robbed from me by the men
with the guns. Just because I kicked the man in the head who was like a
mountain lion! It is fortune. It is America. And I am glad that I have
left Italy and come to chop wood on Mister Kennan's ranch. And I start
this hotel in Glen Ellen with the three thousand dollars. I know there
is large money in the hotel business. When I was a little boy, did not
my father have a hotel in Napoli? I have now two daughters in high
school. Also I own an automobile."

* * * * *

"Mercy me, the whole ranch is a hospital!" cried Villa Kennan, two days
later, as she came out on the broad sleeping-porch and regarded Harley
and Jerry stretched out, the one with his leg in splints, the other with
his leg in a plaster cast. "Look at Michael," she continued. "You're
not the only ones with broken bones. I've only just discovered that if
his nose isn't broken, it ought to be, from the blow he must have
received on it. I've had hot compresses on it for the last hour. Look
at it!"

Michael, who had followed in at her invitation, betrayed a ridiculously
swollen nose as he sniffed noses with Jerry, wagged his bobtail to Harley
in greeting, and was greeted in turn with a blissful hand laid on his
head.

"Must have got it in the fight," Harley said. "The fellow struck him
with the whip many times, so Piccolomini says, and, naturally, it would
be right across the nose when he jumped for him."

"And Piccolomini says he never cried out when he was struck, but went on
running and jumping," Villa took up enthusiastically. "Think of it! A
dog no bigger than Michael dragging out of the saddle a man-killing
outlaw whom scores of officers could not catch!"

"So far as we are concerned, he did better than that," Harley commented
quietly. "If it hadn't been for Michael, and for Jerry, too--if it
hadn't been for the pair of them, I do verily believe that that lunatic
would have kicked my head off as he promised."

"The blessed pair of them!" Villa cried, with shining eyes, as her hand
flashed out to her husband's in a quick press of heart-thankfulness. "The
last word has not been said upon the wonder of dogs," she added, as, with
a quick winking of her eyelashes to overcome the impending moistness, she
controlled her emotion.

"The last word of the wonder of dogs will never be said," Harley spoke,
returning the pressure of her hand and releasing it in order to help her.

"And just for that were going to sa