Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-04-24

in Kentucky. Nan took the saddle
| for Sleepy Cat in haste and alarm.
| When she reached her uncle's bed
side she understood how seriously
the had been hurt, an0 the DOCTOR S
warnings were not needed to con-
vince 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
companions could get hold of it. Oc-
casionally trips to the gap were nee
essary as the weeks passed and her
uncle could not be moved. These
Nan had feared as threatening an
encounter either by accident, or on
his part designed, with De Spain. But
the impending encounter never took
place. De Spain, attending closely to
his own business, managed to keep
accurate track of her whereabouts
without getting in her way. She had
come to Sleepy Cat dreading to meet
him and fearing his influence over
her, but this apprehension, with the
passing of a curiousiy brief period,
dissolved into a confidence in her
ability to withstand further inter
ference, on anyone's part, with her
feelings.
Gale Morgan rode into town fire.
quently, and Nan at first painfully
apprehended hearing sometime of a
deadly duel between her truculent
gap admirer and her persistent town
courtier-who was more considerate
and better hammered, but no less
logged, and, in fact. a good deal
more difficult to handle.
AS to the boisterous mountain
man, his resolute little cousin made
no secret of her detestation of him.
She denied and defied him as openly
as 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 Gala
basas, De Spain, from Thief river to
Sleepy Cat, was marked man. None
sought to cross his path or his pur-
poses, and neither the town haunts
of Calabasas men nor those of their
Morgan Gap sympathizers had any
champion disposed to follow too
closely the alert Medicine Bend rail-
roader.
In and about the hospital. and in
the town itself, Nan found the chief
obstacle to her peace of mind in the
hearing about De Spain. Gonzales
cents in the corridors, practically all
of them men, never gathered in
sunny corners or at the tables in the
dining room without De Spain's S
name coming in some way into the
talk, to be followed with varying cir
cumstantial accounts of what really
had happened that day at Gala
basas.
And with all the known escapades
in which he had figured. exhausted
as topics, by long -winded COM
mentators. more or less haZy stories
of his earlier experiences at Medicine
Bend in the company of Whispering
Smith were dragged into the talk.
One convalescent stage-guard at the
hospital told a story one night at
supper about him that chilled Nan
again with strange fears, for she
knew it to be true. He had had it
from McAlpin himself. so the guard
said, that De Spain's father had long
ago been shot down from ambush
by q cattleman and that Henry de
Spain had sworn to find that man
and kill him. And it was limited pret-
ty strongly that De Spain had in
formation when he consented to
come to Sleepy Cat that the assassin |
still lived, and lived somewhere |
around the head of the sinks.
On that very evening 1t chanced
the doctor came late. When he walk |
ed in he asked her IL she knew !
it was Frontier day, and reminded |
her that just year ago she had |
shot against Henry de Spain and had
beaten the most dangerous man and
the deadliest shot on the mountain
divide in her rife match.
How he had grown in the imagina-
tion of Sleepy Cat and Music noun