"I must go and attend to him," he said. Vesta and Taterleg laid hands on him at once. "You'll bust them stitches I took in your back if you don't keep still, young feller," Taterleg warned. "Whetstone ain't as bad off as you, nor half as bad." Lambert noticed then that his hands were wrapped in wet towels. "Burned?" he inquired, lifting his eyes to Vesta's face. "No, just swollen and inflamed. They'll be all right in a little while." "I blundered into their hands like a blind kitten," said he, reproachfully. "They'll eat lead for it!" said Taterleg. "It was Kerr and that gang," Lambert explained, not wanting to leave any doubt behind if he should have to go. "You can tell us after a while," she said, with compassionate tenderness. "Sure," said Taterleg, cheerfully, "you lay back there and take it easy. I'll keep my eye on things." That evening, when the pain had eased out of his head, Lambert told Vesta what he had gone through, sparing nothing of the curiosity that had led him, like a calf, into their hands. He passed briefly over their attempt to herd him into the fire, except to give Whetstone the hero's part, as he so well deserved. Vesta sat beside him, hearing him to the end of the brief recital that he made of it in silence, her face white, her figure erect. When he finished she laid her hand on his forehead, as if in tribute to the manhood that had borne him through such inhuman torture, and the loyalty that had been the cause of its visitation. Then she went to the window, where she stood a long time looking over the sad sweep of broken country, the fringe of twilight on it in somber shadow. It was not so dark when she returned to her place at his bedside, but he could see that she had been weeping in the silent pain that rises like a poison distillation from the heart. "It draws the best into it and breaks them," she said in great bitterness, speaking as to herself. "It isn't worth the price!" "Never mind it, Vesta," he soothed, putting out his hand. She took it between her own, and held it, and a great comfort came to him in her touch. "I'm going to sell the cattle as fast as I can move them, and give it up, Duke," she said, calling him by that name with the easy unconsciousness of a familiar habit, although she never had addressed him so before. "You're not going away from here whipped, Vesta," he said with a firmness that gave new hope and courage to her sad heart. "I'll be out of this in a day or two, then we'll see about it--about several things. You're not going to leave this country whipped; neither am I."