er that he stood
up, and, in a peculiarly dazed fashion gazed about him, out of a pair
of blackened and bloodshot eyes, while the children continued to cling
to him.

The two onlookers never took their eyes off him. Sunny Oak gazed with
unfeigned astonishment and alarm, but Bill merely stared. The little
man was a pitiable object. His clothes were tattered. His face was
bruised and cut, and dry blood was smeared all round his mouth. Both
eyes were black, and in one of them the white was changed to a bright
scarlet.

James' men had done their work all too well. They had handled their
victim with the brutality of the savages they were.

Scipio let his eyes rest on Bill, and, after a moment's hesitation, as
though gathering together his still scattered wits, spoke his
gratitude.

"It was real kind of you lendin' me Gipsy. I set her back in the barn.
She's come to no harm. She ain't got saddle-sore, nor--nor nothin'.
Maybe she's a bit tuckered, but she's none the worse, sure."

Bill clicked his tongue, but made no other response. At that moment it
would have been impossible for him to have expressed the thoughts
passing through his fierce mind. Sunny, however, was more superficial.
Words were bursting from his lips. And when he spoke his first remark
was a hopeless inanity.

"You got back?" he questioned.

Scipio's poor face worked into the ghost of a smile.

"Yes," he said. And the awkwardness of the meeting drove him to
silently caressing his children.

Presently Sunny, who was not delicate-minded, pointed at his face.

"You--you had a fall?"

Scipio shook his head.

"You see, I found him and--his boys got rough," he explained simply.

"Gee!"

There was no mistaking Sunny's anger. He forgot his usual lazy
indifference. For once he was stirred to a rage that was as active and
volcanic as one of Wild Bill's sudden passions.

But the gambler at last found his tongue, and Sunny was given no
further opportunity.

"What you got there?" he asked, pointing at the parcel Scipio had
deposited on the floor.

The little man glanced down at it.

"That?" he said hazily. "Oh, that's bacon an' things. I got 'em from
Minky on my way up. He told me you'd sure got grub up here, an' I
didn't need to get things. But I guessed I couldn't let you do all
this now I'm back. Say," he added, becoming more alert. "I want to
thank you both, you bin real good helping me out."

Bill swallowed some tobacco juice, and coughed v