name her--occupied the rocking chair, and the three young men
distributed themselves as best suited them. It was most homelike and
resting. Bennington had never before experienced the delight of seeing
a young girl about a house, and he enjoyed to the utmost the deft
little touches by which is imparted that airily feminine appearance to
a room; or, more subtly, the mere spirit of daintiness which breathes
always from a woman of the right sort. He felt there was added a newer
and calmer element of joy to his love.

During the first period of his illness, then, Jim Fay and the Leslie
brothers had worked energetically relocating the claims, while Mrs.
Lawton and Miss Fay had taken charge of the house. By the end of the
first day the job was finished. The question then came up as to the
disposition of the prisoners.

"We didn't want the nuisance of a prosecution," said Fay, "because that
would mean that these mossbacks could drag us off to Rapid City any
old time as witnesses, and keep us there indefinitely. Neither did we
want to let them off scot-free. They'd made us altogether too much
trouble for that! Bert here suggested a very simple way out. I went
down to Spanish Gulch and told the boys the whole story from start to
finish. Well, it isn't hard to handle a Western crowd if you go at it
right. The boys always thought you had good stuff in you since you rode
the horse and smashed Leary's face that night. It would have been easy
to have cooked up all kinds of trouble for our precious gang, but I
managed to get the boys in a frivolous mood, so they merely came up and
had fun."

"I should say they did!" Bert interjected. "They dragged the crowd out
of the shaft--and they were a tough-looking proposition, I can tell
you!--and stood them up in a row. They shaved half of Davidson's head
and half his beard, on opposite sides. They left tufts of hair all over
Arthur. They made a six-pointed star on the top of Slayton's crown.
Then they put the men's clothes on wrong side before, and tied them
facing the rear on three scrubby little burros. Then the whole outfit
was started toward Deadwood. The boys took them as far as Blue Lead,
where they delivered them over to the gang there, with instructions to
pass them along. They probably got to Deadwood. I don't know what's
become of them since."

"I think it was cruel!" put in Miss Fay decidedly.

"Perhaps. But it was better than hanging them."

"What became of Mrs. Arthur?"