at the cabin and tried to study the situation
impersonally. If it were some other fellow, now, what would Ward
advise him to do under the circumstances?

He reached down and felt his leg gingerly. So far as he could tell, it
was a straight, simple break--snapped short off against a rock, he
judged. He shook his head over the thought of riding fifteen miles
with those broken bones grinding their edges together. And still, what
else could he do?

He reached out, took the reins, and led Rattler a step nearer, so that
he could grasp the stirrup. With his voice he held the horse quiet
while he pulled himself upright upon his good leg. Then, with
pain-hurried, jerky movements, he pulled off the saddle, glanced around
him, and flung it behind a buck-brush. He slipped off the bridle,
flung that after the saddle, and gave Rattler a slap on the rump. The
horse moved away, and Ward stared after him with set lips. "Anyway,
you can look after yourself," he said and balanced upon his right leg
while he swung around and faced the cabin. It was not far--to a man
with two sound legs. A hundred yards, perhaps.

Ward crawled there on his hands and one knee, dragging the broken leg
after him. It was not a nice experience, but it served one good
purpose: It wiped from his mind all thought of that black past wherein
Buck had figured so shamefully. He had enough to think of with his
present plight, without worrying over the past.

In half an hour or so Ward rested his arms upon his own doorstep and
dropped his perspiring face upon them. He lay there a long while, in a
dead faint.

After awhile he moved, lifted his head, and looked about him dully at
first and then with a certain stoical acceptance of his plight. He
looked into the immediate future and tried to forecast its demands upon
his strength and to prepare for them. He crawled farther up on the
step, reached the latch, and opened the door. He crawled in, pulled
himself up by the foot of his bunk, and sat down weakly with his head
in his hands. Like a hurt animal, he had obeyed his instinct and had
crawled home. What next?

If Ward had been a weaker man, he would have answered that question
speedily with his gun. He did think of it contemptuously as an easy
way out. If he had never met Billy Louise, he might possibly have
chosen that way. But Ward had changed much in the past two years, and
at the worst he had never been a coward. His hurt was sending wave