imens of trap-door spiders and butterflies and desert
insects. She would loan the collection occasionally, and her stuffed
Gila monster and the arrow-heads and rattle-snake skins that she and
Holland had collected.

As she hammered and sawed she told Norman the story of _The Jester's
Sword_. "That is one reason I am taking so much interest in this," she
explained. "I've been thinking for days about what the old friar said,
that men need laughter sometimes more than food, and if we haven't any
cheer to spare ourselves, we may go a-gathering it from door to door as
he did crusts and carry it to those who need. That is why I have gone on
long walks and made so many calls on the few people that are here, so
that I'd have something amusing to tell Jack when I came home. But he
has seemed to find my 'crusts of cheer' mighty dry food, and he didn't
take half the interest in them that he did in talking to Lupe to-day."

"Lupe will make a beaten track to _his_ door fast enough," prophesied
Norman, "when he finds we want to buy more animals. I'll send word
to-night to him to set his traps for those coyotes and foxes."

That evening after supper, Jack wheeled himself out on to the porch. It
was the first time he had attempted it, and when he had made the trip
successfully, he sat a few minutes watching the stars. They seemed
unusually brilliant, and he amused himself in tracing the constellations
with which he was familiar. It had been a family study at the Wigwam,
and they had learned many things from the little Atlas of the Heavens
which Mrs. Ware kept among her other old school books. Presently he
called Mary.

"I've located Taurus. See, just over that tree top. And there is its red
eye, Aldebaran. I wanted you to see what a jolly twinkle he has
to-night."

It was the first direct reference he had made to the story, and Mary
waited expectantly for him to go on.

"Don't you worry, little pard," he said, after a pause. "I've known all
along how you felt about me. But I'm not knocked quite out of the game,
even if I am such a wreck. I felt so until I had that talk with Lupe, as
if there was no use of my cumbering the ground any longer. But I found
out a lot from him. The men want me back. They don't understand the new
boss at all. They will do anything for me. So even if I can't walk I can
be worth at least half a man to the Company, in just being on the spot
to interpret and to keep things running smoothly. I could attend t