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“Katie’s children—what’s to become of them?”

Hilda took heart to reach out a shaking little hand and touch his fingers. They were chill, but they closed upon hers strongly. She wanted to say that he was not to be troubled, but such things were for grown-ups. She looked about on the cowpunchers, Shorty holding hard to the edge of his chair, old Snake Thompson over by the window shaken by rigors of feeling. The sun was sending long arrows in through the slit of the silken curtain beyond the couch.

“Don’t worry. You’re a-going to be all right,” came Hank’s full, grave voice. “The doctor’ll be here inside of twenty-four hours. You’ll be all right.”

“No,” Van Brunt stopped him with a husky whisper. “I’m not going to live an hour. My children are orphans.”

Plainly this tortured him more than bodily pain.

“Would it quiet your mind, Charley, if I was to promise to stick to ’em always, exactly as if they was my own?”

The great wave of relief that went over the white face on the pillow was sufficient answer, and Hilda looked to see her father get better at once; but what he said between labored breaths was: