with the six-shooter.  The longhorned cattle of Texas were wearing broad trails to the north and the northwest and such towns as Los Portales were on the boom.  Chap-clad punchers galloped through the streets at all hours of the day and night letting out their joyous “Eee-yip-eee.”  The keys of Tolleson’s and half a dozen other gambling places had long since been lost, for the doors were never closed to patrons.  At games of chance the roof was the limit, in the expressive phrase of the country.  Guns cracked at the slightest difference of opinion.  It was bad form to use the word “murder.”  The correct way to speak of the result of a disagreement was to refer to it as “a killing.”

Law lay for every man in a holster on his own hip.  Snaith recognized this and accepted it.  He was ready to “bend a gun” himself if occasion called for it.  What he objected to in this particular killing was the personal affront to him.  One of Webb’s men had deliberately and defiantly killed two of his riders when the town was full of his employees.  The man had walked into Tolleson’s—­a place which he, Snaith, practically owned himself—­and flung down the gauntlet to the whole Lazy S M outfit.  It was a flagrant insult and Wallace Snaith proposed to see that it was avenged.

“I’m going duck-hunting to-morrow, dad,” Lee told him.  “I’ll likely be up before daylight, but I’ll try not to disturb you.  If you hear me rummaging around in the pantry, you’ll know what for.”

He grunted assent, full of the grievance that was rankling in his mind.  Lee came and went as she pleased.  She was her own mistress and he made no attempt to chaperon her activities.

The light had not yet begun to sift into the sky next morning when Lee dressed and tiptoed to the kitchen.  She carried saddlebags with her and into the capacious pockets went tea, coffee, flour, corn meal, a flask of brandy, a plate of cookies, and a slab of bacon.  An old frying-pan and a small stew kettle joined the supplies; also a little package of “yerb” medicine prepared by Aunt Becky as a specific for fevers.

Lee walked through the silent, pre-dawn darkness to the stable and saddled her pony, blanketing and cinching as deftly as her father could have done it.  With her she carried an extra blanket for the wounded man.

The gray light of dawn was beginning to sift into the sky when she reached the camp of the fugitives.  Prince came forward to meet her.  She saw that the fire was now only a bed of coals from which no smoke would rise to betray them.

The girl swung from the saddle and gave a little jerk of her head toward Clanton.

“How is he?”

“Slept like a log all night.  Feels a heap better this mo’nin’.  Wants to know if he can’t have somethin’ to eat.”

“I killed a couple of prairie plover on the way.  We’ll make some soup for him.”

The girl walked straight to her patient and looked down at him with direct and searching eyes.  She found no glaze of fever in the ones that gazed back into hers.