its throat cut; but
this is what he told me when he left. 'Keep him quiet. It may take a
month for that gap to heal, but if you're careful he'll pull through.'"
Again the look of concern, and this time of contrition as well. "I ought
to be ashamed of myself for letting you talk at all; but this is
straight. Now don't say any more."

This time Ben obeyed. He couldn't well do otherwise. He had suddenly
grown weak and drowsy, and almost before Grannis was through speaking he
was again asleep.

The doctor was right about the time of healing. During the remainder of
that month and well into the next, despite his restless protests, Ben
Blair was a prisoner in that dull little room; and through it all
Grannis remained with him.

"You don't have to stay with me unless you like," Ben had said more than
once; but each time Grannis had displayed his own wound, at first
openly, at last, carefully concealed by bandages, whimsically.

"Got to take good care of this arm of mine," he explained. "Blood
poisoning's liable to set in at any minute, and that's something awful,
they tell me."

The invalid made no comment.

* * * * *

It was the evening following the afternoon of Blair's return to the Box
R ranch. In the cosey kitchen, around the new range which Rankin had
imported the previous Fall, sat three people,--Grannis, Graham, and Ma
Graham. The two men were smoking steadily and silently. The woman, her
hands folded in her lap, her eyes glued to the floor, was breathing
loudly with the difficulty of the very corpulent. Of a sudden,
interrupting, the door connecting with the room adjoining opened and Ben
Blair appeared.

"Grannis," he requested, "come here a moment, please."

In silence Blair closed the door behind them, motioned his companion to
a seat, and took another opposite him. He was very quiet, even for his
taciturn self; and, glancing at a heap of papers on a nearby table,
Grannis understood. For a long minute the two men eyed each other
silently. Not without result had they lived the events of the last
months together. It was the younger man who first spoke.

"Grannis," he said impassively, "I'm going to ask you a question, and I
want an honest answer. Whatever you may think it leads to must cut no
figure. Will you give it?"

Equally impassively the elder man nodded, "Yes."

Blair selected a paper from the litter, and looked at it steadily. "What
I want to know is this: have I,