morning hours.

"Yes," sighed Mrs. Chadron, "it was bad enough when he just shot
cowboys, but when it come to Chance we felt real grieved. Chance he
ain't much to look at, but he's worth his weight in gold on the
ranch."

"Busted his right arm all to pieces, they tell me?"

"Right here." Mrs. Chadron marked across her wrist with her knitting
needle, and shook her head in heavy sadness.

"That'll kind of spile him, won't it?"

"Well, Saul says it won't make so much difference about him not havin'
the use of his hand on that side if it don't break his nerve. A man
loses confidence in himself, Saul says, most always when he loses the
hand or arm he's slung his gun with all his life. He takes the notion
that everybody's quicker'n he is, and just kind of slinges back and
drops out of the game."

"Do you expect Saul he'll come back here with them soldiers he went
after?"

"I expect he'll more'n likely order 'em right up the river to clear
them rustlers out before he stops or anything," she replied, in high
confidence.

"The gall of them low-down brand-burners standin' up to fight a man on
his own land!" Banjo's indignation could not have been more pointed if
he had been a lord of many herds himself.

"There comes them blessed girls!" reported Mrs. Chadron from her
station near the window. Banjo crossed over to see, his fiddle held to
his bosom like an infant. Nola and Frances were nearing the gate.

"That colonel girl she's a up-setter, ain't she?" Banjo admired.

"She's as sweet as locus' blooms," Mrs. Chadron declared, unstintingly.

"But she's kind of distant; nothing friendly and warm-hearted like
your little Nola, mom."

"She's a little cool to strangers, but when she knows a body she comes
out."

Banjo nodded, drawing little whispers of melody from his fiddle-strings
by fingering them against the neck.

"I noticed when she smiles she seems to change," he said. "It's like
puttin' bow to the strings. A fiddle's a glum kind of a thing till you
wake it up; she's that way, I reckon."

"Well, git ready for dinner--or lunch, as Nola calls it--they'll be
starved by this time, ridin' all the way from the post in this chilly
wind. I'm mighty afraid we're goin' to have some weather before
long."

"Can't put it off much longer," Banjo agreed, thinking of the hardship
of being caught out in one of those sweeping blizzards, when the
sudden cold grew so sharp that a man's banjo strings broke in the
tense contr