“Later on we’ll get ’em, Roddy . . . mebbe,” he said finally.  “But not now.  If you pulled the Kid it would just be running up the county expense all for nothing.”

The sheriff left him in silence and leading his horse went the few steps to the hotel.  Ignacio Chavez appearing opportunely Norton gave his animal into the breed’s custody; Ignacio, accustomed to doing odd jobs for el Senor Roderico Nortone, and to the occasional half dollars resulting from such transactions, led the big gray away while the sheriff entered the hotel.  It had been a day of hard riding and scanty meals, and he was hungry.

Bright and new and conspicuous, a gold-lettered sign at Struve’s doorway caught his eye and caused him to remember the wounded left hand which had been paining him considerably through the long hot day.  The sign bore the name of Dr. V. D. Page with the words Physician and Surgeon; in blue pencilled letters upon the practitioner’s card, affixed to the brass chain suspending the sign, were the further words:  “Room 5, Struve’s Hotel.”

The sheriff went to Room 5.  It was at the front of the building, upon the ground floor.  The door opened almost immediately when he rapped.  Confronting him was the girl he had encountered at the arroyo.  He lifted his hat, looked beyond her, and said simply: 

“I was looking for Dr. Page.  Is he in now?”

“Yes,” she told him gravely.  “Come in, please.”

He stepped across the threshold, his eyes trained to quick observation of details taking in at a glance all there was to be seen.  The room showed all signs of a fresh unpacking, the one table and two chairs piled high with odds and ends.  For the most part the miscellany consisted of big, fat books, bundles of towels and fresh white napkins, rubber-stoppered bottles of varicolored contents, and black leather cases, no doubt containing a surgeon’s instruments.  Through an open door giving entrance to the adjoining room he noted further signs of unpacking with a marked difference in the character of the litter; the girl stepped quickly to this door, shutting out the vision of a helter-skelter of feminine apparel.

“It is your hand?” she asked, as in most thoroughly matter of fact fashion she put out her own for it.  “Let me see it.”

But for a moment he bestowed upon her merely a slow look of question.

“You don’t mean that you are Dr. Page?” he asked.  Then, believing that he understood:  “You’re the nurse?”

“Is a physician’s life in San Juan likely to be so filled with his duties that he must bring a nurse with him?” she countered.  “Yes, I am Dr. Page.”

He noted that she was as defiant about the matter as the Kid had been about the killing of Bisbee of Las Palmas; plainly she had foreseen that the type of man-animal inhabiting this out-of-the-way corner of the world would be likely to wonder at her hardihood and, perhaps, to jeer.