“Do you think so?” earnestly said Dell.

“I know it,” emphatically asserted the wounded man.  “Hereafter, you and Joel want to be friendly with these drovers and their men.  Cast your bread upon the waters.”

“Mother used to read that to us,” frankly admitted Dell.  There was a marked silence, only broken by a clatter of hoofs, and the trail boss cantered up to the tent.

“That wagon track,” said he, dismounting, “is little more than a dim trail.  Sorry I didn’t think about it sooner, but we ought to have built a smudge fire where this road intersects the cattle trail.  In case the doctor doesn’t reach there by noon, I sent orders to fly a flag at the junction, and Joel to return home.  But if the doctor doesn’t reach there until after darkness, he’ll never see the flag, and couldn’t follow the trail if he did.  We’ll have to send Joel back.”

“It’s my turn,” said Dell.  “I know how to build a smudge fire; build it in a circle, out of cattle chips, in the middle of the road.”

“You’re a willing boy,” said Priest, handing the bridle reins to Dell, “but we’ll wait until Joel returns.  You may water my horse and turn him in the corral.”

The day wore on, and near the middle of the afternoon Joel came riding in.  He had waited fully an hour after the departure of the herd, a flag had been left unfurled at the junction, and all other instructions delivered.  Both Forrest and Priest knew the distance to the ford on the Republican, and could figure to an hour, by different saddle gaits, the necessary time to cover the distance, even to Culbertson.  Still there was a measure of uncertainty:  the messenger might have lost his way; there might not have been any physician within call; accidents might have happened to horse or rider,—­and one hour wore away, followed by another.

Against his will, Dell was held under restraint until six o’clock.  “It’s my intention to follow him within an hour,” said the foreman, as the boy rounded a bluff and disappeared.  “He can build the fire as well as any one, and we’ll return before midnight.  That’ll give the doctor the last minute and the benefit of every doubt.”

The foreman’s mount stood saddled, and twilight had settled over the valley, when the occupants of the tent were startled by the neigh of a horse.  “That’s Rowdy,” said Forrest; “he always nickers when he sights a wagon or camp.  Dell’s come.”

Joel sprang to the open front.  “It’s Dell, and there’s a buckboard following,” he whispered.  A moment later the vehicle rattled up, led by the irrepressible Dell, as if in charge of a battery of artillery.  “This is the place, Doctor,” said he, as if dismissing a troop from cavalry drill.

The physician proved to be a typical frontier doctor.  He had left Culbertson that morning, was delayed in securing a relay team at the ford on the Republican, and still had traveled ninety miles since sunrise.  “If it wasn’t for six-shooters in this country,” said he, as he entered the tent, “we doctors would have little to do.  Your men with the herd told me how the accident happened.”  Then to Forrest, “Son, think it’ll ever happen again?”