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 bones from the homesteaders, enlarging their business to considerable importance.

They'd forget that little squabble in Drumwell very soon, probably had forgotten it already. The farther he rode away from Drumwell that night the more remote the likelihood of that incident being revived to disturb his business activities appeared. He had such a great feeling of elation, of satisfaction, of desire to push ahead with the new enterprise which seemed to offer so much, that his imagination was coursing up and down that long prairie road as if reviewing the past instead of projecting into the future.

There was a home-feeling about that country for him; an invitation in its untried possibilities, it seemed, to match his youth and strength against it and make his place. Queer thing how the turn of a man's life hinged on chance, sometimes. If there never had been that mixup in horses at the livery stable door; if he never had galloped off with Coburn's money, Coburn's bullets—which he had thought were the marshal's, so dev'lish difficult to identify bullets under such conditions—singing about his ears, there never would have been any Eudora Ellison in the scheme, and no bones.

Tom had left home mainly on account of an aversion to hides apart from living creatures that rightfully wore them. Hides had been the foundation of the family fortunes over there; bones were to be the foundation of his own separate and independent fortune here. So there it was; all out of a cow, take it or leave it, as one liked.

Why did Eudora have her hair cut short that way? he wondered, turning from fortune to Eudora as readily