Her head was rolling, while the lips smiled.  Her words came through deeper and deeper veils, fearless, defiant, a challenge inarticulate, a continuous mutter.  Again he looked at the door as he struggled to move with her dragging weight.  The drops rolled on his forehead and neck, his shirt was wet, his hands slipped upon her ribbons.  Suddenly the drugged body folded and sank with him, pulling him to his knees.  While he took breath so, the mutter went on, and through the door came the jigging fiddle.  A fire of desperation lighted in his eyes.  “Buffalo Girls!” he shouted, hoarsely, in her ear, and got once more on his feet with her as though they were two partners in a quadrille.  Still shouting her to wake, he struck a tottering sort of step, and so, with the bending load in his grip, strove feebly to dance the laudanum away.

Feet stumbled across the porch, and Lusk was in the room.  “So I’ve got you!” he said.  He had no weapon, but made a dive under the bed and came up with a carbine.  The two men locked, wrenching impotently, and fell together.  The carbine’s loud shot rang in the room, but did no harm; and McLean lay sick and panting upon Lusk as Barker rushed in.

“Thank God!” said he, and flung Lusk’s pistol down.  The man, deranged and encouraged by drink, had come across the doctor, delayed him, threatened him with his pistol, and when he had torn it away, had left him suddenly and vanished.  But Barker had feared, and come after him here.  He glanced at the woman slumbering motionless beside the two men.  The husband’s brief courage had gone, and he lay beneath McLean, who himself could not rise.  Barker pulled them apart.

“Lin, boy, you’re not hurt?” he asked, affectionately, and lifted the cow-puncher.

McLean sat passive, with dazed eyes, letting himself be supported.

“You’re not hurt?” repeated Barker.

“No,” answered the cow-puncher, slowly.  “I guess not.”  He looked about the room and at the door.  “I got interrupted,” he said.

“You’ll be all right soon,” said Barker.

“Nobody cares for me!” cried Lusk, suddenly, and took to querulous weeping.

“Get up,” ordered Barker, sternly.

“Don’t accuse me, Governor,” screamed Lusk.  “I’m innocent.”  And he rose.

Barker looked at the woman and then at the husband.  “I’ll not say there was much chance for her,” he said.  “But any she had is gone through you.  She’ll die.”

“Nobody cares for me!” repeated the man.  “He has learned my boy to scorn me.”  He ran out aimlessly, and away into the night, leaving peace in the room.

“Stay sitting,” said Barker to McLean, and went to Mrs. Lusk.

But the cow-puncher, seeing him begin to lift her toward the bed without help, tried to rise.  His strength was not sufficiently come back, and he sank as he had been.  “I guess I don’t amount to much,” said he.  “I feel like I was nothing.”