"Cripple! He's about th' liveliest, most cantankerous, trouble-maker this country has had to watch since Bill Williams named his mountain!" a man in the group scoffed.
"Yes, I know. His legs ain't broke or deformed; he can use both arms; his fool tongue has made us all pretty hot since we've knowed him. But he ain't right up here, in his head, boys. He's crippled there. There ain't no reason for a human bein' gettin' to be so nasty as he's got to be. It ain't natural. It's th' booze, Tommy, th' booze that's crippled him. He ought to be kept away from it until he's had a chance, but nobody's took enough interest in him or th' good of th' town to tend to that. We've just locked him up when he got too drunk an' turned him loose to hell some more when he was halfway sober. He ain't had nobody to look out for him, when he's needed it more 'n anything else.
"I ain't blamin' nobody. Don't know as I'd looked out for him myself, if he hadn't looked so helpless, there 'n th' ditch, Gosh, any one of you'd take in a dog with a busted leg an' try to fix him up; if he bit at you an' scratched and tried to fight, you'd only feel sorrier for him. This feller ... he's kind of a dog, too. Maybe it'd be a good investment for us to look after him a little an' see if we can't set him on his feet. We've tried makin' an example of him; now let's try to treat him like any of you'd treat me, if I was down an' out."
He looked down upon the figure on the porch; in his voice had been a fine humane quality that set the muscles of the listening woman's throat contracting.
"Say, Bruce, he's bleedin'!"
On the man's announced discovery the group outside again became compact about the unconscious man and the tall cowboy squatted beside him quickly.
"Get back out of th' light, boys," he said, quietly, and the curious men moved. "Hum ... I'm a sheepherder, if somebody ain't nicked him in th' arm, boys! I'll be—
"Say, he must of laid on that arm an' stopped th' blood. It's clotted.... Oh, damn! It's bleedin' worse. Say, I'll have to get him inside where we can have him fixed up before that breaks open again. Wonder how much he's bled—"
He rose and moved to the door, pulled open the screen quickly. He made one step across the threshold and then paused between strides, for before him in the darkness of the hallway a woman's face stood out like a cameo. It was white, made whiter by the few feeble rays of the light outside that struggled into the entry; the eyes were great, dark splotches, the lips were parted; one hand was at the chin and about the whole suggested posture of her body was a tensity, an anxiety, a helplessness that startled the man ... that, and her beauty. For a moment they stood so, face to face, the one in silhouette, the other in black and white; the one surprised, only, but the other shrinking in terror.
"I ... he ..."