untains
were free as the wind to de Spain. And neither the town haunts of
Calabasas men nor those of their Morgan Gap sympathizers had any
champion disposed to follow too closely the alert Medicine Bend
railroader.

In and about the hospital, and in the town itself, Nan found the chief
obstacle to her peace of mind in the talk she could not always avoid
hearing about de Spain. Convalescents in the corridors, practically
all of them men, never gathered in sunny corners or at the tables in
the dining-room without de Spain's name coming in some way into the
talk, to be followed with varying circumstantial accounts of what
really had happened that day at Calabasas.

And with all the known escapades in which he had figured, exhausted as
topics, by long-winded commentators, more or less hazy stories of his
earlier experiences at Medicine Bend in the company of Whispering
Smith were dragged into the talk. One convalescent stage-guard at the
hospital told a story one night at supper about him that chilled Nan
again with strange fears, for she knew it to be true. He had had it
from McAlpin himself, so the guard said, that de Spain's father had
long ago been shot down from ambush by a cattleman and that Henry de
Spain had sworn to find that man and kill him. And it was hinted
pretty strongly that de Spain had information when he consented to
come to Sleepy Cat that the assassin still lived, and lived somewhere
around the head of the Sinks.

That night, Nan dreamed. She dreamed of a sinister mark on a face that
she had never before seen--a face going into bronzed young manhood
with quick brown eyes looking eagerly at her. And before her wondering
look it faded, dreamlike, into a soft mist, and where it had been, a
man lay, lifting himself on one arm from the ground--his sleeve
tattered, his collar torn, his eyes half-living, half-dead, his hair
clotted, his lips stiffened and distended, his face drawn. And all of
this dissolved into an image of de Spain on horseback, sudden, alert,
threatening, looking through the mist at an enemy. Then Nan heard the
sharp report of a rifle and saw him whirl half around--struck--in his
saddle, and fall. But he fell into her arms, and she woke sobbing
violently.

She was upset for the whole day, moody and apprehensive, with a
premonition that she should soon see de Spain--and, perhaps, hurt
again. The dream unnerved her every time she thought of him. That
evening the doctor came late. When he