adjacent hills for food—their supply of meat ran out on the fourth day.
But the ten days passed; and after that, in spite of the poor care he had received—or perhaps aided by the absolute quiet—the marshal's iron constitution asserted itself more and more strongly. He began to mend rapidly. Eventually he could sit up, and, when that time came, the great period of anxiety was over. For Dozier could sit with his rifle across his knees, or, leaning against the chair which Andrew had improvised, command a fairly good outlook.
Only once—it was at the close of the fourth week—did Andrew find suspicious signs in the vicinity of the cabin—the telltale trampling on a place where four horses had milled in an impatient circle. But no doubt the gang had thought caution to be the better part of hate. They remembered the rifle of Andrew and had gone on without making a sign. Afterward Andrew learned why they had not returned sooner. Three hours after they left the shack a posse had picked them up in the moonlight, and there had followed a forty-mile chase.
But all through the time until the marshal could actually stand and walk, and finally sit his saddle with little danger of injuring the wound, Andrew, knowing nothing of what took place outside, was ceaselessly on the watch. Literally, during all that period, he never closed his eyes for more than a few minutes of solid sleep. And, before the danger line had been crossed, he was worn to a shadow. When he turned his head the cords leaped out on his neck. His mouth had that look, at once savage and nervous, which goes always with the hunted man.
And it was not until he was himself convinced that Dozier could take care of himself that he wrapped himself in his blankets and fell into a twenty-four-hour sleep. He awoke finally with a start, out of a dream in which he had found himself, in imagination, wakened by Scottie stooping over
him. He had reached for his revolver at his side, in the dream, and had found nothing. Now, waking, his hand was working nervously across the floor of the shack. That part of the dream was come true, but, instead of Scottie leaning over him, it was the marshal, who sat in his chair with his rifle across his knees. Andrew sat up. His weapons had been indeed removed, and the marshal was looking at him with beady eyes.
"Have you seen 'em?" asked Andrew. "Have the boys shown themselves?"
He started to get up, but the marshal's crisp voice cut in on him. "Sit down there."
There had been—was it possible to believe it?—a motion of the gun in the hands of the marshal to point this last remark.
"Partner," said Andrew, stunned, "what are you drivin' at?"