I got him, thank the
Lord!" Whereupon he blew his nose violently, and went up to his supper
with his hands in his pockets and his humorous lips pursed into a
whistle.

Before long he was back, chuckling to himself as he bore down upon Ford
in the corral, where he was industriously rubbing Rambler's sprained
shoulder with liniment.

"The wife says you've got to come up to the house," he announced
gleefully. "You've gone and done the heroic again, and she wants to do
something to show her gratitude."

"You go back and tell your wife that I'm a bold, bad man and I won't
come." Ford, to prove his sincerity, sat down upon the stout manger
there, and crossed his legs with an air of finality.

"I did tell her," Mason confessed sheepishly. "She wanted to know who
you was, and I told her before I thought. And she wanted to know what
was the matter with your face, 'poor fellow,' and I told her that,
too--as near as I knew it. I told her," he stated sweepingly, "that
you'd been on a big jamboree and had licked fourteen men hand-running.
There ain't," he confided with a twinkle, "any use at all in trying to
keep a secret from your wife; not," he qualified, "from a wife like
Kate! So she knows the whole darned thing, and she's sore as the deuce
because I didn't bring you up to the house right away when you came. She
thinks you're sufferin' from them wounds and she's going to doctor 'em.
That's the way with a woman--you never can tell what angle she's going
to look at a thing from. You're the man that packed me down out of the
Wrangel mountains on your back, and that's enough for her--dang it, Kate
thinks a lot of me! Besides, you done the heroic this afternoon. You've
got to come."

"There ain't anything heroic in sloshing a few buckets of water on a
barrel of burning rags," Ford belittled, seeking in his pockets for his
cigarette papers.

"How about rescuing a lady?" Mason twitted. "You come along. I want you
up there myself. Gosh! I want somebody I can talk to about something
besides dresses and the proper way to cure sprained ankles, and whether
the grocer sent out the right brand of canned peaches. Women are all
right--but a man wants some one around to talk to. You ain't married!"

"Oh. Ain't I?" Ford snorted. "And what if I ain't?"

"Say, there's a mighty nice girl staying with us; the one you rescued.
She's laid up now--got bucked off, or fell off, or something yesterday,
and hurt her foot--but she's a peach, all ri