een it all--tell him it was not me!"

A half wondering, half incredulous smile passed quickly over Harrison's
face. "In course you didn't MEAN it," he said dryly, "but let
that slide. Get up and get away from yer, while you kin," he added
impatiently, with a significant glance at one or two men who lingered
after the sudden and general dispersion of the crowd at McKinstry's
fall. "Get--will ye!"

"Never!" said the young man passionately, "until he knows that it was
not my hand that fired that shot."

McKinstry painfully struggled to his elbow. "It took me yere," he said
with a slow deliberation, as if answering some previous question, and
pointing to his hip, "and it kinder let me down when I started forward
at the second call."

"But it was not I who did it, McKinstry, I swear it. Hear me! For God's
sake, say you believe me."

McKinstry turned his drowsy troubled eyes upon the master as if he were
vaguely recalling something. "Stand back thar a minit, will ye," he said
to Harrison, with a languid wave of his crippled hand; "I want ter speak
to this yer man."

Harrison drew back a few paces and the master sought to take the wounded
man's hand, but he was stopped by a gesture. "Where hev you put Cressy?"
McKinstry said slowly.

"I don't understand you," stammered Ford.

"Where are you hidin' her from me?" repeated McKinstry with painful
distinctness. "Whar hev you run her to, that you're reckonin' to jine
her arter--arter--THIS?"

"I am not hiding her! I am not going to her! I do not know where she is.
I have not seen her since we parted early this morning without a word
of meeting again," said the master rapidly, yet with a bewildered
astonishment that was obvious even to the dulled faculties of his
hearer.

"That war true?" asked McKinstry, laying his hand upon the master's
shoulder and bringing his dull eyes to the level of the young man's.

"It is the whole truth," said Ford fervently, "and true also that I
never raised my hand against you."

McKinstry beckoned to Harrison and the two others who had joined him,
and then sank partly back with his hand upon his side, where the slow
empurpling of his red shirt showed the slight ooze of a deeply-seated
wound.

"You fellers kin take me over to the ranch," he said calmly, "and let
him," pointing to Ford, "ride your best hoss fer the doctor. I don't,"
he continued in grave explanation, "gin'rally use a doctor, but this yer
is suthin' outside the old woman'