Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/280

 brown blotches, fever and jangling nerves. A virulent case of spotted fever, it was pronounced by " Doc " Fussel, who doubted that he would recover.

" I'd knock him in the head and put him to bed with a shovel, if 'twere me," Bowers had grumbled when he had helped move Pete Mullendore over to Kate's head- quarters.

" We've got to make him talk," Kate had replied grimly. " We've got to get the truth somehow, Bowers, before he goes."

Kate had no prearranged plan as to the course she would pursue if Mullendore became rational, but trusted to her instinct to guide her. She was certain only of one thing — that if he had a spark of manhood in him she would reach it somehow. Though he inspired in her a feeling which was akin to her repugnance for creeping things, and there were moments when something like her childish terror of the half-breed trapper returned, she was determined that there were no lengths to which she would not go, in the way of humbling her pride, to attain her end.

The clock, ticking loudly on its nail, said midnight, and still Mullendore, deaf and blind to all save the fantastic world into which he stared, mumbled incoherently.

At last, unable longer to sit quietly, Kate arose and leaned over him.

"Do you remember the Sand Coulee, Pete? — the Sand Coulee Roadhouse where you used to stop ? " she asked softly.

His mumblings ceased as If her voice had penetrated his dulled ears. Then his lips moved :

"The Sand Coulee Roadhouse — the Sand Cou- lee — "