, Mamma."

His wife gripped him as if he was struggling violently, although his
Honor was lying motionless as an alligator.

"You shan't--you'll get pneumonia and leave me and the children without
any insurance! You've no right to take chances. Let somebody else go
that hasn't any future."

There was that side to it.

"Some hobo most like." The future statesman turned over. "Tuck my back
in, Mamma."

Mr. Sudds was awakened, and his first impulse was to rush to the man's
assistance, but he was not sure where to find matches, and it took him
such an unconscionable time to dress that by the time he got there--

Scales was restrained by the arms of his fragile wife who threatened
hysterics if he left her. Between love and duty Mr. Scales did not
hesitate with the thermometer at forty below zero, and the knowledge
that loss of sleep unfitted him for business.

So Mormon Joe, screaming in his agony, staggered up the alley, leaving a
crimson trail behind him, the sheep dog following like a shadow. He had
nearly reached Main Street when he lurched, groped for a support, then
fell to his knees. The hot drops turned to red globules in the snow as
he kept crawling, gasping, "Oh, God! Won't somebody come to me?" The dog
walked beside him as he dragged himself along, perplexed and wondering
at this whim of his master's.

Mormon Joe was leaning against the side of the White Hand Laundry, his
head fallen forward, when Bowers and the drug clerk got to him. The
collie was licking his face for attention, but the warm caressing
hand--now red and sticky--was lying in the snow, limp and unresponsive.

Mormon Joe had "gone over"--dying as he had lived--a man of mystery.

CHAPTER IX

THE SUMMONS

Bowers had offered to take Lingle, the Deputy Sheriff, to the sheep
camp, which he was sure he could find easily from the directions Mormon
Joe had given him when he hired him, but, as it proved, the herder had
been over-sanguine.

They were hungry and tired from long hours in the saddle, and the breath
frozen on their upturned collars testified to the continued extremity of
the weather when for the hundredth time they checked their horses and
tried to get their bearings.

"I'm certain sure that Mormon Joe said to ride abreast that peak and
about a half mile to the left of it turn in to a 'draw' runnin'
northeast by southwest, and ride until I come acrost the wagon."

"Don't see how a child could miss the way from that desc