limped up the steps, beckoning the others to follow into
the hall.

They entered, awkward, silent, and stood about, none knowing what
was best to do. Dunwody, luckless and unhappy as he was, still
remembered something of his place as host, and would have led them,
friends and enemies, into the dining-room beyond in search of some
refreshment. He limped forward, without any support. In the door
between the hall and the farther room there lay a mounted rug, of a
bear skin. He tripped at its edge and fell, catching vainly at the
door. A sharp exclamation escaped him. He did not at once rise.
It was the arm of his prisoner, Carlisle, who aided him. "You are
hurt, sir."

"No, no, go away!" exclaimed Dunwody, as he struggled to his feet.

"One bone's gone," he said presently in a low tone to Clayton. "I
broke it when I fell that time."

A curious moment of doubt and indecision was at hand. The men,
captors and captives, looked blankly at one another. It was the
mind of a woman which first rose to this occasion. In an instant
Josephine, with a sudden exclamation, flung aside indecision.

"Jeanne' Sally!" she called. "Show these gentlemen to their
rooms," naming Clayton and Jones. "Sir," she said to Dunwody,
whose injury she did not guess to be so severe, "you must lie down.
Gentlemen, pass into the other room, there, if you please." She
motioned to the two prisoners, and stepped to Dunwody's side.

"I can't have this," he broke out suddenly. "You're hurt,
yourself. Go to your room. I tell you, it's nothing."

"Be quiet," she said, close at his ear. "I'm not afraid of you
now."

CHAPTER XVIII

ON PAROLE

In this strange house party, a truce was tacitly agreed. It seemed
sufficient that the future for the time should take care of itself.
Dunwody's injury left Clayton practically leader of the
Missourians. His party gravitated toward him, while opposite sat
the two prisoners, Carlisle and Kammerer, composed and silent, now
and then exchanging a glance with each other, but making no spoken
comment.

Dunwody, in his own room, was looking into the seriousness of his
injury, with the old trapper Eleazar, once more summoned as
readiest physician. Eleazar shook his head when he had stripped
off the first bloody bandages from the limb. "She'll been broke,"
was his dictum. "She'll been bad broke. We mus' have docteur
soon." For half an hour the old man did the best he could,
cleansing and re