red
unto her, and not to be foregone; but she would defer its satisfaction
until the pangs of confession had been suffered; until the rash one
should achieve a mood receptive to counsel.

At the call of Mrs. Pierce she ran down the flower-bordered walk to join
that lady at the gate, and there they watched the cavalcade as it jolted
down the lacets of the mesa trail--four horsemen in single file, two
laden pack animals, another horseman in the rear. The returning invalid
was equal, then, to sitting a horse. The far-focused eyes of Mrs. Pierce
were the first to identify him. As the line advanced through the willow
growth that fringed the creek she said, pointing, "There's Mr.
Bartell--he's in the lead."

"But Clarence doesn't smoke; the doctors won't let him," his sister
interposed, for she could distinguish a pipe in the mouth of the
foremost horseman. "And, anyway, it couldn't be Clarence; it's too--" On
the point of saying "too disreputable," she reflected that the person
in front looked quite like the run of Mrs. Pierce's nearest friends and
might, indeed, be of her own household.

"It's sure your brother, though," insisted Mrs. Pierce, as the riders
broke into a lope over the level, "and he _don't_ look quite as--" Mrs.
Pierce forbore tactfully in her turn. She had meant to say "dandified."

"And I tell you, Mis' Laithe, he does look husky, too. Not no ways so
squammish as when he started. My suz! Here we've et dinner and they'll
be hungry as bears. I must run in and set back something."

The other men turned with the packhorses off toward the corrals, but
Bartell came on at a stiff gallop to where his sister waited. When he
had pulled his horse up before her with perilous but showy abruptness,
he raised himself in the saddle, swung his hat, and poured into the
still air of the valley a long, high yell of such volume that his sister
stepped hastily within the gate again. She had heard the like of that
yell as they passed through Pagosa Springs, rendered by a cowboy in the
acute stage of alcoholic dementia.

"Why, Clarence, _dear_!" she gasped, fearing the worst. But he hurriedly
dismounted and came, steadily enough, to kiss her. She submitted
doubtfully to this, and immediately held him off for inspection. He was
frankly disreputable. The flannel shirt and corduroy trousers were torn,
bedraggled, gray with the dust of the trail; his boots were past
redemption, his hat a reproach; his face a bronzed and hairy ca