“Just like old times!” said his Excellency.  “Where’s the dump-pile!” It was where it should be, close by, and the two stepped behind it to be screened from wandering bullets.  “A man don’t forget his habits,” declared the Governor.  “Makes me feel young again.”

“Makes me feel old,” said McLean.  “Hark!”

“Sounds like my name,” said Barker.  They listened.  “Oh yes.  Of course.  That’s it.  They’re shouting for the doctor.  But we’ll just spare them a minute or so to finish their excitement.”

“I didn’t hear any shooting,” said McLean.  “It’s something, though.”

As they waited, no shots came; but still the fiddle was silent, and the murmur of many voices grew in the dance-hall, while single voices wandered outside, calling the doctor’s name.

“I’m the Governor on a fishing-trip,” said he.  “But it’s to be done, I suppose.”

They left their dump-hill and proceeded over to the dance.  The musician sat high and solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and waiting.  Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were densely clotted.  At the crowd’s outer rim the young horsemen, flushed and swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist, to be ready when the music should resume.  “What is it?” they asked.  “Who is it?” And they looked in across heads and shoulders, inattentive to the caresses which the partners gave them.

Mrs. Lusk was who it was, and she had taken poison here in their midst, after many dances and drinks.

“Here’s Doc!” cried an older one.

“Here’s Doc!” chorused the young blood that had come into this country since his day.  And the throng caught up the words:  “Here’s Doc! here’s Doc!”

In a moment McLean and Barker were sundered from each other in this flood.  Barker, sucked in toward the centre but often eddied back by those who meant to help him, heard the mixed explanations pass his ear unfinished—­versions, contradictions, a score of facts.  It had been wolf-poison.  It had been “Rough on Rats.”  It had been something in a bottle.  There was little steering in this clamorous sea; but Barker reached his patient, where she sat in her new dress, hailing him with wild inebriate gayety.

“I must get her to her room, friends,” said he.

“He must get her to her room,” went the word.  “Leave Doc get her to her room.”  And they tangled in their eagerness around him and his patient.

“Give us ‘Buffalo Girls!’” shouted Mrs. Lusk.... “‘Buffalo Girls,’ you fiddler!”

“We’ll come back,” said Barker to her.

“‘Buffalo Girls,’ I tell yus.  Ho!  There’s no sense looking at that bottle, Doc.  Take yer dance while there’s time!” She was holding the chair.

“Help him!” said the crowd.  “Help Doc.”

They took her from her chair, and she fought, a big pink mass of ribbons, fluttering and wrenching itself among them.