All that day they did not allow Wellesly to do much talking, but kept him lying most of the time in the hammock, in the shade of the cottonwoods, where he slept or luxuriously spent the time slowly swallowing the cool drinks the others brought to him. In the early evening of the next day, when he had sufficiently recovered his strength, they heard his story. He lay in the hammock, with the mountain breeze blowing across his face and a pitcher of cold tea beside him, and told them all that had happened to him from the time he started for Las Plumas until consciousness failed him, with his hands against the solid wall of Mead's house. The three tall Texans listened gravely, Mead and Tuttle sitting one on each side of the hammock and Ellhorn leaning against the tree at its foot. They said nothing, but their eyes were fastened on his with the keenest interest, and now and then they exchanged a nod or a look of appreciation. When he finished silence fell on the group for a moment. Then Mead stretched out a sun-browned hand and shook Wellesly's. "I've never been a friend of yours, Mr. Wellesly," he said, "or considered you one of mine. But I want to say, right now, that you've got more grit than anybody I know in the southwest, and I'm proud to have had the chance to save as brave a man as you are." Tuttle seized Wellesly's other hand and exclaimed, "That's so! That's straight talk! I'm with you there, Emerson!" Ellhorn walked up to Wellesly's side and put his hand in a brotherly way on the invalid's arm. "I tell you what, Mr. Wellesly, we've fought you and the cattle company straight from the shoulder, and I reckon we're likely to keep on fightin' you as long as you fight us, but if you're goin' to give us the sort of war you showed that desert--well, I reckon Emerson will need all the help Tom and me can give him!" Wellesly laughed in an embarrassed way and Ellhorn went on: "Now, just see how things turn out. There's been another war over in Las Plumas and we-all have been fightin' you and your interests and the cattle company and the Republicans for all we were worth. They arrested Emerson again on that same old murder fake, to say nothin' of me for bein' drunk and disorderly, which I sure was, and there was hell to pay for two days. They tried to take Emerson out of town, and Tom and me held up the train they had him on. I buffaloed the engineer while they took care of Daniels and Halliday, and then we pulled our freight. And here we ride up to the ranch, fugitives from justice, just barely in time to save you-all." Wellesly laughed. "I am very glad you did it. My only regret is that you didn't break jail several days earlier."