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"It ain't necessary to probe for the bullet," he admitted, almost regretfully. "But I might poke around in there a mite, while the hole's good and wide open, to make sure that a piece of your shirt or something didn't get lodged inside...."

"I'll break your damned neck for trying it," threatened Standing.

"Well," sighed Winch, "all I'll do then is just take a pack-needle and put in a stitch or two. Remember when Dick Ross's horse...."

"You'll take some warm water and soap and wash me off," said Standing emphatically. "Then you'll make me one of your infernal compresses out of clean cloth; and after that you'll leave me alone.... Tell me about my horse, old Sunlight. So Gallup had him killed for me?"

"Somebody pretty near blowed his head off with buckshot," Billy Winch told him, and again twinkling fires of anger flickered in the little man's eyes. "If Gallup didn't have the job done, who did? I ask you!"

Timber-Wolf stared at the wall. Within him, too, rose scorching anger, that resurgent bitter flood which was not lessened now because in the first place it had leaped upon him unexpectedly, and had thus been the cause of his humiliation. But within him there was another emotion, one of deep grief; for he loved a good horse, no man more. And Sunlight was his pet and his trusted friend, and had been, for many a wilderness week, his only companion.