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 ceeded the exultation of victory. It was as if he had laid a serious indictment against the habits of Wyoming ranchers before a high court of appeal.

"I never heard of canned onions," she admitted, "but nearly everything else is canned in this country. Mother never could stand the stuff. That's why we've got the only orchard—and we had the only garden before the homesteaders came—anywhere in this part of the country. But we're degenerating into farmers, Mr. Simpson; we're not regular cowmen now. We haven't got a head of stock left over from the big winter kill three years ago. We're out of the game."

"It looks more like a farmstead than a cow-ranch," he said, but with undisguised approval. "This looks like excellent wheat land to me. Why don't you plow up this valley and seed it?"

"Some of the homesteaders are trying it out," she said, plainly not greatly interested in the experiment, "but the old-timers say they'll fail. What do you suppose they'll do with that man if he's—if—if a doctor can't do him any good?"

"Um-m?" Simpson grunted it with surprised inflection, pipestem clenched tightly in his teeth, as if some extraneous subject had been interposed, the meaning of it not clear. "Oh, that chap. Put him in a wash somewhere and kick the banks in on him, I fancy. Convenient way to bury a fellow. I've known—at least I've heard it said they do it right along in places."

Simpson smoked along calmly, a humorous glimmer in his far-seeing gray eyes, as though he might be such a hardened rascal that death by violence, even dealt by