shoulder at Buck, slumped in the saddle with a paper pinned to his back
like a fire-warning on a tree, and his own grass rope noosed about his
neck and connecting him with the cottonwood limb six feet above his hat
crown.

Ward had not ridden a hundred yards before he heard Buck Olney scream
hysterically for help. He grinned sourly with his eyebrows pinched
together and, that hard, strained look in his eyes still. "Let him
holler awhile!" he gritted. "Do him good, damn him!"

Until distance and the intervening hills set a wall of silence between,
Ward heard Buck screaming in fear of death, screaming until he was so
hoarse he could only whisper; screaming because he had not seen Ward
take his knife and slice the rope upon the limb so that it would not
have held the weight of a rabbit.

CHAPTER XVIII

FORTUNE KICKS AGAIN

It was past noon when Ward rode down the steep slope to the creek bank
just above his cabin. He was sunk deep in that mental depression which
so often follows close upon the heels of a great outburst of passion.
Mechanically he twitched the reins and sent Rattler down the last shelf
of bank--and he did not look up to see just where he was. Rattler was
a well-trained horse, since he was Ward's. He obeyed the rein signal
and stepped off a two-foot bank into a nest of loose-piled rocks that
slid treacherously under his feet. Sure-footed though he was, he
stumbled and fell; and it was sheer instinct that took Ward's feet from
the stirrups in time.

Ward sprawled among the rocks, dazed. The shock of the fall took him
out of his fit of abstraction, and he pulled away from Rattler as the
horse scrambled up and stood shaking before him. He tried to scramble
up also....

Ward sat and stared stupidly at his left leg where, midway between his
knee and his foot, it turned out at an unnatural angle. He thought
resentfully that he had had enough trouble for once, without having a
broken leg on top of it all.

"Now this is one hell of a fix!" he stated dispassionately, when pain
had in a measure cooled his first anger. He looked around him like a
man who is taking stock of his resources. He was not far from the
cabin. He could get there by crawling. But what then?

Ward looked at Rattler, standing docilely within reach of his hand. He
considered getting on--if he could, and riding--well, the nearest place
was fifteen miles. And that was a good, long way from a doctor. He
glanced again