from an internal hemorrhage that gorged his vitals with blood.
Instinctively he must have concealed himself in the thick willows, for he had no recollection of it afterward. But on waking when the day was almost spent he found himself there, bruised, cut, bloody, and weak. His first thought was that his nickname had been the cause of all this misadventure and misery. If he had come into the Kansas range as Jim Hartwell, things never would have clouded up so suspiciously in men's minds. The pride that he had in that name "Texas" was like all vanities, he reflected; a thing to bring its possessor soon or late to humiliation and pain. Better to have been common Jim, with a whole hide and a good report, than picturesque Texas, beaten refugee, outcast of his kind, distrusted of men.
With these bitter reflections he turned his face toward Cottonwood, twenty miles away. And it was hard walking on Uncle Boley Drumgoole's high heels, a sore road and a long, weary one. It was almost noon of the next day when he arrived at the Woodbine Hotel, a grim, bruised figure, weak and sick.
A man was sitting on the bench beside the door, a cowboy in goatskin chaparejos with the long white hair on them. He rose and blocked the door with a long arm, an envelope in his hand.
