Half in a dream, Elbert went out to the little corral, lifting the wooden pin that let him in. The mare played curiously about him, but mainly kept her eyes to the cabin; her ears straight out for a voice from there. He only saw a bay butterball at first--shiny satin in the bright sunlight--a lot more rounded out than the wooden horse in the leather-store, not so tall as Cal Monroid’s Chester, which had stood in Elbert’s mind up to this moment as all that a horse could be. He was thinking of the look he had seen in Bob Leadley’s face; and of the rock, too big for the small of a man’s back, and of feeding the mare before anything could be done. He dropped a measure of grain into the manger under the shed roof, but Mamie didn’t stay with it. She kept running up and down the corral, nickering softly, listening, her head cocked toward the cabin, her ears held forward pointing to the open door. She seemed appareled in sunshine. V ‘I, ROBERT LEADLEY--’ THAT leak wasn’t in the mine. ‘I feel a trickle inside, young man--’ Thus, every little while, through the heat of the day, the old man intimated his hurt, and how he felt himself bleeding internally. Elbert’s idea was to set out at once and in a hurry to bring help from Slim Stake Camp, but Mr. Leadley so far had persistently refused to let him go. ‘Things I’ve got to say are more important. You never can tell when I’m apt to start talkin’--don’t go yet. I’m restin’ a little first, that’s all--’ When he dozed, Elbert roamed about outside, but within call. Everything imaginable in the way of canned goods, dried fruits, preserves, were stored in a shed as commodious as the cabin; ample supplies of tobacco, quantities of unused tools. Stocked for a year, the place looked; with at least a ton of baled hay and many bags of grain in the corral-shed. All the carpenter work was made of cedar; hand-tooling everywhere--work of a man who liked to bring out the best with a sharp blade; quaint art about the cabinets and wooden insets in the fireplace. Down trail to the right from the cabin door was the tunnel entrance to the mine, and ahead out over many tree-tops, a glimpse of the Flats, in a great pit of saffron light. Elbert kept thinking he should go for help in spite of Mr. Leadley’s protestations. A call from the cabin hurried him in shortly after noon. Twice the injured man’s lips started, before he got words going: