a traveler and lead him to refreshment.
Behind the cottonwoods along the river, sunrise was about to break.

"I'm gittin' so I can't wake up of a morning when I sleep in a house,"
Stilwell complained, his broad face radiating humor. "I guess I'll have
to take the blankets ag'in, old lady."

"I guess you can afford to sleep till half-past three in the morning
once in a while," Mrs. Stilwell said complacently. "Why, Mr. Morgan,
that man didn't sleep under a roof once a month the first five or six
years we were on this range! He just laid out like a coyote anywhere
night overtook him, watchin' them cattle like they were children. Now,
what's come of it!"

This last bitter note, ranging back to their recent loss from Texas
fever, took the cheer out of Stilwell's face. A brooding cloud came over
it; his merry chaff was stilled.

"Yes, and Drumm'll pay for them eight hundred head of stock he killed
for us, if I have to trail him to his hole in Texas!" Fred declared.
"Suit or no suit, that man's goin' to pay."

"I don't like to hear you talk that way, honey," his mother chided.

"Suit!" Fred scoffed; "what does that man care about a suit? He'll never
show his head in this country any more, the next drive he makes he'll
load west of here and we'll never know anything about it. There's just
one way to fix a man like him, and I know the receipt that'll cure _his_
hide!"

"If he ever drives another head of stock into this state I'll hear of
it, and I'll attach him. It'll be four or five years before the
railroad's built down into that country, he'll have to drive here or
nowheres. I'll set right here on this range till he comes."

"Did the rain strike any of your range?" Morgan inquired, eager to turn
them away from this gloomy matter of loss and revenge.

"Yes, we got a good soakin' over the biggest part of it. Plenty of water
now, grass jumpin' up like spring. It's the purtiest country, Cal, a man
ever set eyes on after a rain."

"And in the spring," said Mrs. Stilwell, wistfully.

"And when the wild roses bloom along in May," said Violet. "There's no
place in the world as pretty as this country then."

"I believe you," Morgan told them, nodding his head in undivided assent.
"Even dry as it is around Ascalon and that country north, it gets hold
of a man."

"You buy along on the river here somewhere, Cal, and put in a nice
little herd. It won't take you long to make a start, and a good start.
This country ain't b