der. After a long while
he fell asleep, still thinking of her. A late moon came up and touched
his face and showed it thin and sunken-eyed, yet with the little smile
hidden behind his lips, for he was dreaming of Billy Louise.

Some time after daylight Ward woke and wanted a cigarette, which was a
sign that he was feeling a little more like himself. He was feverish
still, and the beating pain in his leg was maddening. But his brain
was clear of fever-fog. He smoked a little of the cigarette he made
from the supply on the shelf behind the bunk, and after that he looked
about him for something to eat.

He had made a final trip to Hardup two weeks before, and had brought
back supplies for the winter. And because his pay streak of
gravel-bank had yielded a fair harvest, he had not stinted himself on
the things he liked to eat. He lay looking over the piled boxes
against the farther wall, and wondered if he could reach the box of
crackers and drag it up beside the bunk. He was weak, and to move his
leg was agony. Well, there was the dish of prunes on the window-sill.

Ward ate a dozen or so--but he wanted the crackers. He leaned as far
as he could from the bed, and the box was still two feet from his
outstretched fingers. He lay and considered how he might bring the box
within reach.

At the head of the bunk stood the case of peaches and beneath that the
case of canned tomatoes, the two forming a stand for his lantern. He
eyed them thoughtfully, chewing a corner of his underlip. He did not
want peaches or tomatoes just then; he wanted those soda-crackers.

He took Buck Olney's knife--he was finding it a most useful souvenir of
the encounter!--and pried off a board from the peach box. Two nails
stuck out through each end of the board. He leaned again from the bed,
reached out with the board, and caught the nails in a crack on the
upper edge of the cracker-box. He dragged the box toward him until it
caught against a ridge in the rough board floor, when the nails bent
outward and slipped away from the crack. Ward lay back, exhausted with
the effort he had made and tormented with the pain in his leg.

After awhile he took the piece of hoard and managed to slide it under
the box, lifting a corner of it over the ridge. That was hard work,
harder than you would believe unless you tried it yourself after lying
three days fasting, with a broken leg and a fever. He had to rest
again before he took the other en