Belding left the patio and traced thoughtful steps back toward the corrals.  He realized the need of his wife.  If she had been at home he would not have come so close to killing two men.  Nell would never have fallen so low in spirit.  Whatever the real truth of the tragedy of his wife’s life, it would not make the slightest difference to him.  What hurt him was the pain mother and daughter had suffered, were suffering still.  Somehow he must put an end to that pain.

He found the Yaqui curled up in a corner of the barn in as deep a sleep as that of the rangers.  Looking down at him, Belding felt again the rush of curious thrilling eagerness to learn all that had happened since the dark night when Yaqui had led the white horses away into the desert.  Belding curbed his impatience and set to work upon tasks he had long neglected.  Presently he was interrupted by Mr. Gale, who came out, beside himself with happiness and excitement.  He flung a hundred questions at Belding and never gave him time to answer one, even if that had been possible.  Finally, when Mr. Gale lost his breath, Belding got a word in.  “See here, Mr. Gale, you know as much as I know.  Dick’s back.  They’re all back—­a hard lot, starved, burned, torn to pieces, worked out to the limit I never saw in desert travelers, but they’re alive—­alive and well, man!  Just wait.  Just gamble I won’t sleep or eat till I hear that story.  But they’ve got to sleep and eat.”

Belding gathered with growing amusement that besides the joy, excitement, anxiety, impatience expressed by Mr. Gale there was something else which Belding took for pride.  It pleased him.  Looking back, he remembered some of the things Dick had confessed his father thought of him.  Belding’s sympathy had always been with the boy.  But he had learned to like the old man, to find him kind and wise, and to think that perhaps college and business had not brought out the best in Richard Gale.  The West had done that, however, as it had for many a wild youngster; and Belding resolved to have a little fun at the expense of Mr. Gale.  So he began by making a few remarks that appeared to rob Dick’s father of both speech and breath.

“And don’t mistake me,” concluded Belding, “just keep out of earshot when Laddy tells us the story of that desert trip, unless you’re hankering to have your hair turn pure white and stand curled on end and freeze that way.”

About the middle of the forenoon on the following day the rangers hobbled out of the kitchen to the porch.

“I’m a sick man, I tell you,” Ladd was complaining, “an’ I gotta be fed.  Soup!  Beef tea!  That ain’t so much as wind to me.  I want about a barrel of bread an’ butter, an’ a whole platter of mashed potatoes with gravy an’ green stuff—­all kinds of green stuff—­an’ a whole big apple pie.  Give me everythin’ an’ anythin’ to eat but meat.  Shore I never, never want to taste meat again, an’ sight of a piece of sheep meat would jest about finish me....Jim, you used to be a human bein’ that stood up for Charlie Ladd.”