sciously
sworn it aloud and the men gathered around the bed of their stricken
comrade knew that supreme sentence had been passed. They made no
comment, but as Douglass, rolling up his sleeves, bent to the clumsy but
efficient surgery that was to save Red's life, one of them nudged his
neighbor and said inconsequentially, "Red weighs good two hunnerd!" And
he looked admiringly at the ripples playing silkily under the bronze
satin of his foreman's arms.

But far out on the prairie, riding in headlong guilty haste from the
Nemesis that his craven heart dreaded as even his cowardice had never
dreaded anything before, Matlock shivered telepathically and turned in
his saddle. A startled night-fowl fluttered uncannily over his head and
he crouched almost to his saddle-bow with terror. The flutter of
Azrael's wings seemed very close!

An hour later, as Douglass emerged from the bunkhouse, old Abigail
hesitatingly accosted him. "Yuah to come up to thu house, Ken, right
way! Now don' yuh be foolish, boy; remember she's only a gel--an' young
at that!"

He patted the wrinkled hand laid on his arm but shook his head in grim
negation. "It isn't necessary, Abbie; you tell Miss Carter that it will
all be in the report to-morrow!" And he gently but firmly put aside her
restraining hand.

But the old woman was wise in her generation. "Look heah, Ken Douglass,"
she indignantly stormed; "don't yuh try no hifalutin with me. I ain't
goin' to be stood off with no such a bluff ez that! Who nussed yuh when
yuh got shot up by this yeah very mizzuble outfit las' summeh? Yuh come
along o' me without no moah talk. An' when yuh git theah yuh go down on
yuh stubboahn knees to that little angel an' promise thet yuh'll be
good."

He laughed quizzically. "Is that one of the conditions she imposes--that
getting down on my knees? I'm out of practice a little and my knees are
all blacked up from that fire. I'm afraid I'd soil that immaculate
carpet of hers."

"Yuh hev soiled a heap moah than her cyapet already," said the old woman
significantly, "an' yuh mind's been blacker than yuh knees. Did yuh
think she was one o' them dance-hall huzzies yuh've been herdin' with
all yuh mean life? An' up tha' she sits cryin'--"

"Crying!" said the man sharply, and without another word he strode after
the doddering old woman, who had knowingly turned even as she spoke.

As he entered the living-room the girl rose with an involuntary cry. His
hair, eyebrows an