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WAS HE A COWARD?
75
"l'M GOING TO CARE FOR MORE HAWK."
before him with . an urn of nectar, Hilton could not have been more deeply moved. The guileless little girl seemed like a wild flower among nettles, and her shy smile gave him hope.
"You must be tired and dusty/' Nan said, as she proffered him a drink.
"I am about all in, Miss Wilson; everything out here seems so very far apart and it is such an awful trip from the railroad/''
Hilton walked to the house with Nan to get an outfit, as the foreman had ordered, and this was the starting of his troubles. All the boys looked upon Nan as Burke's sweetheart, and the
game to date had been played "hands off."
"The Easterner's fetching himself a bit of trouble," said Ike Peno at the Double Bar Saloon, where Hilton was being discussed a few days after his arrival. "Only this afternoon Burke drew his gun, but the tenderfoot wouldn't scrap. He's got a white liver like the rest of his set, but Nan's taken a fancy to him and that's what's riled Burke. Hilton's in for it, first and last, boys, and Burke's 'Old Betsy' will be nicked again."
Glasses were drained, and, as Ike called for more, the door swung back, and out of the night came Greaser Alpho, trembling and breathless.
YER BASN'T CROSS THE LINE.
HEARTS AND FLOWERS.
"What's the matter, Alpho ?" asked Peno.
"Small-pox case," answered the greaser.
Every man set down his glass with a white face. Plainsmen have a horror of disease; it is a foe they cannot face and fight. They crowded around Alpho, silently, while he told his story.
Burke had just discovered that More Hawk, from the reservation, was stricken with the dread disease. Obeying the ranchman^ law of quarantine, Burke and Pop Wilsou had marked out the dead line, over which no man must pass either way, on penalty of death, and sent the sufferer across this line to die, untended.
"Hard luck, to have to die alone in that shack," said one.