Rawlins returned from Lost Cabin before noon, attended by the sheriff and coroner, the latter official bringing with him the identical set of sheepmen jurors that had served a few days previously over the first victim of the homesteader's war.
The coroner found a double job cut out for him this time. The raider who fell before Rawlins' rifle in that morning's battle was not dead, although shot through the body. He was a virile scoundrel, with the snake's tenacity of life in him, and if the coroner was disappointed in having the fellow as a subject for his official investigation, he was compensated by getting him as a patient. Peck had made a clean job of it. There was nothing left for the doctor side of the coroner to do in his case.
That was undoubtedly the most enthusiastic verdict ever returned by a coroner's jury in the Dry Wood country. It sounded much like a resolution by a chamber of commerce welcoming some new and important industry. The presence of these two handy men holding their own against great and vicious odds inside Senator Galloway's fence; that big band of sheep grazing peacefully, the morning's terrifying visitation quite forgotten, opened the gate of possibility to a new and prolific range.
