Ben tried to shift in bed, but with the movement a sudden pain made him grit his teeth to keep from uttering a groan.  For the first time he thought of himself.

“How much am I hurt, Grannis?” he queried directly.

The foreman busied himself doing nothing about the room.  “You?” cheerfully.  “Oh, you’re all right.”

Ben looked at the other narrowly.  “Nothing to bother about, I judge?”

“No, certainly not.”

Beneath the bedclothes the long body lifted, but despite anything it could do the face went pale.

“Very well, I guess I’ll get up then.”

Instantly Grannis was beside him, motioning him back, genuine concern upon his face.

“No, please don’t.  Not yet.”

“But if I’m not hurt much—­”

Grannis fingered his forelock in obvious discomfort.

“Well, between you and me, it’s this way.  They ripped a seam for you—­so far,” he indicated, “and it’s open yet.”

Turning his free left arm, Ben touched the bandage at his side, and the hand came back moist and red.  Now that it occurred to him, he was ridiculously weak.

“I see.  I’m liable to rip it more,” he commented slowly.

The other nodded.  “Yes; don’t talk.  I ought to have stopped you before this.”

“Grannis!” There was no escaping the blue eyes this time.  “Honestly, now, am I liable to be—­done for, or not?”

The foreman became instantly serious.  “Honest, if you keep quiet you’re all right.  Doc said so not an hour ago.  At first he thought different, that you’d never wake up; you bled like a pig with its throat cut; but this is what he told me when he left.  ’Keep him quiet.  It may take a month for that gap to heal, but if you’re careful he’ll pull through.’” Again the look of concern, and this time of contrition as well.  “I ought to be ashamed of myself for letting you talk at all; but this is straight.  Now don’t say any more.”

This time Ben obeyed.  He couldn’t well do otherwise.  He had suddenly grown weak and drowsy, and almost before Grannis was through speaking he was again asleep.

The doctor was right about the time of healing.  During the remainder of that month and well into the next, despite his restless protests, Ben Blair was a prisoner in that dull little room; and through it all Grannis remained with him.

“You don’t have to stay with me unless you like,” Ben had said more than once; but each time Grannis had displayed his own wound, at first openly, at last, carefully concealed by bandages, whimsically.

“Got to take good care of this arm of mine,” he explained.  “Blood poisoning’s liable to set in at any minute, and that’s something awful, they tell me.”

The invalid made no comment.

* * * * *

It was the evening following the afternoon of Blair’s return to the Box R ranch.  In the cosey kitchen, around the new range which Rankin had imported the previous Fall, sat three people,—­Grannis, Graham, and Ma Graham.  The two men were smoking steadily and silently.  The woman, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes glued to the floor, was breathing loudly with the difficulty of the very corpulent.  Of a sudden, interrupting, the door connecting with the room adjoining opened and Ben Blair appeared.