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Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night thinking of Ann, and then could not get back to sleep.

The easiest thing would be to sell out to Al Budd and leave the country, but there was a stubborn streak in him that wouldn't allow it.

He found that if he was tired enough at night, he went to sleep simply because he was too exhausted to stay awake.

He had plenty of work to do.

He could not afford to lose a drop of the precious water, so he spent most of his waking hours along the ditches in his meadows.

When, in late afternoon on the last day in June, he saw two people top the ridge to the south and walk toward the house, he quit work immediately and strode to his rifle.

Now he saw that both the man and woman were moving slowly and irregularly, staggering, as if they found it a struggle to remain on their feet.

She lay there, making no effort to get back on her feet.

The boy came on to the porch and sat down, his gaze on Morgan as if half expecting him to shoot and not really caring.

He didn't think it was possible for this couple to be pretending.

Leaning his Winchester against the front of the house, he walked to the girl.

It must have hurt her even to walk, for the sole was completely off her left foot and Morgan saw that it was bruised and bleeding.

No girl would go this far to fool a man so she could kill him.

Morgan filled the dipper from the water bucket on the shelf, went back into the front room, lifted the girl's head, and held the edge of the dipper to her mouth.

He stood looking down at her for a moment, wondering what could have reduced her to this condition.

He had seen a few nester wagons go through the country, the families almost starving to death, but he had never seen any of them on foot and as bad off as these two.

The girl dropped off to sleep.

Morgan returned to the kitchen, built a fire, and carried in several buckets of water from the spring which he poured into the copper boiler that he had placed on the stove.

`` Who are you and what happened to you ''??

You'd have starved to death if you'd missed both places ''.

There was more to this than Jones had told him.