wrong."
Ferguson's eyes narrowed and he leveled a forefinger at his patient.
"What happened, up there at Wickenburg?" he demanded.

"What happened?" repeated Clancy. "Why, you just spoke of that. I got in
front of a bullet."

"Stop, trying to play horse with me!" went on the doctor sourly.
"Something took place between you and your partner, Lafe Wynn, at
Wickenburg, and I want to know what it was."

Clancy stiffened.

"That's a personal matter, Doctor Ferguson," he answered, "and I don't
have to explain it to anybody."

"Well, you needn't get hot about it. There's something on your mind, and
it's holding back your complete recovery. I'm asking questions and
talking from the standpoint of your physician. If I knew the nature of
the thing that bothered you, very possibly I could take means to
counteract it."

Clancy was impressed by Ferguson's shrewdness. Yet he had no intention
of revealing the cause of his secret worry.

How could he tell Ferguson, or anybody else, what really happened at
Wickenburg? Only two or three people knew that Lafe Wynn had forged
Clancy's name to a check and had absconded with that money, and with all
the cash assets of the firm of Clancy & Wynn. Only two or three knew how
Clancy had trailed Wynn to Wickenburg and had sent him back to Phoenix
to take charge of the Square-deal Garage, as usual, while
he--Clancy--was in bed in the other town for a week.

Apparently all was the same as it ever had been between the two
partners. In this instance, however, surface indications were not to be
trusted.

Clancy's confidence in Wynn had been rudely shattered. The motor wizard
had spared his partner--had been generous with him, in fact, far beyond
his deserts. This was not particularly on Wynn's account, but on account
of Wynn's mother, an old lady who had come to Phoenix on the very day
Wynn had absconded.

Mrs. Wynn, proud of the business success her son had made, had come to
him so that he might make her a home in her declining years. Clancy had
not the heart to tell the old lady the exact situation, and he had gone
to Wickenburg to get Lafe and make him return to Phoenix.

Wynn knew that Clancy had spared him on his mother's account. This
knowledge caused a restraint between the two partners, all the greater
because Wynn's forgery, and defalcation had wiped out all the cash
assets of Clancy and the firm--some fifteen thousand dollars which had
not been recovered.

Clancy would not tel