neck. While his heart beat twice her soft fingers
touched his throat and grazed his cheek. Then she turned and was gone from
the room.

It was a long time before the bunk house quieted. Curly, faint with
weariness, lay down and tried to sleep. His arm was paining a good deal
and he felt feverish. The men of the Circle C and their guests sat down
and argued the whole thing over. But after a time the doctor came in and
had the patient carried to the house. He was put in a good clean bed and
his arm dressed again.

The doctor brought him good news. "Cullison is doing fine. He has dropped
into a good sleep. He'd ought to make it all right."

Curly thought about the girl who had fought for his life.

"You'll not let him die, Doc," he begged.

"He's too tough for that, Luck Cullison is."

Presently Doctor Brown gave him a sleeping powder and left him. Soon after
that Curly fell asleep and dreamed about a slim dark girl with fine
longlashed eyes that could be both tender and ferocious.

CHAPTER IV

THE CULLISONS

Curly was awakened by the sound of the cook beating the call to breakfast
on a triangle. Buck was standing beside the bed.

"How're they coming this glad mo'ning, son?" he inquired with a grin.

"Fine and dandy," grinned back Flandrau.

So he was, comparatively speaking. The pain in his arm had subsided. He
had had a good sleep. And he was lying comfortably in a clean bed instead
of hanging by the neck from the limb of one of the big cottonwoods on the
edge of the creek.

A memory smote him and instantly he was grave again.

"How is Cullison?"

"Good as the wheat, doc says. Mighty lucky for Mr. C. Flandrau that he is.
Say, I'm to be yore valley and help you into them clothes. Git a wiggle on
you."

Buck escorted his prisoner over to the ranch mess house. The others had
finished breakfast but Maloney was still eating. His mouth was full of hot
cakes, but he nodded across at Curly in a casual friendly way.

"How's the villain in the play this mo'ning?" he inquired.

Twenty-one usually looks on the cheerful side of life. Curly had forgotten
for the moment about what had happened to his friend Mac. He did not
remember that he was in the shadow of a penitentiary sentence. The sun was
shining out of a deep blue sky. The vigor of youth flowed through his
veins. He was hungry and a good breakfast was before him. For the present
these were enough.

"Me, I'm feeling a heap better than I was last