o be broken. He'd been half strangled; they'd have
to get him into the wagon.

"Leave him at Fort Bridger," came Courant's voice through the haze.
"Leave him there to rot."

The doctor answered in the cold tones of authority:

"We'll take him with us as we agreed in the beginning. Because he
happens not to be able to stand it, it's not for us to abandon him. It's
a physical matter--sun and hard work and irritated nerves. Take a hand
and help me lift him into the wagon."

They hoisted him in and disposed him on a bed of buffalo robes spread on
sacks. He groaned once or twice, then settled on the softness of the
skins, gazing at them with blood-shot eyes of hate. When the doctor
offered him medicine, he struck the tin, sending its contents flying.
However serious his hurts were they had evidently not mitigated the
ferocity of his mood.

For the three succeeding days he remained in the wagon, stiff with
bruises and refusing to speak. Daddy John was detailed to take him his
meals, and the doctor dressed his wounds and tried to find the cause of
his murderous outburst. But Leff was obdurate. He would express no
regret for his action, and would give no reason for it. Once when the
questioner asked him if he hated David, he said "Yes." But to the
succeeding, "Why did he?" he offered no explanation, said he "didn't know
why."

"Hate never came without a reason," said the physician, curious and
puzzled. "Has David wronged you in any way?"

"What's that to you?" answered the farm boy. "I can hate him if I like,
can't I?"

"Not in my train."

"Well there are other trains where the men aren't all fools, and the
women----"

He stopped. The doctor's eye held him with a warning gleam.

"I don't know what's the matter with that boy," he said afterwards in the
evening conference. "I can't get at him."

"Sun mad," Daddy John insisted.

Courant gave a grunt that conveyed disdain of a question of such small
import.

David couldn't account for it at all.

Susan said nothing.

At Green River the Oregon Trail broke from the parent road and slanted
off to the northwest. Here the Oregon companies mended their wagons and
braced their yokes for the long pull across the broken teeth of mountains
to Fort Hall, and from there onward to the new country of great rivers
and virgin forests. A large train was starting as the doctor's wagons
came down the slope. There was some talk, and a little bartering between
t