During the many days he had spent in the little hotel room recovering
from his wound--and in the long interval of convalescence that
followed--a small army of workmen had been engaged in rebuilding the
Circle L ranchhouse, the bunkhouses, and the other structures. On the
second day following his return to consciousness Lawler had called in a
contractor and had made arrangements for reconstruction.
A temporary cabin--to be used afterward by Blackburn--had been erected
near the site of the bunkhouses, and into this Lawler and his mother
moved while the ranchhouse and the other buildings were being rebuilt.
Blackburn was slowly engaging men to fill the depleted complement, and
the work went on some way, though in it was none of that spirit which
had marked the activities of the Circle L men in the old days.
In fact, the atmosphere that surrounded the Circle L seemed to be filled
with a strange depression. There had come a cold grimness into
Blackburn's face, a sullenness had appeared in the eyes of the three men
who had survived the fight on the plains; they were moody, irritable,
impatient. One of them, a slender, lithe man named Sloan, voiced to
Blackburn one day a prediction.
"Antrim's dead, all O.K.," he said. "But Slade--who was always a damned
sight worse than Antrim--is still a-kickin'.
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