in sitting beside Kells. The whole day
seemed only an hour. Sometimes she would look down the canon trail, half
expecting to see horsemen riding up. If any of Kells's comrades happened
to come, what could she tell them? They would be as bad as he, without
that one trait which had kept him human for a day. Joan pondered upon
this. It would never do to let them suspect she had shot Kells. So,
carefully cleaning the gun, she reloaded it. If any men came, she would
tell them that Bill had done the shooting.

Kells lingered. Joan began to feel that he would live, though everything
indicated the contrary. Her intelligence told her he would die, and her
feeling said he would not. At times she lifted his head and got water
into his mouth with a spoon. When she did this he would moan. That
night, during the hours she lay awake, she gathered courage out of the
very solitude and loneliness. She had nothing to fear, unless someone
came to the canon. The next day in no wise differed from the preceding.
And then there came the third day, with no change in Kells till near
evening, when she thought he was returning to consciousness. But she
must have been mistaken. For hours she watched patiently. He might
return to consciousness just before the end, and want to speak, to send
a message, to ask a prayer, to feel a human hand at the last.

That night the crescent moon hung over the canon. In the faint light
Joan could see the blanched face of Kells, strange and sad, no longer
seeming evil. The time came when his lips stirred. He tried to talk. She
moistened his lips and gave him a drink. He murmured incoherently, sank
again into a stupor, to rouse once more and babble tike a madman. Then
he lay quietly for long--so long that sleep was claiming Joan. Suddenly
he startled her by calling very faintly but distinctly: "Water! Water!"

Joan bent over him, lifting his head, helping him to drink. She could
see his eyes, like dark holes in something white.

"Is--that--you--mother?" he whispered.

"Yes," replied Joan.

He sank immediately into another stupor or sleep, from which he did not
rouse. That whisper of his--mother--touched Joan. Bad men had mothers
just the same as any other kind of men. Even this Kells had a mother. He
was still a young man. He had been youth, boy, child, baby. Some mother
had loved him, cradled him, kissed his rosy baby hands, watched him grow
with pride and glory, built castles in her dreams of his manhood, and