ast as they
came, starved 'em and took the heart out of 'em and drove 'em away. You
can't farm this country, Morgan; no man ever learnt anything out of
books that will make him master of these plains with a plow."

So spoke Stilwell, the cattleman, sitting at night before his long, low,
L-shaped sod house with his guest who had been dragged into his
hospitality at the end of a rope. Eight days Morgan had been sequestered
in that primitive home, which had many comforts in spite of the crudity
of its exterior. His soreness had passed from the green and
superficially painful stage to the deeper ache of bruised bones. He
walked with a limp, stiff and stoved in his joints as a foundered horse.
But his hands and arms had recovered their suppleness, and, like an
overgrown fledgling at the edge of the nest, he was thinking of
projecting a flight.

During the time Morgan had been in the Stilwell ranchhouse no news had
come to him from Ascalon. Close as they lived to the town, the Stilwells
had been too deeply taken up with their own problem of pending ruin due
to the loss of their herd from Texas fever infection, to make a trip
even to the post-office for their mail. Violet, the daughter, was on the
range more than half the time, doing what she could to drive the sick
cattle to the river where they might have a better chance to fight the
dread malady.

Morgan's injuries had turned out to be deeper seated and more serious
than he had at first supposed. For several days he was racked with a
fever that threatened to floor him, due to the mental torture of that
terrible night. It had passed, and with it much of his pain, and he
would have gone to Ascalon for his reckoning with the men from the
Nueces two days ago if Stilwell had not argued the folly of attempting
an adjustment under the handicap of his injuries.

Wait a few days longer, the rancher sagely advised, eat and rest, and
rub that good fiery horse liniment of his on the sore spots and swollen
joints. Even if they were gone, which Stilwell knew would not be the
case for Drumm would not have made it back from Kansas City yet, Morgan
could follow them. And to do that he must be sound and strong.

Stilwell had put off even his own case against the Texas stockman, he
had been so urged for time in getting his sick cattle down to the shade
and water along the river. Now the job seemed over, for all he could
do, and was taking his ease at home this night, intending to go earl