was in a serious condition between neglect and incipient infection. She looked from the wounds to Tom Simpson's eyes, hurting more by her pitying reproach for his attempted deceit than the horsethief's splintered bullet ever had done. Mrs. Ellison was beside her in a moment. She held Tom sternly when, with a confused "Oh, I say, now," he tried to withdraw his hand from their examination.
"Scratched your granny!" Mrs. Ellison said, that female relative always figuring largely in her exclamations of scoffing and depreciation. "You light right down off of that horse, Tom Simpson, and come in and let me get the lead out of them places. If you don't attend to that hand you're in for a peck of trouble with it. Scratched it! Yes, I've seen scratches of that kind too often to be put on that way."
"I'll take care of the horses, Tom; you go on in," Eudora said.
"I couldn't permit it," he replied, so high and mighty it seemed as if they had given him mortal offense.
Nor would he permit it, nor any further argument in the case at all. When he had the horses properly cared for he joined them at the corral gate, actually grinning as if he had accomplished more in overriding their tender concern than in restoring the animals to their rightful owners. But his embarrassment was almost overwhelming when Eudora jerked Noah Hays' belt and gun from under the saddle where he had tried to hide them when he hung it on the fence. He stammered something about a chap losing them, and would not say another word.
To make matters worse for him, Mrs. Ellison, with the
