the range, and this is the first time," he muttered; "but it don't matter if it'll bring the hot blood down to them old dead shanks."

He was cold to the core of his heart, and reason told him that the sensible thing to do was to give up, lie down there with Hun Shanklin, and go to sleep. But the live coal within burned him like a branding-iron. It was life making its last frantic assault upon his hulk of inert mat

ter.

Presently the wounds began to tingle, the sluggish blood to trickle from them and run down the outsides of his tightly laced boots. Reese could feel the lumps where it was freezing by rubbing the live part of his arm, above the wrist, across them. The tingling grew to absolute pain, and with the pain a clearness came to his head, a new strength to his stiff legs. He slipped the open knife into his pocket, struggled to his feet, gathered Hun Shanklin's long body in his arms, and staggered on.

Often he fell, floating a long distance, it seemed to him, before striking the ground, losing Hun Shanklin's body, big and heavy as it was, and groping for it in the snow on his knees. This terrific exertion warmed him for a while, and then the reaction of chill and fatigue doubled his weak knees beneath him again.

It was a call for more of the remedy, and Reese Wolcott applied it, remembering even then what others who had been driven to it in like emergencies had told him, and repeating it in mumbled thickness aloud: "If you ever have to do it, try and miss the bone."

It could not have been long, but it seemed like another age, a hopeless age of dragging and carrying, even rolling, some bulk to which he was irrevocably bound, until he struck an obstruction which vielded softly, then recoiled and threw him off. He did not trouble about trying to figure out what it was, but in the blissful relief from his wearing fight was content to believe he had reached the end.

Chance had brought him back to camp. It was the end of the tent he had blundered against, and Tom Stewart was inside, much worried, feeding fuel into the hot camp stove. Tom pulled the two bodies in, marveling thick-headedly, and rolled the stranger's behind the stove.

There did not appear to be any use wasting more time than that over him, and, besides, a man's first duty was to his friend.

He cut away Reese's frozen boots, working by the light of the lantern swinging from the ridge-pole, and heaped snow over his feet and legs. With snow he rubbed his old comrade's face and hands, stopping every little while to beat him on the chest with his palms. Reese was breathing, but it was a long time after daylight when he opened his eyes. Then Tom's first word was: "Tell you right now, I'm a-goin' to leave m' whiskers grow. Them whiskers of yourn saved your face. Your hands 'll come out all right, but you 're bound to drop a toe or two, old feller."

"It 's cheap at that," croaked Reese, and Tom admitted that it was, propping him up and feeding him coffee with a spoon. Tom laid him down when he had enough, and turned to put the cup back on the stove, confronting, as he did so, the black and swollen face of Hun Shanklin, who had risen to a sitting posture, and was swaying unsteadily, his hands braced against the ground.

"I thought you-I thought you wasstammered Tom, shrinking from him.

“Give me a drink," demanded Hun, looking vaguely at Tom. Tom poured more coffee, and put the cup to his lips. Hun sputtered and spat. "Give me a drink," he almost screamed, "not that stuff!"

Tom produced the emergency bottle. Its stock was low, and he turned it all out into the cup. Hun took it off greedily, leaned back against the side of the bunk, bent his gaze down on Reese Wolcott's face, and laughed.

"You 're a tough old devil, ain't you?" said he. "Say, I'm all in. You headed right, did n't you? Say, did n't I clean you out once down at Poison Creek, you tough old devil?"

"You sure done it," assented Reese. Hun laughed again. "Funny how this game goes, ain't it? I'm a-cuttin' it out to-day, and I never wanted anything in my life as bad as I want to quit square. I used to be square, you know; then I got crooked-crooked as-no, I did n't neither. Aw, shut up! You give me a hand up on this here bunk, will you, pardner?" Tom lifted him up. "Take that there pocket-book out of m' coat in here, will

you, and hand it to that tough old devil there on the floor." Tom did it, and Hun struggled until he propped himself on an elbow. "You tell anybody you see that Hun Shanklin quit square, will you?" said he. He settled back, and was silent a moment, panting as one about finishing a race. "I wish you 'd put a gun here where I can git at it handy," said he after a while. "That there sheriff of Natrona County 's liable to happen along here before I close the game; and if he does, I want to take a shot at him. I owe him one, and I 'm a-quittin' square."

THE sheriff of Natrona County came after the shadows had turned, the storm having ceased, and prepared to take the body of Hun Shanklin away. First of all he ran through the dead man's pockets, and finding nothing, turned fiercely on the two sheepherders.

"You 've robbed the body," he accused virtuously. They made loud and vigorous denial, and then the sheriff proceeded to search every nook of the tent, to shake out every bag, garment, and sheepskin in it, looking for the hiding-place of the spoils. Reese Wolcott, seeing what was coming, produced Hun Shanklin's wallet and handed it over, saying:

"I intended to take it from him all right enough, but he forked it over before he died. They was a little matter between me and him that he recalled, and he wanted to square it up before he went. Give me a thousand dollars of it,-that 's what he skinned me out of once,-and you can keep the rest. I don't ast no more from no man than what 's a-comin' to me."

The sheriff's eyes brightened as he took the wallet and hefted it in his hand. It was bulky, it was long, and, considering the company it had formerly kept, promising.

"I'll turn it over to the court," said he, placing it in his pocket. "You fellers hain't opened it and took nothing out of it, have you?"

"No; durn fools that we was, we never," answered Reese.

"You know I hain't got no more right to open it than you have," said the sheriff. "I got to turn it over to the court, just like it come to me. Mart," to the deputy

that was hovering over the stove,—“ fetch the horses up. We 'll have to carry him acrost our saddles, turn about, I reckon."

Reese Wolcott was lying on the bunk where Hun Shanklin had died, the body of the flat-game man being stretched along the ground. Beside his hand, shoved down between the blankets and the rail of the bunk, was the revolver Hun Shanklin had clasped-they had humored his last whim-when his soul leaped out into the clearing. The blood flooded up to Reese Wolcott's eyes, hot, blinding. Was he to lose again? Was he to be robbed in broad daylight? He rose a little in his bunk.

"You'll open it," said he, his throat twitching in spasmodic convulsion, beating down the red passion which choked his words; "you'll open it right now!"

The sheriff looked up, and turned white under the tan of desert winds. He was a quick man with a gun, and a nervy man in the face of trouble, but he knew well enough that neither nerve nor gun would avail him there. The old sheepherder handling that grim weapon was the kind of man that would shoot.

"I'll open it," said the sheriff, and Reese Wolcott held the gun on him while he produced it and slipped off the heavy elastic band. Reese leaned over the side of the bunk a little in his eagerness, and even the sheriff's hands trembled as he threw back the flap.

"Well, shades of Simon!" said the sheriff, looking into the wallet, his face picturing his bewildered amazement.

"What's in it?" said Reese. "Take it out; let me see."

The sheriff fingered into the wallet and drew out its contents. It was a pair of socks-a pair of worn, soiled socks; nothing else.

"He cached it somewhere," said the sheriff, a shade of bitterness in his voice, “and loaded the pocket-book for me when he saw the game was up. It was his nature; that was one of Hun Shanklin's jokes." He bent over the body and stripped up a leg of his trousers. Hun Shanklin had died without his socks.

Reese sank back and stared at the

ridge-pole, cursing his memory. "He was crooked with his last breath," said he; "he stuck to his flat game plumb to the eternal, blasted end!"

SPRI

VIII

SPRING

PRINGTIME beamed on Goldur heights with browning hillsides, with unbound rivers, with clack of flickers, or loud tattoo, and whistle of hyla-peepers in every icy pond.

In the winter woods the wintergreen peeped forth like cherries of the snow, and holding up their shining leaves, they seemed to say, "This is what we were waiting for; for this our berries were red." The partridge and the squirrel and the early woodchuck reveled in this crowmoon feast, and lovers of the wilds found a pleasant thought in this, that the allmother had filled the seeming gap with things so good for food. There were be ginnings of wooings and longings in wood and on lake that told of life and lives and coming life; and in the hearts of Snowyruff and Domino these found a deep response.

For ages the beasts have been groping for an ideal form of marriage. All the schemes of human reverts they have tried, and all found wanting but one. The only plan that has satisfied the highest requirements is pure monogamy. This is the wed-law of all the highest kinds. The love-time fever passes, but another bond remains. The love-fire of the foxes had paled a little with the waning of the hunger-moon, but a more abiding sense had supervened, even as the sunset red on the hills may seem more generous fire than the soft red of the granite; but one is

there a splendid moment, the other forever and evermore. Love and friendship men call them; and though the flickering red light blazed so bright at times, it was the pale rock red that gave its color to their lives. Domino and Snowyruff were not only mates, but were friends for life; for such is the way of the noblest beasts, such is the way of foxes.

When first the snow banks gave birth to little chilly rills, the pair had gone searching, trotting, and searching; or more truly perhaps, Snowyruff had searched, and Domino had followed meekly. Through the sandy tract east of Goldur hills they went. There they found the little signals of other foxes, saying in plainest fox, "strangers coming here must fight." Now they passed through all the upper hills of Goldur, where the snow was far too deep, and back to the river-side, and at last came to an aspen dale, the same old aspen dale of Domino's youth, and here the little lady seemed to end her quest; here surely was what she sought.

She nosed this way and that, then in a thicket of hazel she began to dig a hole. Deep snow and deep leaves there covered the ground or she could not have sunk the shaft. But instinct, or some other inexplicable guide, had set her digging at the one possible place; elsewhere all was hard with frost. High on a near hill sat Domino, sentinel and guard. After an hour's digging she came out and Domino took her place. So they worked from time to time.