where the
deadliest had raised a sullen red welt along his temple.

Ben Simeral was first to come along on his way to town, in his wagon.
John Frying Pan was with him. With their help, Laramie got Stone up to
the bridge and into the wagon to take to town. He had shut his eyes
and refused to talk. Kate made Laramie tell her every detail of the
fight and breathed anew the terrors of each moment.

"I stole toward the bridge the minute I heard the firing," she
confessed, unsteadily. "Oh, yes, I know! I might have been killed.
But if you were, I wanted to be. How could you tell, when you stopped
me so, Jim, there was a man under the bridge?"

"A bunch of bank swallows nests under that bridge right where Stone was
hiding," he said, reflecting. "Those swallows always fly out when I
ride up to it. If they don't fly out, I don't cross. Today they
didn't fly out."

CHAPTER XLII

WARNING

By nightfall Kate had the hope that her father might live. Doctor
Carpy, indeed, promised as much, though he confessed to Laramie that he
was partly bluffing. It was, he explained, a question of constitution
and nerve and he thought Barb had both. For better care he had him
brought to town, and within the same hospital walls that sheltered
Doubleday, lay Stone, in even more serious condition. The sole promise
Carpy would make concerning him was that he would fit him up either for
trial, or for his museum--or, as Lefever suggested, for both.

The excitement of the town lay in the pursuit of Van Horn. Laramie
during the first uncertain days of her father's condition stayed within
Kate's call.

"While Van Horn's loose, Jim," said Tenison one day, "you're the man
that's in danger; don't forget that."

"I'd like to forget it," he returned. "But I guess it wouldn't be just
exactly safe to. Barb warned me yesterday to look out for a
surprise--Van Horn's good at them. Then again he may have left the
country--there's no word of him from anybody yet.

"Things up at Barb's ranch have got to have some attention," he
continued. "Barb will be laid up a long time; and if I don't see after
things the banks will. I'm going to take McAlpin up there tomorrow."

The two men were sitting before a large window in the hotel office. As
McAlpin's name was mentioned they saw the man himself stepping
sailor-fashion at a lively pace up Main Street. He made for the hotel,
burst through the office door and headed straight for Laramie: