de, and I'm going now," he said.
"Good-night, Nettie."

He turned as he spoke, with the swift decision that was habitual with
him, and when he went out the girl glanced at her father reproachfully.

"You always get spoiling things when you put your hand in," she said.
"Now that man's hungry, and I'd have fixed it so he'd have got his
supper if you had left it to me."

The hotel-keeper laughed a little. "I'm kind of sorry for Winston
because there's grit in him, and he's never had a show," he said.
"Still, I figure he's not worth your going out gunning after, Nettie."

The girl said nothing, but there was a little flush in her face which
had not been there before, when she busied herself with the dishes.

In the meanwhile Winston was harnessing two bronco horses to a very
dilapidated wagon. They were vicious beasts, but he had bought them
cheap from a man who had some difficulty in driving them, while the
wagon had been given him, when it was apparently useless, by a
neighbor. The team had, however, already covered thirty miles that
day, and started homewards at a steady trot without the playful kicking
they usually indulged in. Here and there a man sprang clear of the
rutted road, but Winston did not notice him or return his greeting. He
was abstractedly watching the rude frame houses flit by, and wondering,
while the pain in his side grew keener, when he would get his supper,
for it happens not infrequently that the susceptibilities are dulled by
a heavy blow, and the victim finds a distraction that is almost welcome
in the endurance of a petty trouble.

Winston was very hungry, and weary alike in body and mind. The sun had
not risen when he left his homestead, and he had passed the day under a
nervous strain, hoping, although it seemed improbable, that the mail
would bring him relief from his anxieties. Now he knew the worst, he
could bear it as he had borne the loss of two harvests, and the
disaster which followed in the wake of the blizzard that killed off his
stock; but it seemed unfair that he should endure cold and hunger too,
and when one wheel sank into a rut and the jolt shook him in every
stiffened limb, he broke out with a hoarse expletive. It was his first
protest against the fate that was too strong for him, and almost as he
made it he laughed.

"Pshaw! There's no use kicking against what has to be, and I've got to
keep my head just now," he said.

There was no great comfort in the reflec