"It took me yere," he said with a slow deliberation, as if answering some previous question, and pointing to his hip, "and it kinder let me down when I started forward at the second call." "But it was not I who did it, McKinstry, I swear it.

Hear me! For God's sake, say you believe me." McKinstry turned his drowsy troubled eyes upon the master as if he were vaguely recalling something.

"Stand back thar a minit, will ye," he said to Harrison, with a languid wave of his crippled hand; "I want ter speak to this yer man." Harrison drew back a few paces and the master sought to take the wounded man's hand, but he was stopped by a gesture.

"Where hev you put Cressy ?" McKinstry said slowly.
"I don't understand you," stammered Ford.
"Where are you hidin' her from me ?" repeated McKinstry with painful distinctness.

"Whar hev you run her to, that you're reckonin' to jine her arter--arter--THIS ?" "I am not hiding her! I am not going to her! I do not know where she is.
I have not seen her since we parted early this morning without a word of meeting again," said the master rapidly, yet with a bewildered astonishment that was obvious even to the dulled faculties of his hearer.
"That war true ?" asked McKinstry, laying his hand upon the master's shoulder and bringing his dull eyes to the level of the young man's.
"It is the whole truth," said Ford fervently, "and true also that I never raised my hand against you." McKinstry beckoned to Harrison and the two others who had joined him, and then sank partly back with his hand upon his side, where the slow empurpling of his red shirt showed the slight ooze of a deeply-seated wound.
"You fellers kin take me over to the ranch," he said calmly, "and let him," pointing to Ford, "ride your best hoss fer the doctor.