; an' Lester's
an' the rest of 'em, had took a gorge trail that cuts into the big basin
from the south, away the other side of Kinney's canon; an' they run
plumb into the rustlers over at the edge of the basin on Sigmund's side.

"An' they brought back your cattle; though Slade an' twenty or thirty of
his men got away, clean. I reckon you've heard about enough, an'--Well,
Lawler, that's about all--exceptin' to tell you how the boys--an' I
don't seem to want to go over that when I'm awake; I keep seein' it
enough of nights."

But something of the deep emotion Blackburn felt was reflected in
Lawler's eyes from the time he heard the story.

During the many days he had spent in the little hotel room recovering
from his wound--and in the long interval of convalescence that
followed--a small army of workmen had been engaged in rebuilding the
Circle L ranchhouse, the bunkhouses, and the other structures. On the
second day following his return to consciousness Lawler had called in a
contractor and had made arrangements for reconstruction.

A temporary cabin--to be used afterward by Blackburn--had been erected
near the site of the bunkhouses, and into this Lawler and his mother
moved while the ranchhouse and the other buildings were being rebuilt.
Blackburn was slowly engaging men to fill the depleted complement, and
the work went on some way, though in it was none of that spirit which
had marked the activities of the Circle L men in the old days.

In fact, the atmosphere that surrounded the Circle L seemed to be filled
with a strange depression. There had come a cold grimness into
Blackburn's face, a sullenness had appeared in the eyes of the three men
who had survived the fight on the plains; they were moody, irritable,
impatient. One of them, a slender, lithe man named Sloan, voiced to
Blackburn one day a prediction.

"Antrim's dead, all O.K.," he said. "But Slade--who was always a damned
sight worse than Antrim--is still a-kickin'. An' Slade ain't the man to
let things go halfway. Them boys from the other outfits bested him, all
right. But Slade will be back--you'll see. An' when he comes we'll be
squarin' things with him--an' don't you forget it!"

* * * * *

It was after Lawler had been occupying the cabin for a month that
Metcalf made his second visit. He rode down the slope of the valley on a
horse he had hired at Willets, and came upon Lawler, who was standing at
the corral gates,