glad to see you. It's rather chilly out here. I'll take your horse
and we'll gather in the dugout and talk over what's happened since
we last met. Brick, don't you begin on anything interesting till
I come."

"You give me that horse," retorted Brick. "You're too aged a man
to be messing with horses. You'll get a fall one of these days
that'll lay you flat. You'll never knit them bones together, if
you do; you ain't vital enough."

Bill clung grimly to the bridle, muttering something that showed no
lack of vitality in his vocabulary.

"He won't let me take no care of him," complained Brick, as he
conducted Wilfred to the dugout.

Wilfred cast a longing glance toward the cabin, and again he thought
Lahoma's parlor door quivered. He even stopped in the path; but
Willock went on, unconscious, and he was obliged to follow.

"It's a strange thing," remarked Brick, as he descended the hard
dirt steps, "how Lahoma has acted on me. I mean, living with her
these past twelve years, and all the rest of the world shut out,
except Bill. Could I of been told before I saved little Lahoma from
the highwaymen that I'd ever worry over an old coon like Bill
Atkins, as to whether he broke his neck or not, I'd 'a' laughed, for
I'd 'a' had to. But it sure does gall me to have him exposing
himself as he does. I never wanted Bill to come here, but he just
come, like a stray cat. First thing I knowed, he was a-purring at
the fireside--well, not exactly a-purring, nuther, but sort of