t an' fix your hand up. Oh, don't be a fool. Come ahead. I'm goin'
to straighten out my face a bit."

So Conniston turned back, and the two men went to the bunk-house. The
cook was pottering around his stove, cleaning up his pots and pans. He
looked up curiously as they came in, realizing that by now they should
have been at work. The faint, careless surprise upon his face changed
suddenly into downright bewilderment as he saw the dust-covered
bodies, the cut lips, blood-streaked cheeks, and swelling eyes of the
two men. The song which he had been humming died away into a little
gasp, and with sagging lower jaw he stood and stared.

"Well," snapped Brayley, pushing back his hat and returning the cook's
stare fiercely. "Well, Cookie, what's eatin' you? Ain't you got
nothin' to do but stand an' gawk? By the Lord, if you ain't I know
where we can git a hash-slinger as is worth his grub!"

Cookie's bulging eyes ranged from one face to the other. Then he
turned back to his stove and began to wash over again a pan which he
had laid aside already as clean.

Conniston and Brayley washed with cold water in silence. Then they
found a bottle of liniment and applied it to their various cuts with a
bit of rag. Brayley, his big fingers unbelievably gentle, bandaged
Conniston's lame hand for him. And then they went back to the corrals.

"You can go out to the east end an' give Rawhide a hand," said
Brayley, as he swung up to his horse's back. "I reckon you won't be
much good for a day or two except jest ridin'. An' say, Con. I had a
talk with the Ol' Man about you this mornin'. He wanted to know if you
was makin' good. Lucky for you," with a twisted grin, "that he asked
before we had our little set-to! You're to git forty-five a month from
now on. An' at the end of the week you're to report over to
Rattlesnake to go to work."

As Greek Conniston rode out across the dry fields toward the east
there was a subtle exhilaration in the fresh, clean morning air which
he drew deep down into his lungs. For the moment the soreness of
bruised muscles, the biting pain in his crippled hand, were trifles
driven outward to the farthermost rim of his consciousness. His foot
was upon the first step of the long stairway which he must climb. He
had whipped Brayley in a fair, square, hand-to-hand, man-to-man fight.
He had done it through sheer dogged determination that he would do it.
He had set himself a task, the hardest task he had ever essayed.