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“One time,” she continued, while she tore a white cloth into long narrow strips, “my cousin ran a nail in her foot. They got Doc. Horne, and he did—God only knows what—but her foot got the size of a pungkin, only redder.”

“Blood-poisoning?”

“Yep.”

As she rolled two or three crude bandages she glanced occasionally at Mauney, with keen, appraising eyes that followed the stretch of his broad shoulders bent over the sink. As she nervously applied the bandage, a moment later, the sound of boots scraping outside the door contributed an added haste to her manner. Before she had finished, the door opened to admit Seth Bard.

Mauney’s father was of average height, but heavily built, with ponderous shoulders and a thick, short neck. Beneath the broad, level rim of his Stetson the lamp-light showed the full, florid face of a man who continually peered at life through half-closed lids in calloused, self-confident reserve, or as if hiding what men might read in his eyes, if he opened them. He stopped abruptly inside the door, his thumbs caught into the top of his trousers, and stood haughtily still for an instant, the personification of master in his house.