“The shooting,” said the doctor, who had kept his fingers on the wrist of his patient; “I could feel his pulse leap and stop when he said that.”

“He said ‘halt!’ first; a very clear sign that he tried to stop Bard before Bard shot.  Doctor, you’re witness to that?”

He had grown deeply excited.

“I’m witness to nothing.  I never dreamed that you could be so interested in any human being.”

He nodded to himself.

“Do you know how I explained your greyness to myself?  As that of a man ennuied with life—­tired of living because he had nothing in the world to occupy his affections.  And here I find you so far from being ennuied that you are using your whole strength to keep the guilt of murder away from another man.  It’s amazing.  The boys will never believe it.”

He continued:  “A man who raised a riot in your own house, almost burned down your place, shot your man, stole a horse—­gad, Drew, you are sublime!”

But if he expected an explanatory answer from the rancher he was disappointed.  The latter pulled up a chair beside the bed and bent his stern eyes on the patient as if he were concentrating all of a great will on bringing Calamity Ben back to health.

He worked with the doctor.  Every half hour a temperature was taken, and it was going up steadily.  Drew heard the report each time with a tightening of the muscles about his jaws.  He helped pack the wounded man with wet cloths.  He ran out and stopped a wrangling noise of the cowpunchers several times.  But mostly he sat without motion beside the bed, trying to will the sufferer back to life.

And in the middle of the morning, after taking a temperature, the doctor looked to the rancher with a sort of dull wonder.

“It’s dropping?” whispered Drew.

“It’s lower.  I don’t think it’s dropping.  It can’t be going down so soon.  Wait till the next time I register it.  If it’s still lower then, he’ll get well.”

The grey man sagged forward from his chair to his knees and took the hands of Calamity, long-fingered, bony, cold hands they were.  There he remained, moveless, his keen eyes close to the wandering stare of the delirious man.  Out of the exhaustless reservoir of his will he seemed to be injecting an electric strength into the other, a steadying and even flow of power that passed from his hands and into the body of Calamity.

When the time came, and Young stood looking down at the thermometer, Drew lifted haggard eyes, waiting.

“It’s lower!”

The great arms of the rancher were thrown above his head; he rose, changed, triumphant, as if he had torn his happiness from the heart of the heavens, and went hastily from the room, silent.

At the stable he took his great bay, saddled him, and swung out on the trail for Eldara, a short, rough trail which led across the Saverack—­the same course which Nash and Bard had taken the day before.