d nursing, and did
not get so much as a drink of water, except through pain and effort.
Hours when he cursed Buck Olney and thought he had him bound to the
chair in the cabin. Hours when he watched for him, gun in hand,
through the window beside the bunk.

It was while he was staring glassy-eyed through the window that his
attention wandered to the big, white bowl of stewed prunes. They
looked good, with their shiny, succulent plumpness standing up like
little wrinkled islands in the small sea of brown juice. Ward reached
out with his left hand--he was gripping the gun in his right, ready for
Buck when he showed up--and picked a prune out of the dish. It was his
first morsel of food since the morning when he had tried to eat his
breakfast while Buck Olney stared at him with the furtive malevolence
of a trapped animal. That was three days ago. The prune tasted even
better than it looked. Ward picked out another and another.

He forgot his feverish hallucination that Buck Olney was waiting
outside there until he caught Ward off his guard. He lay back on his
pillow, his fingers relaxed upon the gun. He closed his eyes and lay
quiet. Perhaps he slept a little.

When he opened his eyes he was in the dark. The window was a
transparent black square sprinkled with stars. Ward watched them
awhile. He thought of Billy Louise; he would like to know how her
mother was getting along and how much longer they expected to stay in
Boise. He thought of the times she had kissed him--twice, and of her
own accord. She would not have done it, either time, if he had asked
her; he knew her well enough for that. She must be left free to obey
the impulses of that big, brave heart of hers. A girl with a smaller
soul and one less fine would have blushed and simpered and acted the
fool generally at the mere thought of kissing a man of her own accord.
Billy Louise had been tender as Christ Himself, and as sweet and pure.
Was there another girl like her in the world? Ward looked at the stars
and smiled. There was never such another, he told himself. And she
"liked him to pieces"; she had said so. Ward laughed a little in spite
of his throbbing leg. "Some other girl would have said, 'Ward, I
lo-ove you,'" he grinned. "Wilhemina is different."

He lay there looking up at the stars and thinking, thinking. Once his
lips moved. He was saying "Wilhemina-mine" softly to himself. His
eyes, shining in the starlight, were very ten