esitated,
biting his lip and plucking absently the tangles from the forelock of
his horse. "You sabe grateful?" he asked finally. And when she gave a
quick little nod, he went on: "Well, I'm grateful to you. You did what
a man would do for his friend. I sabe. I'm heap grateful, and I'll not
forget it. All time I'll be your friend. Good--by." He mounted, and rode
away. He felt, just then, that it was the kindest thing he could do.

He looked back once, just as he was turning into the grade road. She was
standing, her arms folded in her gray blanket, where he had left her.
His fingers tightened involuntarily the reins, so that Keno stopped and
eyed his master inquiringly. But there was nothing that he might say to
her. It was not words that she wanted. He swung his heels against Keno's
flanks, and rode home.

Evadna rallied him upon his moodiness at breakfast, pouted a little
because he remained preoccupied under her teasing, and later was deeply
offended because he would not tell her where he had been, or what was
worrying him.

"I guess you better send word to the doctor he needn't come," the pump
man put his head in at the office door to say, just as the freight was
pulling away from the water-tank. "Saunders died a few minutes ago.
Pete says you better notify the coroner--and I reckon the sheriff, too.
Pretty tough to be shot down like that in broad daylight."

"I think I'd rather be shot in daylight than in the dark," Miss Georgie
snapped unreasonably because her nerves were all a-jangle, and sent the
messages as requested.

Saunders was neither a popular nor a prominent citizen, and there was
none to mourn beside him. Peter Hamilton, as his employer and a man
whose emotions were easily stirred, was shocked a shade lighter as to
his complexion and a tone lower as to his voice perhaps, and was heard
to remark frequently that it was "a turrible thing," but the chief
emotion which the tragedy roused was curiosity, and that fluttering
excitement which attends death in any form.

A dozen Indians hung about the store, the squaws peering inquisitively
in at the uncurtained window of the lean-to--where the bed held a long
immovable burden with a rumpled sheet over it--and the bucks listening
stolidly to the futile gossip on the store porch.

Pete Hamilton, anxious that the passing of his unprofitable servant
should be marked by decorum if not by grief, mentally classed the event
with election day, in that he refu