"I'll go over to the mission and stay with Mother Mathews till I'm healed up. I'll be welcome in that house; I'd be welcome there if I was blind, and had m' back broke and couldn't touch a string." "Yes, you would, Banjo," Mrs. Chadron nodded. "She's married to a Injun, but she's as white as a angel's robe." "She's a good soul, Banjo, as good as ever lived." Frances took advantage of Banjo's trip to the reservation to send a note to her father apprising him of the tragedy at the ranch. Banjo buttoned it inside his coat, mounted his horse, and rode away. Mrs. Chadron watched him out of sight with lamentations. "I wish he'd 'a' stayed--it 'd 'a' been all right with Saul; Saul didn't mean any harm by what he said. He's the tender-heartedest man you ever saw, he wouldn't hurt a body's feelin's for a farm." "I don't believe Banjo is a man to hold a grudge very long," Frances told her, looking after the retreating musician, her thoughts on him but hazily, but rather on a little highland bonnet with a bullet hole in its crown. "No, he ain't," Mrs. Chadron agreed, plucking up a little brightness. "But it's a bad sign, a mighty bad sign, when a friend parts from you with a hurt in his heart that way, and leaves your house in a huff and feels put out like Banjo does." "Yes," said Frances, "we let them go away from us too often that way, with sore hearts that even a little word might ease." She spoke with such wistful regret that the older woman felt its note through her own deep gloom. She groped out, tears blinding her, until her hand found her young friend's, and then she clasped it, and stood holding it, no words between them. CHAPTER XV ONE ROAD Twenty-four hours after Banjo's departure a messenger arrived at the ranchhouse. It was one of the cowboys attached to the ranch, and he came with his right arm in a sling. He was worn, and beaten out by long hours in the saddle and the pain of his wound. He said they had news of Nola, and that Chadron sent word that she would be home before another night passed. This intelligence sent Mrs. Chadron off to bedroom and kitchen to make preparations for her reception and restoration. As she left the room Frances turned to the messenger, who stood swinging his big hat awkwardly by the brim. She untied the sling that held his wounded arm and made him sit by the table while she examined his injury, concerning which Mrs. Chadron, in her excitement, had not even inquired. The shot had gone through the forearm, grazing the bone. When Frances, with the aid of Maggie, the Mexican woman with tender eyes, had cleansed and bound up the wound, she turned to him with a decisive air of demand. "Now, tell me the truth," she said. He was a bashful man, with a long, sheepish nose and the bluest of harmless eyes. He started a little when she made that demand, and blushed. "That's what the boss told me to say," he demurred. "I know he did; but what's happening?"