The Benson signal., 1917-09-15
CHAPTER XVI.
Her Bad Penny.

Her Bad Penny.
Nan reached her room in fever of
excitement, angry at De Spain, bitterly
angry at Gale, angry with the noun
tains, the world, and resentfully fight
ing the pillow on which she cried her.
self to sleep.
In the morning every nerve was on
edge. When her Uncle Duke, with his
chopping utterance, said something
short to her at their very early break
fast he was surprised by an answer
equally short. Her uncle retorted
sharply. A second curt answer greet
ed his rebuff, and while he stared at
her. Nan left the table and the room.
Duke, taking two Of the men, start
ed that morning for Sleepy Cat with
a bunch of cattle. He rode a fractions
horse, infuriated, as his horses fire.
quently were, by his brutal treatment,
bOlted in a moment unguarded by his
master, and flung Duke on his back in
strip of lava rocks.
The old man-in the mountains a
man is called old after he passes
forty-was heavy, and the fall seri-
GUS one. He picked himself up while
the men were recovering his horse,
knocked the horse over the head with
a piece of jagged rock when the fright
ened beast was brought back, climbed
into the saddle again, and rode all the
way into town.
But when his business was done,
Duke, too. was done. He could neither
sit horse, nor sit in wagon. Sleepy
Cat was stirred at the news, and that
the man who had defied everybody in
the mountains for twenty years should
have been laid low and sent to the
hospital by a mere bronchO was the
topic of many comments. De Spain,
would not be alarmed should her uncle
not return that night. But early in the
morning a messenger from McAlpin
rode to her with note telling her of
the accident.
Whatever his vices, Duke had been
a good protector to his dead brothers
child. He had sent her to good schools
and tried to revive in her, despite her
untowa rd surroundings, the better ira
ditions of the family as it had once
flOurished in Kentucky. Nan took the
saddle for Sleepy Cat in haste and
alarm. When she reached her uncle'S
bedside she understood how seriously
he had been hurt, and the doctors
warnings were not needed to convince
her he must have care.
Duke refused to let her leave him,
in any case, and Nan relieved the
nurse, and, what was of equal moment,
made herself custodian of the cash
in hand before Dukes town compan-
ions could get hold of it. Occasional
trips to the gap were necessary as the
weeks passed and her uncle could not
be moved. These Nan had feared as
threatening an encounter either by ac-
cident, or on his part designed, with
De Spain. But the impending encoun-
ter never took place. De Spain, at
tending closely to his own business,
managed to keep accurate track of her
whereabouts without getting in her
dreading to meet him and fearing his
influence over her. but this apprehen-
sion, with the passing of a curiously
brief period, dissolved into a conf
dence in her ability to withstand fur
ther interference, on anyone's part,
with her feelings.
Gale Morgan rode into town fire.
quently, and Nan at first painfully ap-
pretended hearing sometime of dead
ly duel between her truculent gap ad-
mirer and her persistent town courtier
who was more considerate and bet
ter hammered, but no less dogged, and,
in fact, a good deal more difficult to
| handle.
| AS to the boisterous mountain man,
his resolute little cousin made no Sc
cret of her detestation of him. She
denied and defied him as openly as a
girl could, and heard his threats with
continued Indifference. She was quite
alone, too, in her fear of any fatal
meeting between the two men who
seemed determined to pursue her.
The truth was that after Calabasas,
De Spain, from Thief river to Sleepy
Cat, was a marked man. None sought
to cross his path or his purposes, and
neither the town haunts of Calabasas
men nor those of their Morgan Gap
sympathizers had any champion dis
posed to follow too closely the alert
Medicine Bend railroader.
In and about the hospital, and in the
town itself, Nan found the chief OBJ
stacle to her peace of mind in the talk
she could not always avoid hearing
ABOUT De Spain. Convalescents in the
corridors, practically all of them men,
never gathered in sunny corners or at
tie tables in the dining room without