The business that had brought him into the Kansas plains could wait; there was but one big purpose in his life now. He was eager to be up, with the weight of a certain dependable pistol in his holster, the feel of a certain rifle in its scabbard on the saddle under his knee.

Sore and bruised as he was, sorer that he would be tomorrow, Morgan wanted to get up as soon as the long rough cut on his cheek had been comfortably patched with adhesive tape. He asked the rancher if he would oblige him with a horse to go to Ascalon, where his trunk containing his much-needed wardrobe was still in the baggage-room at the depot.

"You couldn't ride to Ascalon this morning, son," the rancher told him, severely kind.

"You'll do if you can make it in a week," the young man added his opinion cheerfully.

"Yes, and then some, the way it looks to me," the elder declared.

Morgan started as if to spring from the low couch where they had laid him when they carried him in, dusty and b.l.o.o.d.y, fearful and repulsive sight of maimed flesh and torn clothing that he was.

"I can't stay a week--I can't wait a day! They'll be gone, man!" he said.

"Maybe they will, son," the rancher agreed, gently pushing him back; "maybe. But they'll leave tracks."

"Yes, by G.o.d! they'll leave tracks!" Morgan muttered.

"Don't you think I'd better send my boy over to town for the doctor?"

the rancher asked.

"Not unless you're uneasy about me."

"No, your head's all right and your bones are whole. You'll heal up, but it'll take some time."

Morgan said he felt that more had been done for him already than any number of doctors could have accomplished, for the service had been one of humanity, with no thought of reward. They would let the doctor stay in Ascalon, and Morgan would go to him if he felt the need coming on.

The rancher disclaimed credit for a service such as one man owed another the world over, he said. But it was plain that he was touched by the outspoken grat.i.tude of this wreckage of humanity that had come halting in bonds to his door.

"I'm a stranger to this country," Morgan explained, "I arrived in Ascalon yesterday--" pausing to ponder it, thinking it must have been longer than a day ago--"yesterday"--with conviction, "a little after noon. Morgan is my name. I came here to settle on land."

"You're the man that took the new marshal's gun away from him," the rancher said, nodding slowly. "My daughter knew you the minute she saw you--she was over there yesterday after the mail."

Morgan's heart jumped. He looked about the room for her, but she and her mother had withdrawn.

"I guess I made a mistake when I mixed up with him," Morgan said, as if he excused himself to the absent girl.

"The only mistake you made was when you handed him back his gun. You ought to 'a' handed it back to a corpse," the rancher said.

"We knew that feller he killed," the younger man explained, with a world of significance in his voice.

"He used to live up here in this country before he went to Abilene; he'd come back to blow his money in Ascalon, I guess," the rancher said. "He was one of them harmless bluffin' boys you could take by the ear and lead around like he had a ring in his nose."

"That's what I told them," Morgan commented, in thoughtful, distracted way.

"You sized him up right. He wouldn't 'a' pulled his gun, quick as he was to slap his hand on it and run a sandy. I guess it was just as well it happened to him then as some other time. Somebody was bound to kill him when he got away among strangers."

The rancher, who introduced himself as Stilwell, asked for the details of the killing, which Morgan gave, together with the trivial thing that led up to it. The big rancher sighed, shaking his head sadly.

"You ought to took his gun away from him and bent it around his fool head," he said.

"It would have been better for him, and for me, I guess," Morgan agreed.

"Yes, that marshal was purty sore on you for takin' his gun away from him right out in public, it looks like," the rancher suggested, a bid in his manner for the details of his misfortune which Morgan felt were his by right of hospitality.

"I ran into some of his friends later on. He'd turned the town over to them, a bunch of cowpunchers just up from the Nueces."

The rancher started at the word, exchanging a startled, meaning look with his son.

"That outfit that loaded over at Ascalon yesterday?" he inquired.

"Yes; seven or eight of them stayed behind to look after the horses--eight with the marshal, he's one of the outfit."

"Did them fellers rope you and drag you away out here?" Stilwell inquired, leaning over in the tensity of his feeling, his tanned face growing pale, as if the thought of such atrocity turned his blood cold.

"They hitched me to a freight train. The rope broke at the river."

The rancher turned to his son again, making a motion with open hand outflung as if displaying evidence in some controversy between them that clinched it on his side without another word. The younger man came a step nearer Morgan's couch, where he stood with grave face, hesitant, as if something came forward in his mind to speak. The elder strode to the door and looked out into the sun of early morning, and the cool shadows of the cottonwood trees at the riverside which reached almost to his walls.

"To a train! G.o.d A'mighty--to a train!" Morgan heard him say.

"How far is it from Ascalon to the river?" Morgan asked.

"Over two miles! And your hands tied--G.o.d A'mighty!"

"You take it easy, they'll not leave Ascalon till Sol Drumm, their boss, comes back from Kansas City," the young man said. "We're layin' for him ourselves, we've got a bill against him."

"And we've got about as much show to collect it as we have to dip a hatful of stars out of the river," Stilwell said, turning gloomily from the door.

"We'll see about that!" the younger one returned, in high and defiant stubbornness.

"We've already lost upwards of five hundred head of stock from that feller's trespa.s.s on our range," Stilwell explained. "That gang drove in here three weeks ago to rest and feed up for market, payin' no attention to anybody's range or anybody's warning to keep off. They had the men with them to go where they pleased. Them Texas cattle come up here loaded with fever ticks, and the bite of them little bugs means death to a northern herd. They sowed ticks all over my range. I'm still a losin'

cattle, and Lord knows where it will stop."

"You've been working to get a quarantine law pa.s.sed, I remember," Morgan said, feeling this outrage as if the cattle were his own.

"Yes, but Congress is asleep, and them fellers down in Texas never shut their eyes. I warned Drumm to keep off my range, asked him first like a gentleman, but he drove in one night between my pickets and mixed his poison cattle with mine out of pure cussidness. He claimed they got away, and him with fifteen or twenty men to ride herd! It's cost me ten thousand dollars, at the lowest figure, already, and more goin'. It looks like it would clean me out."

"You ought to have some recourse against him in law," Morgan said.

"Yes, I thought so, too. I went to the county attorney and wanted to bring an attachment on Drumm's herd, but he told me there wasn't any law he could act under, it was anybody's range as much as mine, Texas fever or no Texas fever. I could sue him, he said, but it was a slim chance.

Well, I'm goin' to see another lawyer--I'll take it up with Judge Thayer, and see what he can do."

"Drumm'll pay it, down to the last dime!" the young man declared.

"We can't hold him up and take it away from him, Fred," the older man reproved. "That would be as big a crime as his."

"He'll pay it!" Fred repeated, with what Morgan thought to be admirable tenacity, even though his means to the desired end might be hard to justify.

They helped Morgan to another room, where they outfitted him with clothing to replace his own shredded garments. Stilwell insisted that he remain as his guest until his hurts were mended, although, he explained, he could not stay at home to keep him company. His wife and daughter would talk his arm off without help from the rest of the family. He would call them in and introduce them.