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Stilwell had put off even his own case against the Texas stockman, he had been so urged for time in getting his sick cattle down to the shade and water along the river. Now the job seemed over, for all he could do, and was taking his ease at home this night, intending to go early in the morning and put his case for damages against Drumm into Judge Thayer's hands.
Wait a few days longer, the rancher sagely advised, eat and rest, and rub that good fiery horse liniment of his on the sore spots and swollen joints. Even if they were gone, which Stilwell knew would not be the case for Drumm would not have made it back from Kansas City yet, Morgan could follow them. And to do that he must be sound and strong.
The horse that Morgan had borrowed from Stilwell lifted its head with a start as he approached where it stood at the side of the station platform, as if it questioned him on the reason for this transformation and the honesty of his purpose.
So spoke Stilwell, the cattleman, sitting at night before his long, low, L-shaped sod house with his guest who had been dragged into his hospitality at the end of a rope. Eight days Morgan had been sequestered in that primitive home, which had many comforts in spite of the crudity of its exterior.
Morgan!" she panted, as weak, it seemed, as a wounded bird. "I thought he came here he had your horse." "He's here, honey," Mrs. Stilwell told her, consoling her like a hurt child. Morgan did not come forward. He stood as he had risen from his chair at the table, one hand on the cloth, his head bent as if in a travail of deepest thought.
This man had long looked to be taken into partnership, and finally to succeed his master, seeing that the latter had no sons, and he conceived a violent jealousy of Jack Stilwell, in whose presence, as a prime favorite of Mistress Anthony and of her daughter, he thought he foresaw an overthrow of his plans.
When he had gone a few rods, halting on his lame feet, alert as a hunter who expects the game to break from cover, Stilwell and Fred got up from their apparently disinterested lounging in front of the hotel and followed leisurely after him. Many of the little business houses around the square were closed.
"I am afraid, Edwards, that you have not got rid of those loose notions of morality you picked up among the pirates," Jack said, smiling. "Perhaps not, Captain Stilwell. You see, bad habits stick to a man; but I have done with them now. When I get back to England I shall buy a snug public house at Dover, and with that and my pension I shall be in clover for the rest of my life."
But these old-timers were not enlisted under the Earp banner and the town's new rulers had only the other element for retainers. So now Frank Stilwell robbed stages on the Bisbee road until the drivers got to know his voice quite well; and he swaggered through the Tombstone dance-halls bestowing the rings which he had stripped from the fingers of women passengers upon his latest favorite.
In the house the Stilwell family and Morgan were at breakfast, attended by Violet, who bore on biscuits and ham to go with the coffee that sent its cheer out through the open door as if to find a traveler and lead him to refreshment. Behind the cottonwoods along the river, sunrise was about to break.
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