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 kitchen chair and several pillows under his long back. He had not been doing much reading since the first commotion attending Tom's arrival, but he had done more listening than any invalid ought to, considering the result of such fragments as he had caught. He was flushed with excitement when Mrs. Ellison opened the door. She declared on her conscience she believed his fever was coming up, due to smoking.

Waco did not refute the charge against tobacco immediately, nor say anything whatever. He was gripping Tom Simpson's hand, looking at him with the straight eye of a man who understands far more than he has seen or heard. So the two of them remained a moment, in a sort of speechless hand-to-hand embrace. Then Waco:

"No ma'am, it ain't smokin'. I'm bilin' over havin' to lay here like a blame old lady while another man goes out to pay my debts. I couldn't help hearin' you talkin' about Tom's hand. Did they git you anyways bad, pardner?"

"Not at all," Tom said as lightly as his embarrassment could make the words. "Just a few little nicks, due to an awkward accident."

"There was a feller named Noahy, a tall, rangy, ganglin' cuss that looked a good deal like me," Waco said.

He put it more as a question than a flat statement of fact, slanting his words up at the end of it, a bid, hedged with the greatest delicacy at his command, for information on what had happened to Noah.

"Just so," said Tom. He was looking hard out of the window at the side of Waco's bed.

"He's the feller that slammed me with that gun," said