Her glance wandered past him and at once the heavy step of Buck Daniels approached.

“At least,” she murmured, “I am glad that you are frank.  I don’t want to have anything kept from me, please.  Buck, will you take the doctor up to his room?” She managed a faint smile.  “This is an old-fashioned house, Doctor Byrne, but I hope we can make you fairly comfortable.  You’ll ask for whatever you need?”

The doctor bowed, and was told that they would dine in half an hour, then the girl went back towards the room in which Joe Cumberland lay.  She walked slowly, with her head bent, and her posture seemed to Byrne the very picture of a burden-bearer.  Then he followed Daniels up the stairs, led by the jingling of the spurs, great-rowelled spurs that might grip the side of a refractory horse like teeth.

A hall-light guided them, and from the hall Buck Daniels entered a room and fumbled above him until he had lighted a lamp which was suspended by two chains from the ceiling, a circular burner which cast a glow as keen as an electric globe.  It brought out every detail of the old-fashioned room—­the bare, painted floor; the bed, in itself a separate and important piece of architecture with its four tall posts, a relic of the times when beds were built, not simply made; and there was a chest of drawers with swelling, hospitable front, and a rectangular mirror above with its date in gilt paint on the upper edge.  A rising wind shook the window and through some crack stirred the lace curtains; it was a very comfortable retreat, and the doctor became aware of aching muscles and a heavy brain when he glanced at the bed.

The same gust of wind which rattled the window-pane now pushed, as with invisible and ghostly hand, a door which opened on the side of the bedroom, and as it swung mysteriously and gradually wide the doctor found himself looking into an adjoining chamber.  All he could see clearly was a corner on which struck the shaft of light from the lamp, and lying on the floor in that corner was something limp and brown.  A snake, he surmised at first, but then he saw clearly that it was a chain of formidable proportions bolted against the wall at one end and terminating at the other in a huge steel collar.  A chill started in the boots of the doctor and wriggled its uncomfortable way up to his head.

“Hell!” burst out Buck Daniels.  “How’d that door get open?” He slammed it with violence.  “She’s been in there again, I guess,” muttered the cowpuncher, as he stepped back, scowling.

“Who?” ventured the doctor.

Buck Daniels whirled on him.

“None of your—­” he began hotly, but checked himself with choking suddenness and strode heavily from the room.

CHAPTER V

THE WAITING

The doctor removed his coat with absent-minded slowness, and all the time that he was removing the dust and the stains of travel, he kept narrowing the eye of his mind to visualise more clearly that cumbersome chain which lay on the floor of the adjoining room.  Now, the doctor was not of a curious or gossipy nature, but if someone had offered to tell him the story of that chain for a thousand dollars, the doctor at that moment would have thought the price ridiculously small.