McLean sat passive, with dazed eyes, letting himself be supported.

"You're not hurt?" repeated Barker.

"No," answered the cow-puncher, slowly. "I guess not." He looked about
the room and at the door. "I got interrupted," he said.

"You'll be all right soon," said Barker.

"Nobody cares for me!" cried Lusk, suddenly, and took to querulous
weeping.

"Get up," ordered Barker, sternly.

"Don't accuse me, Governor," screamed Lusk. "I'm innocent." And he rose.

Barker looked at the woman and then at the husband. "I'll not say there
was much chance for her," he said. "But any she had is gone through you.
She'll die."

"Nobody cares for me!" repeated the man. "He has learned my boy to scorn
me." He ran out aimlessly, and away into the night, leaving peace in the
room.

"Stay sitting," said Barker to McLean, and went to Mrs. Lusk.

But the cow-puncher, seeing him begin to lift her toward the bed without
help, tried to rise. His strength was not sufficiently come back, and he
sank as he had been. "I guess I don't amount to much," said he. "I feel
like I was nothing."

"Well, I'm something," said Barker, coming back to his friend, out of
breath. "And I know what she weighs." He stared admiringly through his
spectacles at the seated man.

The cow-puncher's eyes slowly travelled over his body, and then sought
Barker's face. "Doc," said he, "ain't I young to have my nerve quit me
this way?"

His Excellency broke into his broad smile.

"I know I've racketed some, but ain't it ruther early?" pursued McLean,
wistfully.

"You six-foot infant!" said Barker. "Look at your hand."

Lin stared at it--the fingers quivering and bloody, and the skin grooved
raw between them. That was the buckle of her belt, which in the struggle
had worked round and been held by him unknowingly. Both his wrists and
his shirt were ribbed with the pink of her sashes. He looked over at the
bed where lay the woman heavily breathing. It was a something, a sound,
not like the breath of life; and Barker saw the cow-puncher shudder.

"She is strong," he said. "Her system will fight to the end. Two hours
yet, maybe. Queer world!" he moralized. "People half killing themselves
to keep one in it who wanted to go--and one that nobody wanted to stay!"

McLean did not hear. He was musing, his eyes fixed absently in front of
him. "I would not want," he said, with hesitating utterance--"I'd
not wish for even my enemy to have a thing like what I've had