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 stern manner of a prosecutor hunting for evidence, drew the rifle out of the scarred old scabbard and saw where the horsethief's bullet had struck and jammed the trigger. She handed it to Eudora without a word. The two women stood staring at each other, white-faced, speechless, each constructing according to her imaginative capability the story that unimpeachable evidence suggested.

After that they did not question Tom on his adventure or the perils involved. They knew he had been hand to hand with death, and neither of them put the slightest credence in his evasive explanation of the sheriff and cowboy. While Mrs. Ellison probed the wounds in his hand, picking out the slivers of lead with pincers, Tom inquired of Waco Johnson. He was all right. Mrs. Ellison said. He had recovered his senses and his appetite; in about three weeks he would be the same as if nothing had happened to him.

Mrs. Ellison extracted the last bit of lead, squeezed the wounds and applied turpentine without stint. When she had the hand neatly bandaged she said Waco Johnson might be interviewed if Tom desired. He was in a bedroom just off the kitchen, more than likely reading Alice in Wonderland, which Eudora had lent him, and which he declared to be the beatinest book that ever came his way.

"And he's just about the beatinest man I ever run across," Mrs. Ellison declared. "He always asks you how you'd like to be a whale. It's a pleasantry of his, I guess, but it's past me where anybody's complimented by such a fool question as that."

Waco was bolstered up in bed with an overturned