By nine o’clock the meal had been eaten.  The stove now made the tent so hot that Mr. Hinman’s cot had to be moved to the farther end and the tent flaps thrown open to admit cooler air.

Greg had attended to feeding both of the horses, which had gotten through the dismal night without very much discomfort.

Now Dick went down to look at the road.

“I’m going to mount our horse, bareback, and keep straight on up the road,” he announced, coming back.  “I will not have to go very far before I find a physician.”

“No, you’re not going, either,” broke in the boss tramp.  “I am going.”

“But, see here, I can’t very well let a stranger like you go off with our horse,” Dick objected smilingly.

“You don’t have to,” retorted the other.  “I’ll go on foot, and I’ll make the trip as fast as I can, too.  But maybe you’d better give me a note to the doctor.  He might not pay much attention to a sick call from a fellow who looks as tough as I do.”

“If I let you go, can I depend upon you to keep right on going straight and fast, until you deliver a note to a doctor?” asked Prescott, eyeing the boss tramp keenly.

“Yes!” answered the tramp, returning the glance with one so straightforward that Dick felt he could really trust the man.  “And if the first doctor won’t or can’t come, I’ll keep on going until I find one who will take the call.”

“Good for you!” cried Tom Reade heartily.  “And if it weren’t for fear of startling you, I’d say that the next thing you’ll be doing will be to find and accept a job, and work again like a useful man!”

“That would be startling,” grinned the fellow, half sullenly.

Dick wrote the note.  Away went his ill-favored looking messenger.  Dick turned to administer more nitre to the peddler.

“Do you expect to move on at all to-day?” Dave asked of Dick.

“It wouldn’t be really wise, would it?” Dick counter-queried.  “Our tent and shelter flap are pretty wet to take down and fold away in a wagon.  We’d find it wet going, too.  Hadn’t we better stay here until to-morrow, and then break camp with our tent properly dry?”

All hands voted in favor of remaining—–­except the hoboes, who weren’t asked.  They would remain indefinitely, anyway, if permitted, and if the food held out.

But Dick soon set them to work.  One was despatched for water, the other two set to gathering wet firewood and spreading it in the sun to dry out.  Nor did the trio of remaining tramps refuse to do the work required of them, though they looked reluctant enough at first.

Two more hours passed.

“I’m afraid our friend, Hustling Weary, is having a hard time to get a doctor who’ll come down the road,” Dick remarked to Darrin.

“Oh, the doctor will come, if Weary has found him,” Dave replied.  “Doctors always come.  They have to, or lose their reputations.”