to them to be on guard. Now death had begun to
leap upon them from the roadside grass. Perhaps his own turn would
come tonight or tomorrow. He could not be more watchful than his
neighbors had been; no man could close all the doors.

The price of life in that country for such men as himself always had
been unceasing vigilance. When a man stood guard over himself day and
night he could do no more, and even at that he was almost certain,
some time or other, to leave a chink open through which the waiting
blow might fall. After a time one became hardened to this condition of
life. The strain of watching fell away from him; it became a part of
his daily habit, and a man grew careless about securing the safeguards
upon his life by and by.

"Them fellers," said Banjo, feeling that he had lowered himself
considerably in carrying the news involving their swift end to
Macdonald, "got about what was comin' to 'em I reckon, Mac. Why don't
a man like you hitch up with Chadron or Hatcher, or one of the good
men of this country, and git out from amongst them runts that's nosin'
around in the ground for a livin' like a drove of hogs?"

"Every man to his liking, Banjo," Macdonald returned, "and I don't
like the company you've named."

They never quarreled over the point, but Banjo never ceased to urge
the reformation, such as he honestly believed it to be, upon Macdonald
at every visit. The little troubadour felt that he was doing a
generous and friendly turn for a fallen man, and squaring his own
account with Macdonald in thus laboring for his redemption.

Banjo was under obligation to Macdonald for no smaller matter than his
life, the homesteader having rescued him from drowning the past spring
when the musician, heading for Chadron's after playing for a dance,
had mistaken the river for the road and stubbornly urged his horse
into it. On that occasion Banjo's wits had been mixed with liquor, but
his sense of gratitude had been perfectly clear ever since.
Macdonald's door was the only one in the nesters' colony that stress
or friendship ever had constrained him to enter. Even as it was, with
all the big debt of gratitude owing, his intimacy with a man who had
opened an irrigation ditch was a thing of which he did not boast
abroad.

Banjo made but a night's stop of it with Macdonald. Early in the
morning he was in the saddle again, with a dance ahead of him to play
for that night at a ranch twenty miles or more away. He lingere