Fortune Kicks Again

It was past noon when Ward rode down the steep slope to the creek bank just above his cabin. He was sunk deep in that mental depression which so often follows close upon the heels of a great outburst of passion. Mechanically he twitched the reins and sent Rattler down the last shelf of bank--and he did not look up to see just where he was. Rattler was a well-trained horse, since he was Ward's. He obeyed the rein signal and stepped off a two-foot bank into a nest of loose-piled rocks that slid treacherously under his feet. Sure-footed though he was, he stumbled and fell; and it was sheer instinct that took Ward's feet from the stirrups in time.

Ward sprawled among the rocks, dazed. The shock of the fall took him out of his fit of abstraction, and he pulled away from Rattler as the horse scrambled up and stood shaking before him. He tried to scramble up also....

Ward sat and stared stupidly at his left leg where, midway between his knee and his foot, it turned out at an unnatural angle. He thought resentfully that he had had enough trouble for once, without having a broken leg on top of it all.

"Now this is one hell of a fix!" he stated dispassionately, when pain had in a measure cooled his first anger. He looked around him like a man who is taking stock of his resources. He was not far from the cabin. He could get there by crawling. But what then?