“Seems to me she did mention a rig, but I thought I’d rather walk,” explained Gordon casually, much amused at Dr. Watson’s chagrined wonder.

“Walk!” snorted the physician.  “You’ll not walk, but be carried into an operating-room if you’re not precious lucky.  You deserve to lose that leg, and I don’t say you won’t.”

“I’m an optimistic guy, Doctor.  I’ll say it for you.  I ain’t got any legs to spare.”

“Huh!  Some people haven’t got the sense of a chicken with its head cut off.”

“Now you’re shouting.  Go for me, Doc.  Then, mebbe, I’ll do better next time.”

The doctor gave up this incorrigible patient and relapsed into silence, from which he came occasionally with an explosive “Huh!” Once he broke out with:  “Didn’t she feed you well enough, or was it just that you didn’t know when you were well off?”

For he was aware that his patient’s fever was rising and, like a good practitioner, he fumed at such useless relapse.

The knee had been doing fine.  Now there would be the devil to pay with it.  The utter senselessness of the proceeding irritated Watson.  What in Mexico had got into the young idiot to make him do such a fool thing?  The doctor guessed at a quarrel between him and Miss Valdes.  But the close-mouthed American gave him no grounds upon which to base his suspicion.

The first thing that Dick did after reaching Corbett’s was to send two telegrams.  One was addressed to Messrs. Hughes & Willets, 411-417 Equitable Building, Denver, Colorado; the other went to Stephen Davis, Cripple Creek, of the same state.

Doctor Watson hustled his patient to bed and did his best to relieve the increasing pain in the swollen knee.  He swore gently and sputtered and fumed as he worked, restraining himself only when Mrs. Corbett came into the room with hot water, towels, compresses, and other supplies.

“What about a nurse?” Watson wanted to know of Mrs. Corbett, a large motherly woman whose kind heart always found room in it for the weak and helpless.

“I got no room for one.  Juanita and I will take care of him.  The work’s slack now.  We’ll have time.”

“He’s going to take a heap of nursing,” the doctor answered, rubbing his unshaven chin dubiously with the palm of his hand.  “See how the fever’s climbed up even in the last half hour.  That boy’s going to be a mighty sick hombre.”

“I’m used to nursing, and Juanita is the best help I ever had, if she is a Mexican.  You may trust him to us.”

“Hmp!  I wasn’t thinking of him, but of you.  Couldn’t be in better hands, but it’s an imposition for him to go racing all over these hills with a game leg and expect you to pull him through.”