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 "You've hit it," Tom said, with the bright satisfaction he might have displayed if Waco had guessed a riddle which he had thought beyond his powers.

Waco and Eudora laughed, and that glimmer of mirth like firelight on a wall came into Tom Simpson's bright, wise eyes. Only Mrs. Ellison was not moved by the humor of the moment. She was sitting a little apart, the crochet work she had been half-heartedly doing lying in her lap, a sunbeam coming through the window bright on her idle needle.

"We'll take him for the one they shot under you," Eudora said, touching an episode of his adventure that had not been mentioned between them before.

Tom flushed as if confusion would drown him. If Eudora had accused him of complicity in the loss of the horse his embarrassment could not have been greater.

"Eudora!" her mother reproved gently, yet with the startled exclamation of a shock.

Eudora reached out impulsively and touched Tom's hand.

"Oh, Tom! I didn't mean"

"Very good—very-very good!" Tom said, his confusion vanishing before her own. "That will be a fair arrangement, fair compensation. Very-very good."

Waco had taken up his quarters in the bunk-house, his wound having growed up, as he expressed it, the recuperative powers of his kind being remarkable. The same qualities which inured these hard riders of the range to withstand its vicissitudes stored up in them phenomenal healing powers. There was no creature alive, with the probable exception of a fishin' worm as Waco had said,