“Couldn’t get the doc, Kate?” he asked.

“Not Doctor Hardin,” she answered, “and I’ve brought Doctor Byrne instead.”

The tall man allowed his gaze to drift leisurely from head to foot of Randall Byrne.

Then:  “H’ware you, doc?” he said, and extended a big hand.  It occurred to Byrne that all these men of the mountain-desert were big; there was something intensely irritating about their mere physical size; they threw him continually on the defensive and he found himself making apologies to himself and summing up personal merits.  In this case there was more direct reason for his anger.  It was patent that the man did not weight the strange doctor against any serious thoughts.

“And this,” she was saying, “is Mr. Daniels.  Buck, is there any change?”

“Nothin’ much,” answered Buck Daniels.  “Come along towards evening and he said he was feeling kind of cold.  So I wrapped him up in a rug.  Then he sat some as usual, one hand inside of the other, looking steady at nothing.  But a while ago he began getting sort of nervous.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing.  I just felt he was getting excited.  The way you know when your hoss is going to shy.”

“Do you want to go to your room first, doctor, or will you go in to see him now?”

“Now,” decided the doctor, and followed her down the hall and through a door.

The room reminded the doctor more of a New England interior than of the mountain-desert.  There was a round rag rug on the floor with every imaginable colour woven into its texture, but blended with a rude design, reds towards the centre and blue-greys towards the edges.  There were chairs upholstered in green which looked mouse-coloured where the high lights struck along the backs and the arms—­shallow-seated chairs that made one’s knees project foolishly high and far.  Byrne saw a cabinet at one end of the room, filled with sea-shells and knicknacks, and above it was a memorial cross surrounded by a wreath inside a glass case.  Most of the wall space thronged with engravings whose subjects ranged from Niagara Falls to Lady Hamilton.  One entire end of the room was occupied by a painting of a neck and neck finish in a race, and the artist had conceived the blooded racers as creatures with tremendous round hips and mighty-muscled shoulders, while the legs tapered to a faun-like delicacy.  These animals were spread-eagled in the most amazing fashion, their fore-hoofs reaching beyond their noses and their rear hoofs striking out beyond the tips of the tails.  The jockey in the lead sat quite still, but he who was losing had his whip drawn and looked like an automatic doll—­so pink were his cheeks.  Beside the course, in attitudes of graceful ease, stood men in very tight trousers and very high stocks and ladies in dresses which pinched in at the waist and flowed out at the shoulders.  They leaned upon canes or twirled parasols and they had their backs turned upon the racetrack as if they found their own negligent conversation far more exciting than the breathless, driving finish.