"Lands alive! gave up!" said the matron of the household, who still held Morgan's arm up to drain off the congested blood. "Look at your face, look at your feet! Gave up--lands alive!" "You're busted up purty bad, old feller," said a young man who seemed to appear suddenly at Morgan's feet, where he stood looking down with the most friendly and feeling expression imaginable in his wholesome brown face. "That cut on your face ain't deep, it could be closed up and stuck with strips of plaster and only leave a shallow scar, but it ought to be done while it's fresh," the boss of the ranch said. "I'd be greatly obliged to you," Morgan told him, by way of agreement to the dressing of his wound. By the time the pioneer of the Arkansas had treated his mysteriously injured patient's hurts, Morgan had come to himself completely. He was relieved to know that his collapse at the threshold of that hospitable home was due to the suffering of his bound arms, rather than any internal rupture or concussion as he at first feared. Already his thoughts were running forward, his blood was pounding in his arteries, in vengeful eagerness to take up the trail of the men who had subjected him to this inhuman ordeal. He could not hope to repay them cruelty for cruelty, for he was not a man who did much crippling when it came to handling a gun, but if he had to follow them to the Nueces, even to the Rio Grande, for his toll, then he would follow. The business that had brought him into the Kansas plains could wait; there was but one big purpose in his life now. He was eager to be up, with the weight of a certain dependable pistol in his holster, the feel of a certain rifle in its scabbard on the saddle under his knee. Sore and bruised as he was, sorer that he would be tomorrow, Morgan wanted to get up as soon as the long rough cut on his cheek had been comfortably patched with adhesive tape. He asked the rancher if he would oblige him with a horse to go to Ascalon, where his trunk containing his much-needed wardrobe was still in the baggage-room at the depot. "You couldn't ride to Ascalon this morning, son," the rancher told him, severely kind. "You'll do if you can make it in a week," the young man added his opinion cheerfully. "Yes, and then some, the way it looks to me," the elder declared. Morgan started as if to spring from the low couch where they had laid him when they carried him in, dusty and bloody, fearful and repulsive sight of maimed flesh and torn clothing that he was. "I can't stay a week--I can't wait a day! They'll be gone, man!" he said. "Maybe they will, son," the rancher agreed, gently pushing him back; "maybe. But they'll leave tracks." "Yes, by God! they'll leave tracks!" Morgan muttered. "Don't you think I'd better send my boy over to town for the doctor?" the rancher asked. "Not unless you're uneasy about me." "No, your head's all right and your bones are whole. You'll heal up, but it'll take some time."