Stee Jenkin had his outer garments nearly torn off him, there was blood on his face, and he sank on to the nearest bench as if his trembling limbs refused to support him any longer.
"Why, your face is bleeding! What have you been doing--not fighting, I hope ?" T here was a touch of severity in Mrs.Burton's tone; for she knew the man did not bear a very good character, and she was not disposed to give herself much trouble on account of anyone who had brought his misfortunes upon his own head.
"Yes, ma'am, I have been fighting, and for my life too, which is a very different thing from a round of fisticuffs with your neighbour," growled Stee Jenkin in a shaken tone, and the hand with which he tried to lift the steaming coffee to his lips shook so violently that he spilled the hot liquid on his clothes.
Katherine and Miles had gone back to the store again, so it was Oily Dave who explained the nature of the fight in which both men had been involved.
"We'd a perticular bit of business on hand to-night," he said, in response to the enquiring look which Mrs.Burton turned upon him, for Stee was plainly too much upset to be coherent.

"I'd got a revolver certainly, but Stee had nothing but a knife, for we didn't expect any trouble with wolves so early in the season, though it is a fact we might have done, for everyone knows the place is just about swarming with them this winter." "Did the wolves attack you?
Oh, how truly horrible!" exclaimed Mrs.Burton, with so much genuine sympathy that both men winced under it, hardened offenders though they were; for they knew very well that they deserved the fate which had so nearly fallen upon them.
"About ten of the cowards closed in on us as we were going through a patch of cotton woods, where we couldn't move fast because of catching our snow-shoes," Oily Dave went on, winking and blinking in a nervous fashion.

"And we were fairly cornered before we knew where we were.

One great brute came at me straight in the face.

I knocked him off with my fist and fumbled for my barker, but shot wild and did no more damage than to singe the hair off another brute's back; but I managed to edge a bit closer to Stee, who was getting it rough, and hadn't even a chance to draw his knife.