Then Lenore felt that she had hold of Dorn’s arm and she was listening to Jake without understanding a word he said, while she did hear her father’s yell of command, “Line up there, you I.W.W.’s!”

Jake walked so swiftly that Lenore had to run to keep up.  Dorn stumbled.  He spoke incoherently.  He tried to stop.  At this Lenore clasped his arm and cried, “Oh, Kurt, come home with me!”

They hurried down the slope.  Lenore kept looking back.  The crowd appeared bunched now, with little motion.  That relieved her.  There was no more fighting.

Presently Dorn appeared to go more willingly.  He had relaxed.  “Let go, Jake,” he said.  “I’m—­all right—­now.  That arm hurts.”

“Wal, you’ll excuse me, Dorn, for handlin’ you rough....  Mebbe you don’t remember punchin’ me one when I got between you an’ Glidden?”

“Did I?...  I couldn’t see, Jake,” said Dorn.  His voice was weak and had a spent ring of passion in it.  He did not look at Lenore, but kept his face turned toward the cowboy.

“I reckon this ’s fur enough,” rejoined Jake, halting and looking back.  “No one comin’.  An’ there’ll be hell to pay out there.  You go on to the house with Miss Lenore....  Will you?”

“Yes,” replied Dorn.

“Rustle along, then....  An’ you, Miss Lenore, don’t you worry none about us.”

Lenore nodded and, holding Dorn’s arm closely, she walked as fast as she could down the lane.

“I—­I kept your coat,” she said, “though I never thought of it—­till just now.”

She was trembling all over, hot and cold by turns, afraid to look up at him, yet immensely proud of him, with a strange, sickening dread.  He walked rather dejectedly now, or else bent somewhat from weakness.  She stole a quick glance at his face.  It was white as a sheet.  Suddenly she felt something wet and warm trickle from his arm down into her hand.  Blood!  She shuddered, but did not lose her hold.  After a faintish instant there came a change in her.

“Are you—­hurt?” she asked.

“I guess—­not.  I don’t know,” he said.

“But the—­the blood,” she faltered.

He held up his hands.  His knuckles were bloody and it was impossible to tell whether from injury to them or not.  But his left forearm was badly cut.

“The gun cut me....  And he bit me, too,” said Dorn.  “I’m sorry you were there....  What a beastly spectacle for you!”

“Never mind me,” she murmured.  “I’m all right now!...  But, oh!—­”

She broke off eloquently.

“Was it you who had the cowboys pull me off him?  Jake said, as he broke me loose, ‘For Miss Lenore’s sake!’”

“It was dad who sent them.  But I begged him to.”

“That was Glidden, the I.W.W. agitator and German agent....  He—­just the same as murdered my father....  He burned my wheat—­lost my all!”

“Yes, I—­I know, Kurt,” whispered Lenore.