ran to the chair of Buck swiftly and caught his hands: "What sort of
a man is Mac Strann?"

But Buck smiled strangely up into her face.

"Does it make any difference," he said, "to Dan?"

She went slowly back to her place.

"No," she admitted, "no difference."

"If you came by relays for twenty-four hours," said the doctor,
numbering his points upon accurate fingertips, "it is humanly impossible
that this man could have followed you very closely. It will probably
take him another day to arrive."

But here his glance fell upon old Joe Cumberland, and found the
cattleman smiling faintly to himself.

Buck Daniels was considering the last remark seriously.

"No," he said, "it _ain't_ possible. Besides, what Kate says may be
true. She ought to know--she says he'll wait for Mac Strann. I didn't
think of that; I thought I was savin' Dan from another--well, what a
damn fool I been!"

He unknotted his bandana and with it mopped his face to a semblance of
cleanliness.

"It was the ridin' that done it," he explained, shame-faced. "You put a
man on a hoss for a certain time, and after a while he gets so he can't
think. He's sort of nutty. That was the way with me when I come in."

"Open the window on the veranda," said Joe Cumberland. "I want to feel
the wind."

The doctor obeyed the instruction, and again he noted that same quiet,
contented smile on the lips of the old man. For some reason it made him
ill at ease to see it.

"He won't get here for eight or ten hours," went on Buck Daniels, easing
himself into a more comfortable position, and raising his head a little
higher. "Ten hours more, even if he does come. That'll give me a chance
to rest up; right now I'm kind of shaky."

"A condition, you will observe, in which Mr. Barry will also be when he
arrives," remarked the doctor.

"Shaky?" grinned Buck Daniels. "M'frien', you don't know that bird!" He
sat up, clenching his fist. "And if Dan _does_ come, he can't affo'd to
press me too far! I'll take so much, and then----"

He struck his fist on the arm of the chair.

"Buck!" cried Kate Cumberland. "Are you mad? Have you lost your reason?
Would you _face_ him?"

Buck Daniels winced, but he then shook his head doggedly.

"He had his chance down in Brownsville," he said. "And he didn't take
it. Why? Because my back was turned? Well, he could of got in front of
me if he'd been terrible anxious. I've seen Dan in action; he's seen
_me_ in action! Maybe he's see