“Gee, look at it boil!” he cried.  “I guess they’s poison.  You’ll have to do it to all of them.”

Wesley’s teeth were set, as he watched the boy’s face.  He poured the drug, strong enough to do effective work, on a dozen places over that little body and bandaged all he could.  Billy’s lips quivered at times, and his chin jumped, but he did not shed a tear or utter a sound other than to take a deep interest in the boiling.  As Wesley put the small shirt on the boy, and fastened the trousers, he was ready to reset the hitching post and mend the fence without a word.

“Now am I clean?” asked Billy.

“Yes, you are clean outside,” said Wesley.  “There is some dirty blood in your body, and some bad words in your mouth, that we have to get out, but that takes time.  If we put right things to eat into your stomach that will do away with the sores, and if you know that I don’t like bad words you won’t say them any oftener than you can help, will you Billy?”

Billy leaned against Wesley in apparent indifference.

“I want to see me!” he demanded.

Wesley led the boy into the house, and lifted him to a mirror.

“My, I’m purty good-looking, ain’t I?” bragged Billy.  Then as Wesley stooped to set him on the floor Billy’s lips passed close to the big man’s ear and hastily whispered a vehement “No!” as he ran for the door.

“How long until supper, Margaret?” asked Wesley as he followed.

“You are going to keep him for supper?” she asked

“Sure!” said Wesley.  “That’s what I brought him for.  It’s likely he never had a good square meal of decent food in his life.  He’s starved to the bone.”

Margaret arose deliberately, removed the white cloth from the supper table and substituted an old red one she used to wrap the bread.  She put away the pretty dishes they commonly used and set the table with old plates for pies and kitchen utensils.  But she fried the chicken, and was generous with milk and honey, snowy bread, gravy, potatoes, and fruit.

Wesley repainted the scratched wheel.  He mended the fence, with Billy holding the nails and handing the pickets.  Then he filled the old hole, digged a new one and set the hitching post.

Billy hopped on one foot at his task of holding the post steady as the earth was packed around it.  There was not the shadow of a trouble on his little freckled face.

Sinton threw in stones and pounded the earth solid around the post.  The sound of a gulping sob attracted him to Billy.  The tears were rolling down his cheeks.  “If I’d a knowed you’d have to get down in a hole, and work so hard I wouldn’t ‘a’ hit the horses,” he said.

“Never you mind, Billy,” said Wesley.  “You will know next time, so you can think over it, and make up your mind whether you really want to before you strike.”