“’T’s all right, sweetheart.  Yore old dad’s not even powder-burnt.  You been worryin’ a heap, I reckon.”  His voice was full of rough tenderness.

She began to cry.

He patted her shoulder and caressed her dark head drawing it close to his shoulder.  “Now—­now—­now sweetheart, don’t you cry.  It’s all right, li’l’ honey bug.”

“You’re not ... hurt,” she begged through her tears.

“Not none.  Never was huskier.  But I got a boy out here that’s beat up some.  Come in, Dave—­and you, Bob.  They’re good boys, Joy.  I want you to meet ’em both.”

The girl had thought her father alone.  She flung one startled glance into the night, clutched the dressing-gown closer round her throat, and fled her barefoot way into the darkness of the house.  To the boys, hanging back awkwardly at the gate, the slim child-woman was a vision wonderful.  Their starved eyes found in her white loveliness a glimpse of heaven.

Her father laughed.  “Joy ain’t dressed for callers.  Come in, boys.”

He lit a lamp and drew Dave to a lounge.  “Lemme look at yore haid, son.  Bob, you hot-foot it for Doc Green.”

“It’s nothin’ a-tall to make a fuss about,” Dave apologized.  “Only a love tap, compliments of Shorty, and some kicks in the slats, kindness of Mr. Miller.”

In spite of his debonair manner Dave still had a bad headache and was so sore around the body that he could scarcely move without groaning.  He kept his teeth clamped on the pain because he had been brought up in the outdoor code of the West which demands of a man that he grin and stand the gaff.

While the doctor was attending to his injuries, Dave caught sight once or twice of Joyce at the door, clad now in a summer frock of white with a blue sash.  She was busy supplying, in a brisk, competent way, the demands of the doctor for hot and cold water and clean linen.

Meanwhile Crawford told his story.  “I was right close to the club when Doble met me.  He pulled a story of how his brother Dug had had trouble with Steelman and got shot up.  I swallowed it hook, bait, and sinker.  Soon as I got into the house they swarmed over me like bees.  I didn’t even get my six-gun out.  Brad wanted me to sign a relinquishment.  I told him where he could head in at.”

“What would have happened if the boys hadn’t dropped along?” asked Dr. Green as he repacked his medicine case.

The cattleman looked at him, and his eyes were hard and bleak.  “Why, Doc, yore guess is as good as mine.” he said.

“Mine is, you’d have been among the missing, Em.  Well, I’m leaving a sleeping-powder for the patient in case he needs it in an hour or two.  In the morning I’ll drop round again,” the doctor said.

He did, and found Dave much improved.  The clean outdoors of the rough-riding West builds blood that is red.  A city man might have kept his bed a week, but Dave was up and ready to say good-bye within forty-eight hours.  He was still a bit under par, a trifle washed-out, but he wanted to take the road in pursuit of Miller and Doble, who had again decamped in a hurry with the two horses they had stolen.