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The Keeper of the Bees

the half of a pearl button that it carried in its left cheek. The hardness of his bed awoke him in the night before the fire was gone, and so he piled on the remainder of the wood and turned his cold side toward the flame and the warm one down and went back to sleep again.

When morning came he washed his face and hands by wetting his handkerchief in the stream, and after that he wet his handkerchief several times and wrung the water over the coals he had left, scattering them widely and obliterating every trace of fire that could possibly spread. Then, with feet still aching in the shoes he had not dared to remove, he started on down the canyon.

About ten o’clock that morning he met the Ranger. The Ranger of this particular canyon was not so lonely as were the range riders of the mountains, but for all that he was friendly. He stopped to talk a minute and as he casually glanced at Jamie he saw the attenuation of his figure, he saw the whiteness of his hands, he saw how the skin of his face settled on the lean bones, and being young and full of life and having in his veins quite a bit of the milk of human kindness, he said to Jamie: “My mother tells me that if I keep in the saddle too much I will develop gout in my feet. What do you say to taking the horse for the next few miles and letting me exercise?”.

Jamie said if that would be any accommodation to the Ranger he would be glad to ride for him, but he had not figured on what the gait of a horse would do to his left breast. Fit himself to the saddle as easily as he could, riding was torture he could not endure for long, and so,