d had
inflicted had healed slowly and he had lain long bedridden. He had
been the last of the gang to hear the sorry story of how the robbery
had failed and the sequel recording the deaths of Lute and his
lieutenant. Now Jase heard that Alexander's door was no longer barred
to men who came courting and he returned home. But he came nursing a
grudge against Bud who had wounded him and who had set awry all his
plans. For only one thing was he thankful. Alexander had no suspicion
of his complicity in the effort to rob her.

But when Jase presented himself at Alexander's house, wearing a fancy
waistcoat and a bright colored tie, he learned to his discomfiture that
the bars which had been lowered to others were still up and fixed
against himself.

Bud, too, was far from happy, as from a distance he watched Alexander's
apotheosis. Bud knew that he was like a gray and inconspicuous moth
enamored of a splendidly winged butterfly. She could never be thrilled
by the colorless fidelity of a man who was simple almost to stupidity,
even though he lived with no thought above his loyalty. One day almost
unconquerable thirst came upon Bud. It attacked him suddenly as he
passed the house and saw Halloway sitting on the porch talking with
Alexander, and heard the peal of her responsive laughter.

That appetite rode him like a witch, making capital of his nervous
dejection and he tramped the woods vainly struggling to submerge it in
physical fatigue. Unfortunately it took a great deal of exertion to
wear Bud down, and the mania of craving was as strong as his untiring
muscles. By the purest of evil chance too, he stumbled upon an illicit
still, where an acquaintance was brewing whiskey. He had not known
that it was being operated there and had he sought to find it he could
not have done so, for it was well hidden behind browse and thicket and
a man watched furtively with a ready rifle. But the "blockader"
recognized Bud and had no fears of his playing informer, so with an
amused smile on his bearded face he stepped into sight with a tin cup
invitingly out-held.

To Bud Sellers its sickening odor was the bouquet of ambrosia. It
stole into his nostrils and set up in his brain insidious sensations of
imagined delight. He pushed it back at first then seized it and gulped
it greedily down.

Hurriedly he went away. He told himself that if he stopped there all
would still be well, but it was as feasible to tell the tiger th