h. There were
still three scars, two in the shoulder, one in the right side, to show
where the bullets had bitten deep into him, from behind. He had been
searched swiftly, roughly, his clothing torn by the hurried fingers of
the man who had shot him.

It had been close to midnight when his consciousness came back to him. A
little man, hard featured but gentle fingered, was working over him. It
was Jimmie Clayton. And Clayton had found the crumpled check in the
darkness, had gotten the wounded man on his own horse, had taken him to
El Paso, and finally had saved his life, nursing him, working over him
day and night for the two weeks in which his life was in danger.

Since then Thornton had seen little of Clayton. He had known even at the
time of the shooting that the man was as hard a character as his
close-set, little eyes and weasel face bespoke him; he had come to know
him as an insatiate gambler, the pitiful sort of gambler who is too much
of a drunkard to be more than his opponent's dupe at cards. He had found
him to be a brawler and very much of a ruffian. But though he did not
close his eyes to these things they did not matter to him. For
gratitude and a sense of loyalty were two of the strong silver threads
that went to make up the mesh of Buck Thornton's nature, and it was
enough to him that little Jimmie Clayton had played the part of friend
in a town where friends were scarce and at a time when but for a friend
he would have died.

It was not alone the fact of Clayton's turning up here and now that
surprised the cattle man; it was the fact of his turning up anywhere.
For he had thought that Clayton, weak natured and so very often the
other man's tool, was serving time in the Texas penitentiary. For, three
years ago, rumour had brought to him word of a sheriff's clean-up, and
the names of three men who had been working a crude confidence game,
bold rather than shrewd, and Jimmie Clayton's name was one of the three.
He had heard only after the men had been convicted and sentenced for
five years apiece, and had at the time regretted that he could not have
known sooner so that in some way he might have returned the favour he
had never forgotten.

At last having dressed, he shoved the letter into his pocket, and went
down to the bunk house for breakfast. To the cook and to the three men
already at the table he had little to say, so full were his thoughts of
Jimmie Clayton. He was wondering what "hard luck" the