ley and my husband
and myself. Mr. Shirley is very sick with pneumonia, and Mr. Aydelot could
not leave him, so I started to Carey's Crossing to see if you could come
to him. I missed the trail somewhere. I was trying to help, but I failed,
you see."

The doctor was looking at her with a puzzled expression which she thought
was born of his sympathy. To the mention of her failing he responded
quickly:

"No, Mrs. Aydelot, you succeeded. I had started to Shirley's myself on
personal business, and I was letting some whim turn me aside. If you had
kept the trail we should have missed each other, for I was on my way to
Big Wolf Creek, a good distance away, and your leaving the trail and
wandering down here was providential for Shirley. Shall I show you on to
the Crossing?"

"Oh, no, Doctor, if you will only come back with me. I don't want to go
on," Virginia insisted.

"You are a regular westerner, Mrs. Aydelot," Carey declared. "But you
haven't been out here long. I heard of your passing through our town late
last summer. I was up on Big Wolf then and failed to see you. I know
something of your husband, but I have never met him."

He helped her to mount her horse and together they sought the trail and
followed it westward in the face of the wind.

* * * * *

Near midnight down in Jim Shirley's cabin Asher Aydelot turned from a lull
in the sick man's ravings to see Dr. Horace Carey entering the door with a
pair of saddle bags in his hand.

"Hello, sir! Aydelot? I'm Carey, the doctor."

Then as his quick eye took in the haggard face of the man before him, he
said cheerily:

"Everything fit as a fiddle up your way. I left your cabin snug and warm
as a prairie dog's hole, and your wife is sound asleep by this time, with
a big dog on guard. Yes, I understand," he added, as Asher silently
gripped his hand. "You've died a thousand deaths today. Forget it, and
give me a hand here. My own are too stiff, and I must get these wet boots
off. I always go at my work dry shod."

He had pulled a pair of heavy shoes from the saddle bags, and was removing
his outer coat and sundry scarfs, warming his hands between whiles and
seemingly unconscious of the sick man's presence.

"You are wet to the knees. You dared the short trail and the strange fords
of rivers on a night so dark as this," Asher declared as he helped Carey
to put off his wrappings.

"It's a doctor's business to forget h