Upon inquiry I learned from Nielsen that Buck was coming somewhere back along the trail hopping along on three legs.  I rode on down to my camp, and procuring a bottle of iodine I walked back in the hope of doing Buck a good turn.  During my absence he had reached camp, and was lying under an aspen, apart from the other hounds.  Buck looked meaner and uglier and more distrustful than ever.  Evidently this injury to his leg was a trick played upon him by his arch enemy man.  I stood beside him, as he licked the swollen, bloody leg, and talked to him, as kindly as I knew how.  And finally I sat down beside him.  The trap-teeth had caught his right front leg just above the first joint, and from the position of the teeth marks and the way he moved his leg I had hopes that the bone was not broken.  Apparently the big teeth had gone through on each side of the bone.  When I tried gently to touch the swollen leg Buck growled ominously.  He would have bitten me.  I patted his head with one hand, and watching my chance, at length with the other I poured iodine over the open cuts.  Then I kept patting him and holding his head until the iodine had become absorbed.  Perhaps it was only my fancy, but it seemed that the ugly gleam in his distrustful eyes had become sheepish, as if he was ashamed of something he did not understand.  That look more than ever determined me to try to find some way to his affections.

A camp-fire council that night resulted in plans to take a pack outfit, and ride west along the rim to a place Haught called Dude Creek.  “Reckon we’ll shore smoke up some bars along Dude,” said Haught.  “Never was in there but I jumped bars.  Good deer an’ turkey country, too.”

Next day we rested the hounds, and got things into packing shape with the intention of starting early the following morning.  But it rained on and off; and the day after that we could not find Haught’s burros, and not until the fourth morning could we start.  It turned out that Buck did not have a broken leg and had recovered surprisingly from the injury he had received.  Aloof as he held himself it appeared certain he did not want to be left behind.

We rode all day along the old Crook road where the year before we had encountered so many obstacles.  I remembered most of the road, but how strange it seemed to me, and what a proof of my mental condition on that memorable trip, that I did not remember all.  Usually forest or desert ground I have traveled over I never forget.  This ride, in the middle of October, when all the colors of autumn vied with the sunlight to make the forest a region of golden enchantment, was one of particular delight to me.  I had begun to work and wear out the pain in my back.  Every night I had suffered a little less and slept a little better, and every morning I had less and less of a struggle to get up and straighten out.  Many a groan had I smothered.  But now, when I got warmed up from riding or walking or sawing wood, the pain left me altogether and I forgot it.  I had given myself heroic treatment, but my reward was in sight.  My theory that the outdoor life would cure almost any ill of body or mind seemed to have earned another proof added to the long list.