He reached out, took the reins, and led Rattler a step nearer, so that he could grasp the stirrup. With his voice he held the horse quiet while he pulled himself upright upon his good leg. Then, with pain-hurried, jerky movements, he pulled off the saddle, glanced around him, and flung it behind a buck-brush. He slipped off the bridle, flung that after the saddle, and gave Rattler a slap on the rump. The horse moved away, and Ward stared after him with set lips. "Anyway, you can look after yourself," he said and balanced upon his right leg while he swung around and faced the cabin. It was not far--to a man with two sound legs. A hundred yards, perhaps. Ward crawled there on his hands and one knee, dragging the broken leg after him. It was not a nice experience, but it served one good purpose: It wiped from his mind all thought of that black past wherein Buck had figured so shamefully. He had enough to think of with his present plight, without worrying over the past. In half an hour or so Ward rested his arms upon his own doorstep and dropped his perspiring face upon them. He lay there a long while, in a dead faint. After awhile he moved, lifted his head, and looked about him dully at first and then with a certain stoical acceptance of his plight. He looked into the immediate future and tried to forecast its demands upon his strength and to prepare for them. He crawled farther up on the step, reached the latch, and opened the door. He crawled in, pulled himself up by the foot of his bunk, and sat down weakly with his head in his hands. Like a hurt animal, he had obeyed his instinct and had crawled home. What next? If Ward had been a weaker man, he would have answered that question speedily with his gun. He did think of it contemptuously as an easy way out. If he had never met Billy Louise, he might possibly have chosen that way. But Ward had changed much in the past two years, and at the worst he had never been a coward. His hurt was sending waves of nausea over him, so that he could not concentrate his mind upon anything. Then he thought of the bottle of whisky he kept in his bunk for emergencies. Ward was not a man who drank for pleasure, but he had the Western man's faith in a good jolt of whisky when he felt a cold coming on or a pain in his stomach--or anything like that. He always kept a bottle on hand. A quart lasted him a long time. He felt along the footboard of the bunk till his fingers touched the bottle, drew it out from its hiding-place--he hid it because stray callers would have made short work of it--and, placing the uncorked bottle to his trembling lips, swallowed twice.