even speak with
him face to face. At times under Swenson's plain speaking she grew faint
with the horror of the struggle which was going on in that silent cabin.

This leprous plague, this offspring of crowded and dirty tenements and of
foul ship-steerages, seemed doubly unholy here in the clean sanity of the
hills. It was a profanation, a hideous curse. "If it should seize upon
Ross--" Words failed to express her horror, her hate of it. "Oh God, save
him!" she prayed a hundred times each day.

Twice in the night she rose from her bed to listen, to make sure that
Cavanagh was not calling for help. The last time she looked out, a white
veil of frost lay on the grass, and the faint light of morning was in the
east, and in the exquisite clarity of the air, in the serene hush of the
dawn, the pestilence appeared but as the ugly emanation of disordered
sleep. The door of the ranger's cabin stood open, but all was silent. "He
is snatching a half-hour's sleep," she decided.

If the guard had carried in his mind the faintest intention of permitting
Lize to go to Cavanagh's aid, that intention came to no issue, for with
the coming of the third night Wetherford was unconscious and
unrecognizable to any one who had known him in the days of "the free
range." Lithe daredevil in those days, expert with rope and gun, he was as
far from this scarred and swollen body as the soaring eagle is from the
carrion which he sees and scorns.

He was going as the Wild West was going, discredited, ulcerated, poisoned,
incapable of rebirth, yet carrying something fine to his grave. He had
acted the part of a brave man, that shall be said of him. He had gone to
the rescue of the poor Basque, instinctively, with the same reckless
disregard of consequences to himself which marked his character when as a
cow-boss on the range he had set aside the most difficult tasks for his
own rope or gun. His regard for the ranger into whose care he was now
about to commit his wife and daughter, persisted in spite of his
suffering. In him was his hope, his stay. Once again, in a lucid moment,
he reverted to the promise which he had drawn from Cavanagh.

"If I go, you must take care--of my girl--take care of Lize, too. Promise
me that. Do you promise?" he insisted.

"I promise--on honor," Ross repeated, and, with a faint pressure of his
hand (so slender and weak), Wetherford sank away into the drowse which
deepened hour by hour, broken now and then by convulsion