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.