e
large man who administered the dose was delighted. He spoke
encouragingly, working the spoon faster, as a man blows eagerly when he
sees a flame start weakly in a doubtful fire. The woman with the voice
of youth, who stood on Morgan's left hand, gently put his arm down, as
if modesty would no longer countenance this office of tenderness to a
conscious man.

"Any feelin' in your hands?" the man inquired, bending a whiskered face
down near Morgan's.

"Plenty of it, thank you," Morgan replied, his voice stubborn as a rusty
hinge.

"You'll be all right then, there's no bones broken as far as I can
locate 'em. You just stretch out and take it easy, you'll be all right."

"I gave up--I gave up--too easy," Morgan said, slowly, like a very tired
man.

"Lands alive! gave up!" said the matron of the household, who still held
Morgan's arm up to drain off the congested blood. "Look at your face,
look at your feet! Gave up--lands alive!"

"You're busted up purty bad, old feller," said a young man who seemed to
appear suddenly at Morgan's feet, where he stood looking down with the
most friendly and feeling expression imaginable in his wholesome brown
face.

"That cut on your face ain't deep, it could be closed up and stuck with
strips of plaster and only leave a shallow scar, but it ought to be done
while it's fresh," the boss of the ranch said.

"I'd be greatly obliged to you," Morgan told him, by way of agreement to
the dressing of his wound.

By the time the pioneer of the Arkansas had treated his mysteriously
injured patient's hurts, Morgan had come to himself completely. He was
relieved to know that his collapse at the threshold of that hospitable
home was due to the suffering of his bound arms, rather than any
internal rupture or concussion as he at first feared.

Already his thoughts were running forward, his blood was pounding in his
arteries, in vengeful eagerness to take up the trail of the men who had
subjected him to this inhuman ordeal. He could not hope to repay them
cruelty for cruelty, for he was not a man who did much crippling when it
came to handling a gun, but if he had to follow them to the Nueces, even
to the Rio Grande, for his toll, then he would follow.

The business that had brought him into the Kansas plains could wait;
there was but one big purpose in his life now. He was eager to be up,
with the weight of a certain dependable pistol in his holster, the feel
of a certain rifle in its scabb