Once they had an out-and-out fight.  Snooks, fever crazed, struggled to get out of bed, crying that he was going to sink his agonized body in the creek, and Con gripped the poor abhorrent wrists, forcing the man to his back.  Then flinging his whole weight above the prostrate body he held him by sheer force, conquering and saving this life which had no claims on him except that of all common humanity.  An onlooker would have thought that the dread disease had no horrors for the boy, but Con was only human, and many a time he fought it out with himself when the terrors of the threatened infection were upon him.  Then he would say to himself, “Con, are you going to try and be a gentleman through your whole life, or just be a cad?” Then all thought of quitting would vanish, and back he would go to the shack, to be rewarded by a wonderful look of dog-like gratitude that would shine in Snooks’ festered eyes, replacing the haunting fear that always lurked there whenever the boy remained outside any length of time—­the fear that Con, too, had gone, as had his “pardner,” leaving him forever alone.

“Don’t you get scared,” Con would say on these occasions.  “I’m with you to the finish for good or ill, and it will be for good, I think.”

“It sure is for my good,” Snooks had said once.  “If I pull out of this I’ll be another man, and it will be owing to having known you, pard.  I had forgotten that such bravery and decency and unselfishness existed.  I had—­”

“Oh, quit it!  Stop it!” Con smiled.  “This isn’t anything—­don’t you know.”  But Snooks shook his head thoughtfully, muttering, “I do know, and you’re making another man of me.”

One day, after two weeks had dragged wearily past wherein no human being had passed up the unfrequented trail, Con heard gun shots, distant at first, then nearing the shack.  Like a wild being he sprang to the door, hoping some range rider, chancing by, would at least bring food and a doctor, when, to his horror, he saw Banty riding by, almost exhausted, peering to right and left of the trail, searching—­searching, he well knew, for his lost cousin.  Con made a rapid bolt for a hiding place, but Banty, whose quick eyes had caught sight of the fleeting figure, gave a yell of delight as he leaped from his saddle.

“Don’t you come near this place!  Get out, get out, I tell you!” screamed Con, while Banty stood as if petrified, staring wide-eyed at his seemingly insane cousin.

“You come near here and I’ll trim you within an inch of your life,” Con roared anew, shaking his fist menacingly.  “I’ll trim you the way I did the fellow who sent me the blue ribbon for my hair.  We’ve got smallpox here.  I’m looking after a chap who is down with it.  Get us a doctor and beef tea and more tar soap and food, but don’t you come an inch nearer, Banty, don’t.  Think of aunt and the people at the ranch.  You can’t do any good, and I’ll go clean crazy if you expose yourself to this.  Oh, Banty, get out of this, get out of this, or, I tell you, honest, I’ll lick you if you don’t.”