nded to deceive? These and a
score of other questions passed through his mind as he sat there waiting,
but when the dull rumble of the wagon started them all into activity, he
had not succeeded in finding any really plausible answers.

The return trip was necessarily slow, and dawn was just breaking as they
forded the creek and drove up to the bunk-house. They had barely come to a
standstill when, to Buck's surprise, the slim figure of Mary Thorne,
bare-headed and clad in riding-clothes, appeared suddenly around the
corner of the ranch-house and came swiftly toward them.

"Pedro told me," she said briefly, pausing beside the wagon. "How is he?"

"Doin' fine," responded Lynch promptly. "It's a clean wound an' ought to
heal in no time. Our new hand Green tied him up like a regular
professional."

His manner was almost fulsomely pleasant; Miss Thorne's expression of
anxiety relaxed.

"I'm so glad. You'd better bring him right up to the house; he'll be more
comfortable there."

"That ain't hardly necessary," objected Lynch. "He'll do all right here.
We don't want him to be a bother to yuh."

"He won't be," retorted Miss Thorne with unexpected decision. "We've
plenty of room, and Maria has a bed all ready. The bunk-house is no place
for a sick man."

During the brief colloquy Bemis, though perfectly conscious, made no
comment whatever. But Buck, glancing toward him as he lay on the husk
mattress behind the driver, surprised a fleeting but unmistakable
expression of relief in his tanned face.

"He don't want to stay in the bunk-house," thought Stratton. "I don't know
as I blame him, neither. I wonder, though, if it's because he figures on
being more comfortable up there, or--"

The unvoiced question ended with a shrug as Lynch, somewhat curt of
manner, gave the order to move.

"Yuh don't all of yuh have to come, neither," he added quickly. "Butch an'
Slim an' me can carry him in."

Miss Thorne, who had already started toward the house, glanced over one
shoulder. "If Green knows something about first aid, as you say, he'd
better come too, I think."

Buck glanced questioningly at the foreman, received a surly nod and
dismounted, smiling inwardly. It amused him exceedingly to see the
dictatorial Tex forced to take orders from this slip of a girl. Evidently
she was not quite so pathetically helpless as he had supposed the
afternoon before. He began to wonder how she did it, for Lynch struck him
as a far from easy