.
+
+"Are you still chief of police there?" she asked.
+
+"I'm marshal now," he replied. "The police force has been done away with
+by the mayor and council."
+
+"Well then, I still have doubt about the safety of Comanche," she
+observed, turning from him.
+
+Governor Boyle approached Ten-Gallon and pointed to Hun Shanklin's
+body.
+
+"You must do something to get that carcass out of camp right away," he
+said. "Isn't there a deputy coroner at Comanche?"
+
+"The undertaker is," said Ten-Gallon, drawing back at the prospect of
+having to lay hands on the body of the man whom he feared in death as he
+had feared him in life.
+
+"Send him over here," Governor Boyle directed.
+
+Ten-Gallon departed on his mission, and the Governor took one of the
+trodden blankets from in front of the tent and spread it over Shanklin's
+body, shrouding it completely. Dr. Slavens had lowered the flap of the
+tent to keep the sun from the wounded man's face. When he came out,
+Agnes met him with an inquiring look.
+
+"He's conscious," said the doctor. "The blow of that heavy bullet
+knocked the wind out of him for a while."
+
+"Will he--lapse again?" asked the Governor, balancing between hope and
+fear.
+
+"It isn't likely. You may go in and speak to him now if you want to. But
+he must keep still. A little exertion might start a hemorrhage."
+
+Jerry Boyle lay upon his back, his bloodless face toward them, as they
+gathered noiselessly in the door of the tent. His eyes were standing
+open, great and questioning, out of his pallor, nothing but the animal
+quality of bewilderment and fear in their wide stare.
+
+Governor Boyle went in and dropped to his knees beside the cot. Dr.
+Slavens followed hastily, and placed his hand on the wounded man's
+breast.
+
+"You may listen," said he; "but keep still."
+
+"Don't even try to whisper," admonished the Governor, taking his son's
+hand between his own.
+
+"That's all right, Governor," replied the young man, his face quickening
+with that overrunning little crinkling, like wind over water, which was
+his peculiar gift for making his way into the hearts of women and men,
+unworthy as he was.
+
+"Be still!" commanded the old man. "I know what happened. There's
+nothing to say now."
+
+"Did I get him?" whispered Jerry, turning his head a little and looking
+eagerly into his father's face.
+
+The Governor placed his hand over his son's mouth, silencing the young
+man with a little hissing sound, like a mother quieting her babe.
+
+Agnes turned away, the disgust which she felt for this savage spirit of
+the man undisguised in her face. Dr Slavens cautioned the Governor
+again.
+
+"If he says another word, you'll have to leave him," said he. "This is
+one case where talk will turn out anything but cheap."
+
+He joined Agnes, and together they walked away from the scene of
+violence and death.
+
+"You're tired to death," said he. "I'm going to take possession of
+Boyle's tent down there for you, and you've got to take a long sleep.
+After that we'll think about the future."
+
+She walked on beside him, silent and submissive, interposing no
+objection to his plan. They found the tent very well equipped; he
+started to leave her there to her repose. She stood in the door with her
+hat in her hand, her hair in disorder, dust over her dress and shoes.
+
+"Could you send word to Smith by the stage this morning and ask him to
+bring my things--tent and everything--down here?" she asked.
+
+"Then you're not planning to go back there?" he asked, his heart jumping
+with hope.
+
+She shook her head, smiling wanly.
+
+"I can't bear the thought of it," said she.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A SUDDEN CLOUD
+
+
+Dr. Slavens went back to his camp, concluding on the way that it would
+be wise to have a complete understanding with Governor Boyle in regard
+to taking further charge of his son's case. If, after three days allowed
+for infection to manifest itself, the wound remained healthy and clean,
+there would be little need of a doctor in constant attendance. Young
+Boyle would be able to express his preference in the matter then, and
+Slavens did not want to act as physician to him against his will.
+
+Governor Boyle was walking up and down like a sentry before the tent
+when Dr. Slavens came up.
+
+"He's asleep," said the father. "He seems to be pitifully weak for a man
+suffering from a fresh wound; he dropped off as if he had fainted."
+
+"When you consider that a bullet of that caliber, with the powder back
+of it that this one had, strikes somewhere around a ton," said the
+doctor, "it ceases to be a wonder that he is weak."
+
+"It's Heaven's mercy that spared him!" declared the Governor, his voice
+troubled with emotion.
+
+Slavens wondered at the deep affection which this man of so hard a
+repute could show for his son, and at the tie of tenderness which
+plainly bound them. But precedent is not wanting, as the doctor
+reflected, to establish the contention that some of the world's greatest
+oppressors have been good fathers, kind husbands, and tender guardians
+of the home.
+
+"Yes; Shanklin shot twice," said Slavens. "It was his second one that
+hit, after he had been mortally hurt himself."
+
+"It was the hand of Providence that turned his aim!" said the Governor.
+"The old one-eyed villain had the reputation of being the best shot in
+the Northwest. He provoked my son to draw on him, or tried to at
+least--for I can't believe that Jerry drew first--with the intention of
+putting him out of the way."
+
+"What do you propose to do about bringing another surgeon here?" asked
+Dr. Slavens.
+
+"Why, I hadn't given it any serious thought," answered Governor Boyle,
+looking at him quickly.
+
+"It would please me better to have you do so."
+
+"But I have entire confidence in your ability to handle the case, sir.
+Your conduct in the matter has been admirable, and I see no reason why
+you should not continue to attend my son until--the end, one way or the
+other."
+
+"You understand, Governor," said Dr. Slavens gravely, searching the old
+man's face with steady eyes, "that there is no ground for good feeling
+or friendship between your son and me?"
+
+The Governor nodded, averting his face, as if the acknowledgment gave
+him pain or shame.
+
+"And in case that everything should not turn out to the happiest
+conclusion for him, I should not want to stand the chance of blame."
+
+"Quite sensible, but unnecessarily cautious, I tell you," the Governor
+replied.
+
+"I have done all that a better surgeon could have done," pursued the
+doctor, "and I am quite willing to go ahead and do all that can be done
+until you can bring another physician here, to relieve me, or at least
+satisfy you that I have not allowed any feeling of man to man to stand
+between physician and patient."
+
+"Very well; I will telegraph to Cheyenne for a physician," agreed the
+Governor, "since it is your wish. But I am entirely satisfied with, and
+trustful of you, sir. That I desire you to understand plainly."
+
+Dr. Slavens thanked him.
+
+"I shall send for the other physician to act merely in an advisory
+capacity, and in no manner to relieve you of the case unless you desire
+to be relieved. But I think it will be to your interest to stand by me.
+I feel that I am under a certain obligation to you, more especially to
+Miss Gates, for my son's----"
+
+"We will not discuss that, if you please," Dr. Slavens interrupted.
+
+"At least I will stand by what I said to you a little while back," the
+Governor said; "that is, in the matter of remuneration, if you pull him
+through."
+
+"All of that in its proper place," said the doctor. "I am going back to
+Comanche now to send for the boy's mother," the Governor announced, "and
+telegraph to Cheyenne for the doctor of whom I spoke. I have known him
+for many years. I'll have some more tents and camp-supplies sent out,
+and anything that you stand in need of which can be procured in
+Comanche."
+
+Dr. Slavens gave him a list of articles needed in the patient's case,
+and the Governor rode away. The undertaker from Comanche arrived a
+little later, and took Hun Shanklin's body up from the ground. When his
+wagon, on its return to Comanche, had passed the tent where Agnes was
+trying to sleep, she got up and joined Dr. Slavens.
+
+"I couldn't sleep," she explained. "Every time I shut my eyes I could
+see that poor old gambler's body lying there with the coat over his
+face!"
+
+"I don't feel either pity or pain in his case," said the doctor; "or,
+when it comes to that, for the other one, either."
+
+"Well, you couldn't have prevented it, anyway," she sighed.
+
+"And wouldn't have if I could," he declared. "I looked on them as one
+poison fighting another, as we set them to do in the human system. When
+one overcomes the other, and the body throws them both out, health
+follows."
+
+"Do you think Jerry will recover?"
+
+"There's a chance for him," he replied.
+
+"For his mother's sake I hope he will," she said. "I went to see her,
+remembering in the midst of my distress her kind face and gentle heart.
+I'm glad that I went, although my mission failed."
+
+"No, nothing fails," he corrected gently. "What looks to us like failure
+from our side of it is only the working out of the plan laid down a long
+time ahead. We may never see the other side of the puzzle, but if we
+could see it we'd find that our apparent failure had been somebody
+else's gain. It's the balance of compensation. Your thought of Boyle's
+mother, and your ride to appeal to her in my behalf, worked out in
+bringing his father here at a time when Jerry needed him as he never may
+need him in his life again."
+
+"It was a strange coincidence," she reflected.
+
+"We call such happenings that for want of a better name, or for the
+short-sightedness which keeps us from applying the proper one," said he.
+"It's better that you have concluded to give up the City of Refuge.
+You'll not need it now."
+
+"It was a foolish undertaking, romantic and impossible, from the very
+beginning," she owned. "I never could have put it through."
+
+"It would have carried many a heartache with it, and many a hard and
+lonely day," said he. "And so we are both back where we were, so far as
+landed possessions go in this country, at the beginning."
+
+"I've lost considerable by my foolish dream," she confessed with
+regret.
+
+"And I have gained everything," he smiled, taking her hand in his.
+
+The world around them seemed to be too grave to look kindly on any
+love-passages of tenderness or kisses, or triflings such as is the
+common way of a man with a maid. In that moment when hand touched hand
+she looked up into his eyes with warm softness glowing in her own, and
+on her lips stood an invitation which his heart sprang to seize, like an
+eager guest leaping through the portal of welcome.
+
+At that moment, when eye drew eye, heart warmed to heart, and lips
+trembled to meet, Jerry Boyle coughed as if blood were mounting to his
+throat and cutting off his life.
+
+Dr. Slavens was at his side in a moment. It must have been the
+strangulation of an uneasy dream, for there was no symptom of
+hemorrhage. The wounded man still slept, groaning and drawing the lips
+back from the teeth, as he had drawn them in his passion when he came on
+that morning to meet his enemy with the intention in his heart to slay.
+
+But love shuddered and grew pale in the cold nearness of death. The kiss
+so long deferred was not given, and the fluttering pulse which had
+warmed to welcome it fell slow, as one who strikes a long stride in a
+journey that has miles yet to measure before its end.
+
+Governor Boyle was back in camp in the middle of the afternoon, and
+before night the tents and furnishings for lodging the party comfortably
+arrived from Comanche. The Governor pressed Agnes, who was considering
+riding to Comanche to find lodging, to remain there to assist and
+comfort his wife when she should arrive.
+
+"We need the touch of a woman's hand here," said he.
+
+They brought Jerry's tent and set it up for her. She was asleep at
+dusk.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Boyle arrived next morning, having started as soon as the messenger
+bearing news of the tragedy reached the ranch. She was a slight,
+white-haired woman, who had gone through hardships before coming to
+prosperity on that frontier, so the fifty-mile ride in a wagon was no
+unusual or trying experience for her.
+
+Whatever tears she had for her son's sad plight she had spent on the
+rough journey over. As she sat beside him stroking his heavy hair back
+from his pallid brow, there was in her face a shadow of haunting
+anxiety, as if the recollection of some old time of terror added its
+pangs to those of the present.
+
+Her presence in camp, and her constant ministrations at her son's side,
+relieved Dr. Slavens of considerable professional anxiety, as well as
+labor. It gave him time to walk about among the gigantic stones which
+cast their curse of barrenness over that broken stretch, Agnes with him,
+and make a further investigation of the land's mineral possibilities.
+
+"Ten-Gallon was telling the truth, in my opinion," said he. "I have
+explored these rocks from line to line of this claim, and I reached the
+conclusion a good many days ago that somebody had been misled in
+supposing it was worth money. It was nothing but Boyle's persistent
+determination to get hold of it that gave it a color of value in my
+mind."
+
+"Still, it may be the means, after all, of yielding you as much as you
+expected to get out of it at the first," she suggested.
+
+He looked at her questioningly.
+
+"I mean the Governor's declaration yesterday morning that he would pay
+you twice what you expected to get out of it if you would save Jerry's
+life."
+
+"Oh, _that_!" said he, as if he attached little importance to it.
+
+"He's a millionaire many times over," she reminded him. "He can afford
+to do it, and he should."
+
+"I may be out of the case entirely before night," he told her,
+explaining that another physician would arrive on the first train from
+Cheyenne.
+
+"You know best," said she, resigning hope for his big fee with a sigh.
+
+"Smith will come over with your tent and goods today, very likely," said
+he, "and then we can leave. I had planned it all along, from the time we
+used to take those moonlight walks to the river, that we should leave
+this country together when it came our time to go."
+
+"It would be wrong for you to waste your life here, even if you could
+make more money than elsewhere, when the world with more people and more
+pain in it needs you so badly," she encouraged him.
+
+"Just so," he agreed. "It's very well for Smith to stay here, and men of
+his kind, who have no broader world. They are doing humanity a great
+service in smoothing the desert and bringing the water into it."
+
+"We will leave it to them," she said.
+
+They tramped across the claim until they came in sight of Hun Shanklin's
+tent. Its flap was blowing in the wind.
+
+"The old rascal came over to make friends with me," said Slavens. "He
+claimed that he never lifted his hand against me. There's his horse,
+trying to make it down the slope to the river. I'll have to catch the
+beast and take that rope off.
+
+"There's a man over there!" Agnes exclaimed. "Look! There among the
+rocks to the right of the tent! I wonder who it is?"
+
+Slavens looked where she pointed, just as the man disappeared among the
+rocks.
+
+"It's the Governor!" she whispered.
+
+"Looked like his coat," he agreed.
+
+"Do you suppose he's----"
+
+"Trying to locate old Shanklin's mine," he said. "That's what he's
+after. If there's copper on that piece the Governor will get it, even if
+his son doesn't live to share with him. The difference of a figure or
+two in the description of a piece of land might be revised on the books,
+if one had the influence."
+
+The doctor for whom Governor Boyle had sent arrived on the afternoon
+train from Cheyenne and reached the camp before sunset. He spoke in the
+highest terms of the manner in which Dr. Slavens had proceeded, and
+declared that it would be presumptuous meddling for him, or anyone else,
+to attempt to advise in the case.
+
+Agnes heard his commendation with triumph in her eyes, and Mrs. Boyle
+gave Dr. Slavens her blessing in a tearful look. The doctor from
+Cheyenne took up his instrument-case and held out his hand with a great
+deal more respect in his bearing toward the unknown practitioner than he
+had shown upon his arrival.
+
+"On vacation here?" he asked, puzzled to find any other excuse for so
+much ability running wild among the rocks in that bleak place.
+
+"Something like that," answered Slavens noncommittally.
+
+"When you're passing through Cheyenne, stop off and see me," giving
+Slavens a respectful farewell.
+
+Dr. Slavens advanced several points in the appraisement of Governor
+Boyle, although, to do the Governor justice, he had seen from the
+beginning that the wandering physician was a master. Boyle had been
+weighing men for what they were worth, buying them and selling them, for
+too many years to place a wrong bet. He told Slavens that unlimited
+capital was back of him in his fight for Jerry's life, and that he had
+but to demand it if anything was wanted, no matter what the cost.
+
+Dr. Slavens told him bluntly that his son was in a fix where one man's
+money would go as far as another's to get him clear, and that it had
+very little weight in the other end of the scales against the thing they
+were standing in front of, face to face.
+
+"Save him to me, Doctor! For God's sake save him!" begged the old man,
+his face bloodless, the weight of his unshored years collapsing upon him
+and bowing him pitifully.
+
+Again Slavens felt the wonder of this man's softness for his son, but
+pity was tinctured with the thought that if it had been applied in
+season to shaping the young man's life, and his conscience, and his
+sense of justice, it might have commanded more respect. But he knew that
+this was the opportunity to make the one big chance which the years had
+been keeping from him. At the start Slavens had told the old man that
+his son had a chance for life; he had not said how precariously it lay
+balanced upon the lip of the dark canyon, nor how an adverse breath might
+send it beyond the brink. The weight of the responsibility now lay on
+him alone. Failure would bring upon him an avalanche of blame; success a
+glorious impetus to his new career.
+
+He took a walk down to the river to think about it, and breathe over it,
+and get himself steadied. When he came back he found Smith there,
+unloading Agnes' things, soaking up the details of the tragedy with as
+much satisfaction as a toad refreshing itself in a rain.
+
+Smith was no respecter of office or social elevation. If a man deserved
+shooting, then he ought to be shot, according to Smith's logic. As he
+made an excuse to stay around longer by assisting the doctor to raise
+Agnes' tent, he expressed his satisfaction that Jerry Boyle had received
+part payment, at least, of what was due him.
+
+"But I tell you," said he to the doctor in confidence, turning a wary
+eye to see that Agnes was out of hearing just then. "I'm glad he got it
+the way he did. I was afraid one time that girl over there was goin' to
+let him have it. I could see it in her eye."
+
+"You can see almost anything in a woman's eye if your imagination is
+working right," the doctor told him, rather crabbedly.
+
+"You don't need to believe it if you don't want to," returned Smith,
+somewhat offended, "but I tell you that girl'd shoot a man in a minute
+if he got too fresh!"
+
+"I believe you're right about that, Smith," agreed the doctor, "so let's
+you and I be careful that we don't get too fresh."
+
+Smith said no more, but he kept turning his eye upon the doctor as he
+got his wagon ready to set off on his return, with a good deal of
+unfriendliness in it. Evidently it had come into his mind only then that
+Dr. Slavens was assuming a sort of proprietary air around Agnes.
+
+With his foot on the brake and his lines drawn up, Smith looked down and
+addressed her.
+
+"Well, I don't suppose you'll be back on the river for some time?"
+
+"I expect it will be a long time," she replied, evading exposition of
+her plans.
+
+"I'll keep my eye on the place for you, and see that them fellers don't
+cut down your timber," he offered.
+
+She thanked him.
+
+"When you come over that way, take a look at that sign on the front of
+my store," said Smith, giving her a significant, intimate glance. "The
+more you see that name in print the better you like it."
+
+With that Smith threw off his brake so suddenly and violently that it
+knocked a little cloud of dust out of his wagon, laid the whip to his
+team, and drove off with almost as grand a flourish as he used to
+execute when setting out from Comanche on the stage.
+
+Mrs. Boyle left her son's side, her husband relieving her, to see that
+Agnes was supplied with everything necessary. She had pressed Agnes to
+remain with her--which was well enough in accord with the girl's own
+inclination--and help her care for her "little boy," as she called him
+with fond tenderness.
+
+"Isn't she sweet?" whispered Agnes, as Mrs. Boyle went to her own tent
+to fetch something which she insisted Agnes must have. "She is so gentle
+and good to be the mother of such a wolf!"
+
+"But what did she think about her precious son going to turn the whole
+United States out after you because you wouldn't help him pull the plank
+out from under an unworthy friend?"
+
+"I didn't tell her that," said Agnes, shaking her head. "I told the
+Governor as we came over, and she isn't to know that part of it."
+
+Their tents made quite a little village, and the scene presented
+considerable quiet activity, for the Governor had brought a man over
+from Comanche to serve the camp with fuel and water and turn a hand at
+preparing the food. Agnes was cook-in-extraordinary to the patient and
+the doctor. She and Slavens took their supper together that night,
+sitting beside the fire.
+
+There they talked of the case, and the prospect of the fee, and of the
+future which they were going to fix up together between them, as
+confidently as young things half their age. With the promised fee, life
+would be one way; without it another. But everything was white enamel
+and brass knobs at the poorest, for there was confidence to give hope;
+strength and love to lend it color.
+
+Striking the fire with a stick until the sparks rose like quail out of
+the grass, Dr. Slavens vowed solemnly that he would win that fee or take
+in his shingle--which, of course, was a figurative shingle only at that
+time--and Agnes pledged herself to stand by and help him do it as
+faithfully as if they were already in the future and bound to sustain
+each other's hands in the bitter and the sweet of life.
+
+"It would mean a better automobile," said he.
+
+"And a better surgery, and a nicer chair for the consulting-room," she
+added, dreaming with wide-open eyes upon the fire.
+
+"And a better home, with more comfort in it for you."
+
+"Oh, as for that!" said she.
+
+"I've got my eye on a place with old elms in front of it, and moss on
+the shingles, and a well where you pull the bucket up with a rope over a
+pulley," said he. "I've got it all laid out and blooming in my heart for
+that precious mother of yours. It is where mine used to live," he
+explained; "but strangers are in it now. We'll buy them out."
+
+"It will be such a burden on you. And just at the beginning," she
+sighed. "I'm afraid, after all, that I'll never be coward enough to
+consent to it at the last."
+
+"It's out of your hands now, Agnes," said he; "entirely out of your
+hands."
+
+"It is strange how it has shaped out," she reflected after a little
+silence; "better, perhaps, than we could have arranged it if we had been
+allowed our own way. The one unfortunate thing about it seems to be that
+this case is isolated out here in the desert, where it never will do you
+a bit of good."
+
+"Except the fee," he reminded her with a gentle smile.
+
+"Oh, the fee--of course."
+
+"But there is a big hurdle to get over before we come to even that."
+
+"You mean----"
+
+She looked at him with a start, the firelight catching her shining
+eyes.
+
+"The crisis."
+
+"Day after tomorrow," said she, studying the fire as if to anticipate in
+its necromancy what that day offered to their hopes.
+
+The shadow of that grave contingency fell upon them coldly, and the
+plans they had been making with childlike freedom of fancy drew away and
+grew dim, as if such plans never had been. So much depended on the
+crisis in Jerry Boyle's condition, as so much devolves upon the big _if_
+in the life of every man and woman at some straining period of hopes and
+schemes.
+
+Words fell away from them; they let the fire grow pale from neglect, and
+gray ashes came over the dwindling coals, like hoarfrost upon the bright
+salvia against a garden wall. Silence was over the camp; night was deep
+around them. In Jerry Boyle's tent, where his mother watched, a dim
+light shone through the canvas. It was so still there on that barren
+hillside that they could hear the river fretting over the stones of the
+rapids below the ford, more than half a mile away.
+
+After a while her hand sought his, and rested warm upon it as she
+spoke.
+
+"It was pleasant to dream that, anyway," said she, giving up a great
+sigh.
+
+"That's one advantage of dreams; they are plastic material, one can
+shape them after the heart's desire," he answered.
+
+"But it was foolish of me to mingle mine with yours so," she objected.
+"And it was wrong and selfish. I can't fasten this dead weight of my
+troubles on you and drag you back. I can't do that, dear friend."
+
+He started at the word, laying hold of her hand with eager grip.
+
+"Have you forgotten the other word--is that all there is to it?" he
+asked, bending toward her, a gentle rebuke in his trembling voice.
+
+"There is so much more! so much more!" she whispered. "Because of that,
+I cannot be so selfish as to dream those splendid dreams again--wait,"
+she requested, as she felt that he was about to speak.
+
+"If I thought only of myself, of a refuge for others and myself, then I
+would not count the penalty which would attach to you to provide it. But
+unless we win the Governor's fee, my dear, dear soul, don't you see how
+impossible it will be for us to carry out even the most modest of our
+fond schemes?"
+
+"Not at all," he protested.
+
+"It would drag you back to where you were before, only leaving you with
+a greater burden of worry and expense," she continued, unheeding. "I was
+rapt, I was deadened to selfish forgetfulness by the sweet music of
+those dreams. I am awake now, and I tell you that you must not do it,
+that I shall never permit you to ruin your life by assuming a load which
+will crush you."
+
+"Agnes, the chill of the night is in your heart," said he. "I will not
+listen to such folly! Tomorrow, when the sun shines, it will be the same
+as yesterday. I have it all arranged; you can't change it now."
+
+"Yes. You took charge of me in your impetuous generosity, and I was
+thoughtless enough to interpose no word. But I didn't mean to be
+selfish. Please remember above it all that I didn't mean to be
+selfish."
+
+"I have it all arranged," he persisted stubbornly, "and there will be no
+turning back. Tomorrow it will not look so gloomy to you. Now, you'd
+better go to bed."
+
+He rose as he spoke, gave her his hand, and helped her to her feet. As
+they stood face to face Agnes placed her hand upon his shoulder
+gravely.
+
+"I am in sober earnest about this, Doctor," said she. "We must not go on
+with any more planning and dreaming. It may look as if I feared the
+future with you for my own sake, putting the case as I do, all dependent
+on the winning of that fee. But you would not be able to swim with the
+load without that. It would sink you, and that, too, after you have
+fought the big battle and won new courage and hope, and a new vision to
+help you meet the world. Unless we weather the crisis, I must ride away
+alone."
+
+"I'd be afraid of the future without you; it would be so bleak and
+lonesome," said he simply. He gave her good night before her tent.
+
+"And for that reason," said he, carrying on his thought of a minute
+before, "we must weather the crisis like good sailormen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CRISIS
+
+
+Brave words are one thing, and inflammation in a gunshot wound is
+another. Infection set up in Jerry Boyle's hurt on the day after that
+which the doctor had marked as the critical point in his battle for
+life.
+
+Dr. Slavens was of the opinion that the bullet had carried a piece of
+clothing into the wound, which it was not able to discharge of itself.
+An operation for its removal was the one hope of saving the patient, and
+that measure for relief was attended by so many perils as to make it
+very desperate indeed.
+
+The doctor viewed this alarming turn in his patient with deep concern,
+not so much out of sympathy for the sufferer and his parents, perhaps,
+as on his personal account. The welfare of Jerry Boyle had become the
+most important thing in life to him, for his own future hinged on that
+as its most vital bearing.
+
+Agnes was firm in her adherence to the plan of procedure which she had
+announced. She declared that, as matters stood, she would not become a
+burden, with all her encumbrances, upon his slender resources. If
+mischance wrested the promised fee out of his hands, then they must go
+their ways separately. She repeated her determination to abide by that
+on the morning when Dr. Slavens announced the necessity of the
+operation.
+
+Slavens was hurt and disappointed. It seemed that his faith in her
+suffered a blighting frost.
+
+"In plain words," he charged, "you will refuse to marry me because I am
+poor."
+
+"There's no other way to put it," she admitted. "But I refuse only out
+of my boundless esteem and tenderness for you and your success. I am
+putting down happiness when I do this, and taking up an additional load
+of pain. But what peace or self-respect would ever be mine again if I
+should consent to add the burden of two helpless old people to what you
+will have to carry on your own account?"
+
+"My back is broad enough to be Atlas to your little world," he
+declared.
+
+"But there's no use strangling success," she argued. "It can't be many
+years, at the longest, until time and nature relieve my tottering
+charges of their dependence on me. If you would care to wait, and if I
+might not be too old----"
+
+"If there's nothing better for it, then we'll wait," he cut in almost
+sharply. "Do you remember how I showed you to hold that cone?"
+
+She had consented to assist him in the operation to the extent of
+keeping the patient under the ether after he had administered it.
+
+"This way," said she, placing the cotton-filled paper cone over the
+nostrils.
+
+From the physician's standpoint, the operation was entirely successful.
+A successful operation, as the doctor defines it, means that the doctor
+gets what he starts after. Frequently the patient expires during the
+operation, but that does not subtract anything from the sum of its
+success.
+
+In the case of Jerry Boyle the matter wore a brighter aspect all around.
+The doctor found the bit of coat-lining which the bullet had carried in
+with it, and removed it. The seat of inflammation was centered around
+it, as he had foreseen, and the patient was still alive, even though the
+greater part of the day had passed since the tormenting piece of cloth
+was removed.
+
+The camp was hushed in the depression of despair. Until that day they
+had heard Mrs. Boyle's hopeful voice cheering her husband, upon whom the
+foreboding of disaster seemed to weigh prophetically. Sometimes she had
+sung in a low voice as she watched beside her son. But now her courage
+seemed to have left her, and she sat in the tent with the Governor,
+huddled like two old tempest-beaten birds hiding under a frail shelter
+which could not shield them from the last bitter blow. They had given
+the care of their son over to the doctor and Agnes entirely, watching
+their coming and going with tearful eyes, waiting for the word that
+would cut the slender stay of hope.
+
+On the afternoon of the second day after the operation, Agnes entered
+the tent and looked across the patient's cot into Dr. Slavens' tired
+eyes. He shook his head, holding the sufferer's wrist, his finger on the
+fluttering pulse. It seemed to Agnes that Boyle had sunk as deep into
+the shadow of the borderland as human ever penetrated and drew breath.
+From all appearances he was dead even that moment, and the solemn shake
+of the head with which the doctor greeted her seemed to tell her it was
+the end.
+
+She went to her own tent and sat in the sun, which still fell hot and
+bright. The Governor and his wife had let down the flap of their tent,
+as if they could no longer bear the pain of watching. Tears came into
+Agnes' eyes as she waited there in the wreckage of so many human hopes;
+tears for the mother who had borne that unworthy son, but whose heart
+was tender for him as if his soul had been without a stain; tears for
+the old man whose spirit was broken, and tears for herself and her own
+dreams, and all the tender things which she had allowed to spring within
+her breast.
+
+After a long time Dr. Slavens came out of the hospital-tent and let the
+flap down after him. The sun was striking long, slanting shadows across
+the barrens; the fire was dying out of its touch. Agnes' heart sank as
+she saw the doctor draw away a little distance, and then turn and walk a
+little beat, back and forth, back and forth, his head bowed, his hands
+clasped behind him in an attitude of thorough disappointment and deep
+gloom. She got up and went to him, a feeling that all was over.
+
+"Never mind," she consoled, lifting her tear-streaked face to meet his
+haggard look. "You've lost, but I have come to tell you that it makes no
+difference between us. We will go on with our life together as we
+planned it; we will take up our dreams."
+
+"Agnes, you have come in good time," said he, lifting his hand to his
+forehead wearily.
+
+"I am not noble enough to sacrifice my happiness for your good," she
+continued. "I am too weak and common, and womanly frail for that. I
+cannot carry out my brave resolution, now that you've lost. We will go
+away together, according to your plan, and I will live by your plan,
+always and forever."
+
+"You have come in good time--in good time," said he again, as one
+speaking in a daze.
+
+Then he drew her to his breast, where her head lay fair and bright, her
+straying hair, spread like a shattered sunbeam, lifting in the young
+wind that came from the hills beyond the river.
+
+There she rested against the rock of his strength, his hand caressing
+her wild tresses, the quiver of her sobbing breast stirring him like a
+warm and quickening draught.
+
+"You did well to come and tell me this," said he, "for, as I love you,
+my dear, dear woman, I would not have had you on the other terms. But I
+have not lost. Jerry Boyle has emerged from the shadow. He will live."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+After that day when his adventuring soul strayed so near the portal
+which opens in but one direction, Boyle's recovery was rapid. Ten days
+later they loaded him into a wagon to take him to Comanche, thence to
+his father's home by rail.
+
+Young Boyle was full of the interest of life again, and his stock of
+audacity did not appear to be in the least diminished by his melancholy
+experience. He treated Dr. Slavens on the footing of an old friend, and
+if there was any shame in his heart at his past behavior toward Agnes,
+his colorless cheeks did not betray it.
+
+With the exception of one flying visit to the capital city of the state,
+Governor Boyle had remained in camp faithfully since the day of the
+tragedy. But the slow days in those solitudes were galling to his busy
+mind once the safety of his boy's life was assured. He became in a
+measure dictatorial and high-handed in his dealings with the doctor, and
+altogether patronizing.
+
+Dr. Slavens considered his duty toward the patient at an end on the
+morning when they loaded him into the spring wagon to take him to
+Comanche. He told the Governor as much.
+
+"He'll be able to get up in a few days more," said the doctor, "and
+inside of a month he'll be riding his horse as if daylight never had
+been let through him."
+
+Governor Boyle took this announcement as the signal for him to produce
+his checkbook, which he did with considerable ostentation and flourish.
+
+"How much did you expect to get out of this pile of rocks?" he asked the
+doctor, poising his fountain-pen over the page.
+
+Dr. Slavens colored under the question, which came so sharply and
+indelicately, although he had rehearsed in his mind for that moment an
+uncounted number of times. He said nothing, fumbling as he was for a
+reply.
+
+Jerry, lying back on his cot in the wagon, his head propped up, laughed
+shortly and answered for him.
+
+"It was about twenty thousand, wasn't it, Doctor?"
+
+"Somewhere around there," admitted Slavens, as if confessing some wild
+folly.
+
+"Well, I said I'd give you half as much as you expected to get out of it
+if you pulled Jerry through, and I'm here to keep my word," said the
+Governor, beginning to write.
+
+Agnes looked at the doctor, indignant amazement in her face. Then she
+turned to the Governor sharply.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Governor Boyle, but I was present when you made that
+promise; you said you'd pay him _twice_ as much as he hoped to get out
+of the claim if he saved Jerry's life," said she.
+
+Governor Boyle raised his eyes with a cold, severe look on his bearded
+face.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" said he with withering rebuke, which carried with
+it denial and challenge of proof. That said, he bent to his writing
+again.
+
+Jerry Boyle laughed.
+
+"Oh, jar loose a little, Governor--be a sport!" he urged.
+
+"Here is my check for ten thousand dollars, Doctor," said the Governor,
+handing the slip to Slavens; "I consider that pretty good pay for two
+weeks' work."
+
+The Governor mounted his horse, and gave the driver the word to proceed
+slowly to the station.
+
+"And if I croak on the road over the Governor'll stop payment on the
+check," said Jerry facetiously.
+
+"Well, unless you get busy with that little gun of yours and somebody
+puts another hole through you on the way," the doctor assured him, "I'll
+make it to the bank door with a perfectly good check in my hand."
+
+Young Boyle held out his hand in farewell, his face suddenly sober and
+serious.
+
+"The gun has been cached," said he. "I promised mother I'd never sling
+it on a man again, and I'm going to stick to it. I'm going to get a bill
+put through the Legislature making it a felony to pack one, if it can be
+done. I'm cured, Doctor, in more ways than one."
+
+The cavalcade moved off down the winding road. Agnes was ablaze with
+indignation.
+
+"The idea of that man going back on his solemn word, given in the very
+presence of death!"
+
+"Never mind; that's the way he made his money, I suppose," said the
+doctor. "I've got more out of it than I ever expected to get without a
+row, and I'm going to make a line for that bank in Cheyenne and get the
+money on his check before he changes his mind. He may get to thinking
+before he gets home that Jerry isn't worth ten thousand dollars."
+
+As they rode up to the rise of the hill, Agnes reined in and stopped.
+
+"Here is where we changed places on the coach that day when Smith
+thought there was going to be a fight," she recalled.
+
+"Yes, this is the place," he said, looking around with a smile. "Old Hun
+Shanklin was up here spying out the land."
+
+"Smith called you to the box to help him, he told me later, because he
+picked you out as a man who would put up a fight," said she.
+
+"Well, let us hope that he made a good guess," Slavens said, "for here's
+where we take up the racket with the world again."
+
+"We changed places on the coach that day; you took the post of danger,"
+she reflected, her eyes roaming the browning hills and coming back to
+his face with a caress in their placid depths.
+
+"Yes," he said, slowly, gravely; "where a man belongs."
+
+Dr. Slavens gathered up his reins to go, yet lingered a little, looking
+out over the gray leagues of that vast land unfolded with its new
+adventures at his feet. Agnes drew near, turned in her saddle to view
+again the place of desolation strewn over with its monumental stones.
+
+"This is my Gethsemane," she said.
+
+"It was cursed and unholy when I came to it; I leave it sanctified by my
+most precious memory," said he.
+
+He rode on; Agnes, pressing after, came yet a little way behind, content
+to have it so, his breast between her and the world. And that was the
+manner of their going from the place of stones.
+
+
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+EDGAR RICE BURROUGH'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grossat & Dunlap's list.
+
+_TARZAN THE UNTAMED_
+
+Tells of Tarzan' s return to the life of the ape-man in his search for
+vengeance on those who took from him his wife and home.
+
+_JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN_
+
+Records the many wonderful exploits by which Tarzan proves his right
+to ape kingship.
+
+_A PRINCESS OF MARS_
+
+Forty-three million miles from the earth--a succession of the weirdest
+and most astounding adventures in fiction. John Carter, American,
+finds himself on the planet Mars, battling for a beautiful woman, with
+the Green Men of Mars, terrible creatures fifteen feet high, mounted
+on horses like dragons.
+
+_THE GODS OF MARS_
+
+Continuing John Carter's adventures on the Planet Mars, in which he
+does battle against the ferocious "plant men," creatures whose mighty
+tails swished their victims to instant death, and defies Issus, the
+terrible Goddess of Death, whom all Mars worships and reveres.
+
+_THE WARLORD OF MARS_
+
+Old acquaintances, made in the two other stories, reappear, Tars
+Tarkas, Tardos Mors and others. There is a happy ending to the story
+in the union of the Warlord, the title conferred upon John Carter,
+with Dejah Thoris.
+
+_THUVIA, MAID OF MARS_
+
+The fourth volume of the series. The story centers around the
+adventures of Carthoris, the son of John Carter and Thuvia, daughter
+of a Martian Emperor.
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+FLORENCE L. BARCLAY'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+_THE WHITE LADIES OF WORCESTER_
+
+A novel of the 12th Century. The heroine, believing she had lost her
+lover, enters a convent. He returns, and interesting developments
+follow.
+
+_THE UPAS TREE_
+
+A love story of rare charm. It deals with a successful author and his
+wife.
+
+_THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE_
+
+The story of a seven day courtship, in which the discrepancy in ages
+vanished into insignificance before the convincing demonstration of
+abiding love.
+
+_THE ROSARY_
+
+The story of a young artist who is reputed to love beauty above all
+else in the world, but who, when blinded through an accident, gains
+life's greatest happiness. A rare story of the great passion of two
+real people superbly capable of love, its sacrifices and its exceeding
+reward.
+
+_THE MISTRESS OF SHENSTONE_
+
+The lovely young Lady Ingleby, recently widowed by the death of a
+husband who never understood her, meets a fine, clean young chap who
+is ignorant of her title and they fall deeply in love with each other.
+When he learns her real identity a situation of singular power is
+developed.
+
+_THE BROKEN HALO_
+
+The story of a young man whose religious belief was shattered in
+childhood and restored to him by the little white lady, many years
+older than himself, to whom he is passionately devoted.
+
+_THE FOLLOWING OF THE STAR_
+
+The story of a young missionary, who, about to start for Africa,
+marries wealthy Diana Rivers, in order to help her fulfill the
+conditions of her uncle's will, and how they finally come to love each
+other and are reunited after experiences that soften and purify.
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+ETHEL M. DELL'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+_THE LAMP IN THE DESERT_
+
+The scene of this splendid story is laid in India and tells of the
+lamp of love that continues to shine through all sorts of tribulations
+to final happiness.
+
+_GREATHEART_
+
+The story of a cripple whose deformed body conceals a noble soul.
+
+_THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE_
+
+A hero who worked to win even when there was only "a hundredth
+chance."
+
+_THE SWINDLER_
+
+The story of a "bad man's" soul revealed by a woman's faith.
+
+_THE TIDAL WAVE_
+
+Tales of love and of women who learned to know the true from the
+false.
+
+_THE SAFETY CURTAIN_
+
+A very vivid love story of India. The volume also contains four other
+long stories of equal interest.
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+ZANE GREY'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+    THE MAN OF THE FOREST
+    THE DESERT OF WHEAT
+    THE U. P. TRAIL
+    WILDFIRE
+    THE BORDER LEGION
+    THE RAINBOW TRAIL
+    THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT
+    RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
+    THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS
+    THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN
+    THE LONE STAR RANGER
+    DESERT GOLD
+    BETTY ZANE
+
+LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS
+
+The life story of "Buffalo Bill" by his sister Helen Cody Wetmore,
+with Foreword and conclusion by Zane Grey.
+
+ZANE GREY'S BOOKS FOR BOYS
+
+    KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE
+    THE YOUNG LION HUNTER
+    THE YOUNG FORESTER
+    THE YOUNG PITCHER
+    THE SHORT STOP
+    THE RED-HEADED OUTFIELD AND OTHER BASEBALL STORIES
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S STORIES OF ADVENTURE
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+THE RIVER'S END
+
+A story of the Royal Mounted Police.
+
+THE GOLDEN SNARE
+
+Thrilling adventures in the Far Northland.
+
+NOMADS OF THE NORTH
+
+The story of a bear-cub and a dog.
+
+KAZAN
+
+The tale of a "quarter-strain wolf and three-quarters husky" torn
+between the call of the human and his wild mate.
+
+BAREE, SON OF KAZAN
+
+The story of the son of the blind Grey Wolf and the gallant part
+he played in the lives of a man and a woman.
+
+THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM
+
+The story of the King of Beaver Island, a Mormon colony, and his
+battle with Captain Plum.
+
+THE DANGER TRAIL
+
+A tale of love, Indian vengeance, and a mystery of the North.
+
+THE HUNTED WOMAN
+
+A tale of a great fight in the "valley of gold" for a woman.
+
+THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH
+
+The story of Fort o' God, where the wild flavor of the wilderness
+is blended with the courtly atmosphere of France.
+
+THE GRIZZLY KING
+
+The story of Thor, the big grizzly.
+
+ISOBEL
+
+A love story of the Far North.
+
+THE WOLF HUNTERS
+
+A thrilling tale of adventure in the Canadian wilderness.
+
+THE GOLD HUNTERS
+
+The story of adventure in the Hudson Bay wilds.
+
+THE COURAGE OF MARGE O'DOONE
+
+Filled with exciting incidents in the land of strong men and women.
+
+BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY
+
+A thrilling story of the Far North. The great Photoplay was made
+from this book.
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+ELEANOR H. PORTER'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+JUST DAVID
+
+The tale of a loveable boy and the place he comes to fill in the
+hearts of the gruff farmer folk to whose care he is left.
+
+THE ROAD TO UNDERSTANDING
+
+A compelling romance of love and marriage.
+
+OH, MONEY! MONEY!
+
+Stanley Fulton, a wealthy bachelor, to test the dispositions of his
+relatives, sends them each a check for $100,000, and then as plain
+John Smith comes among them to watch the result of his experiment.
+
+SIX STAR RANCH
+
+A wholesome story of a club of six girls and their summer on Six Star
+Ranch.
+
+DAWN
+
+The story of a blind boy whose courage leads him through the gulf of
+despair into a final victory gained by dedicating his life to the
+service of blind soldiers.
+
+ACROSS THE YEARS
+
+Short stories of our own kind and of our own people.
+Contains some of the best writing Mrs. Porter has done.
+
+THE TANGLED THREADS
+
+In these stories we find the concentrated charm and tenderness of all
+her other books.
+
+THE TIE THAT BINDS
+
+Intensely human stories told with Mrs. Porter's wonderful talent for
+warm and vivid character drawing.
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+"STORM COUNTRY" BOOKS BY GRACE MILLER WHITE
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+JUDY OF ROGUES' HARBOR
+
+Judy's untutored ideas of God, her love of wild things, her faith in
+life are quite as inspiring as those of Tess. Her faith and sincerity
+catch at your heart strings. This book has all of the mystery and
+tense action of the other Storm Country books.
+
+TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY
+
+It was as Tess, beautiful, wild, impetuous, that Mary Pickford made
+her reputation as a motion picture actress. How love acts upon a
+temperament such as hers--a temperament that makes a woman an angel or
+an outcast, according to the character of the man she loves--is the
+theme of the story.
+
+THE SECRET OF THE STORM COUNTRY
+
+The sequel to "Tess of the Storm Country," with the same wild
+background, with its half-gypsy life of the squatters--tempestuous,
+passionate, brooding. Tess learns the "secret" of her birth and finds
+happiness and love through her boundless faith in life.
+
+FROM THE VALLEY OF THE MISSING
+
+A haunting story with its scene laid near the country familiar to
+readers of "Tess of the Storm Country."
+
+ROSE O' PARADISE
+
+"Jinny" Singleton, wild, lovely, lonely, but with a passionate
+yearning for music, grows up in the house of Lafe Grandoken, a
+crippled cobbler of the Storm Country. Her romance is full of power
+and glory and tenderness.
+
+Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+KATHLEEN NORRIS' STORIES
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list
+
+SISTERS. Frontispiece by Frank Street.
+
+The California Redwoods furnish the background for this beautiful
+story of sisterly devotion and sacrifice.
+
+POOR, DEAR, MARGARET KIRBY.
+Frontispiece by George Gibbs.
+
+A collection of delightful stories, including "Bridging the Years" and
+"The Tide-Marsh." This story is now shown in moving pictures.
+
+JOSSELYN'S WIFE. Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert.
+
+The story of a beautiful woman who fought a bitter fight for happiness
+and love.
+
+MARTIE, THE UNCONQUERED.
+Illustrated by Charles E. Chambers.
+
+The triumph of a dauntless spirit over adverse conditions.
+
+THE HEART OF RACHAEL.
+Frontispiece by Charles E. Chambers.
+
+An interesting story of divorce and the problems that come with a
+second marriage.
+
+THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE.
+Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert.
+
+A sympathetic portrayal of the quest of a normal girl, obscure and
+lonely, for the happiness of life.
+
+SATURDAY'S CHILD. Frontispiece by F. Graham Cootes.
+
+Can a girl, born in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through
+sheer determination to the better things for which her soul hungered?
+
+MOTHER. Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
+
+A story of the big mother heart that beats in the background of every
+girl's life, and some dreams which came true.
+
+
+Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+BOOTH TARKINGTON'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are told. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+SEVENTEEN. Illustrated by Arthur William Brown.
+
+No one but the creator of Penrod could have portrayed the immortal
+young people of this story. Its humor is irresistible and reminiscent
+of the time when the reader was Seventeen.
+
+PENROD. Illustrated by Gordon Grant.
+
+This is a picture of a boy's heart, full of the lovable, humorous,
+tragic things which are locked secrets to most older folks. It is a
+finished, exquisite work.
+
+PENROD AND SAM. Illustrated by Worth Brehm.
+
+Like "Penrod" and "Seventeen," this book contains some remarkable
+phases of real boyhood and some of the best stories of juvenile
+prankishness that have ever been written.
+
+THE TURMOIL. Illustrated by G. E. Chambers.
+
+Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who revolts against his
+father's plans for him to be a servitor of big business. The love of a
+fine girl turns Bibbs' life from failure to success.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA. Frontispiece.
+
+A story of love and politics,--more especially a picture of a country
+editor's life in Indiana, but the charm of the book lies in the love
+interest.
+
+THE FLIRT. Illustrated by Clarence P. Underwood.
+
+The "Flirt," the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl's engagement,
+drives one man to suicide, causes the murder of another, leads another
+to lose his fortune, and in the end marries a stupid and unpromising
+suitor, leaving the really worthy one to marry her sister.
+
+Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+THE NOVELS OF GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL LUTZ
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+THE BEST MAN
+
+Through a strange series of adventures a young man finds himself
+propelled up the aisle of a church and married to a strange girl.
+
+A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS
+
+On her way West the heroine steps off by mistake at a lonely watertank
+into a maze of thrilling events.
+
+THE ENCHANTED BARN
+
+Every member of the family will enjoy this spirited chronicle of a
+young girl's resourcefulness and pluck, and the secret of the
+"enchanted" barn.
+
+THE WITNESS
+
+The fascinating story of the enormous change an incident wrought in a
+man's life.
+
+MARCIA SCHUYLER
+
+A picture of ideal girlhood set in the time of full skirts and poke
+bonnets.
+
+LO, MICHAEL!
+
+A story of unfailing appeal to all who love and understand boys.
+
+THE MAN OF THE DESERT
+
+An intensely moving love story of a man of the desert and a girl of
+the East pictured against the background of the Far West.
+
+PHOEBE DEANE
+
+A tense and charming love story, told with a grace and a fervor with
+which only Mrs. Lutz could tell it.
+
+DAWN OF THE MORNING
+
+A romance of the last century with all of its old-fashioned charm. A
+companion volume to "Marcia Schuyler" and "Phoebe Deane."
+
+Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction
+
+Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLAIM NUMBER ONE***
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