mbatant class. We will
come for you, by and by. It will be all right!"

He gave the sliver of ear an affectionate corkscrew twist before he and
Firio, taking all their ammunition, crawled along the bottom of the
_arroyo_ and up the ridge where they settled down comfortably behind a
ledge commanding the water-hole at easy range.

"It's lucky we learned to shoot in the moonlight!" Jack whispered.

"_Si"!_ Firio answered, in perfect understanding.

XXXVII

THE END OF THE WEAVING

For over a week a private car had stood on a siding at Little Rivers.
Every morning a porter polished the brasswork of the platform in heraldry
of the luxury within. Occasionally a young man with a plaster over a
wound on his cheek would walk up and down the road-bed on the far side of
the car. Indeed, he had worn a path there. He never went into town, and
any glances that he may have cast in that direction spoke his desire to
be forever free of its sight. Not a train passed that he did not wish
himself aboard and away. But as heir-apparent he had no thought of
endangering his new kingdom by going before his father went. He meant to
keep very close to the throne. He had become clingingly, determinedly
filial. At times the gleam of the brasswork would exercise the same
hypnosis over his senses as the scintillation of the jewelry counters of
the store, and he would rub his hands crisply together.

John Wingfield, Sr. spent little time in the car. Morning and afternoon
and evening he would go over to Dr. Patterson's with the question: "How
is he?" which all Little Rivers was asking. The rules of longevity were
in oblivion and the routine channels of a mind, so used to teeming
detail, had become abysses as dark and void as the canyons of the range.

On the day of his arrival in Little Rivers he found a town peopled
mostly by women and children. All of the men who could bear arms and get
a horse had departed, and with them Mary. Thereby hangs a story all to
the honor of little Ignacio. After Jack had ridden away with his
insistent refusal of assistance, apprehension among the group that
watched him disappear in the gathering darkness was allayed by reports of
men who had been at the store, where they found the Leddyites hanging
about as usual. True, no one had seen either Pete or Ropey Smith, but
Lang said that they were upstairs playing poker, a favorite relaxation
from the strain of their intellectual life.

But Ignacio learned from