"Go and rest yourself," Santry urged. "It's my turn now."

 

"I'm not tired," she declared, trying to smile into the keen eyes of the doctor, who had heard the facts from the old plainsman as they rode out from town.

 

Wade lay with his eyes closed, apparently in profound stupor, but gave signs of consciousness when Dr. Catlin gently shook him. Dorothy felt that he should not be disturbed, although she kept her own counsel, but Catlin wanted to see if he could arouse his patient at all, for the extent of the injury caused by the bullet, which had entered the back in the vicinity of the spinal cord, could be gauged largely by the amount of sensibility remaining. The wounded man was finally induced to answer monosyllabically the questions put to him, but he did so with surly impatience. The physician next made a thorough examination, for which he was better fitted than many a fashionable city practitioner, by reason of his familiarity with wounds of all kinds.

 

When he arose Santry, who had watched him as a cat watches a mouse, forced himself to speak, for his throat and mouth were dry as a bone.

 

"Well, Doc, how about it?"

 

"Oh, he won't die this time; but he may lie there for some weeks. So far as I can tell the bullet just grazed the spinal cord, and it's the shock of that which makes him so quiet now. A fraction of an inch closer and he would have died or been paralyzed, a cripple, probably for life. At is it, however, barring the possibility of infection, he should pull through. The bullet passed straight through the body without injury to any vital organ, and there is no indication of severe internal hemorrhage."

 

Santry moistened his lips with his tongue and shook his head heavily.

 

"What gets me," he burst out, "is that Gawd A'mighty could 'a' let a skunk like Moran do a thing like that! And then"--his voice swelled as though the words he was about to utter exceeded the first--"and then let the varmint get away from me!"

 

Dr. Catlin nodded sympathy with the statement and turned to Dorothy. She had been anxiously searching his face to discover if he were encouraging them unduly, and when she felt that he was not stretching the facts a tremendous weight was lifted from her mind.

 

"You are going to stay here?" he asked.

 

"Yes; oh, yes!" she answered.

 

"That's good." He opened his medicine case and mixed a simple antipyretic. "I'll explain what you're to do then. After that you better lay down and try to sleep. Wade won't need much for some days, except good nursing."

 

"I'm not tired," she insisted, at which he smiled shrewdly.

 

"I'm not asking you if you're tired. I'm telling you that you are. Those nerves of yours are jumping now. You've got our patient to consider first, and you can't look after him unless you keep well yourself. I'm going to mix something up for you in a few minutes and then you're going to rest. A nurse must obey orders."

 

He explained to her what she was to do for the patient and then gave her something to offset the effects of her own nervous shock. Then counseling them not to worry too much, for there would be no fatal result if his directions were followed, the physician mounted his horse and rode back to town. Such journeys were all in the day's work to him, and poor pay they often brought him, except as love of his fellow-men rewarded his spirit.

 

During the long days and nights that followed Dorothy scarcely left Wade's bedside, for to her mother now fell the burdens of the ranch household. From feeling that she never would be equal to the task of caring for so many people, Mrs. Purnell came to find her health greatly improved by her duties, which left her no opportunity for morbid introspection.

 

Santry, too, was in almost constant attendance upon the sick man, and was as tender and solicitous in his ministrations as Dorothy herself. He ate little and slept less, relieving his feelings by oaths whispered into his mustache. He made the ranch hands move about their various duties as quietly as mice. Dorothy grew to be genuinely fond of him, because of their common bond of sympathy with Wade. Frequently they sat together in the sickroom reading the newspapers, which came out from town each day. On one such occasion, when Santry had twisted his mouth awry in a determined effort to fold the paper he was reading without permitting a single crackle, she softly laughed at him.

 

"You needn't be so careful. I don't think it would disturb him."

 

The old fellow sagely shook his head.

 

"Just the same, I ain't takin' no chances," he said.

 

A moment afterward he tiptoed over to her, grinning from ear to ear, and with a clumsy finger pointed out the item he had been reading. An expression of pleased surprise flooded her face when she read it; they laughed softly together; and, finding that he was through with the paper, she put it away in a bureau drawer, meaning to show that item some day to Gordon.

 

Under the car............