o--twenty,
_treinta_, _cuarenta_ [47]. Who knows," concluded Ylario, with a
deprecating spread of his hands, "for what that doctor do those verree
droll and such-like things?"

[FOOTNOTE 47: treinta, cuarenta--(Spanish) thirty, forty]

"What horses are up?" asked Raidler shortly.

"Paisano is grazing out behind the little corral, _senor_."

"Saddle him for me at once."

Within a very few minutes the cattleman was mounted and away. Paisano,
well named after that ungainly but swift-running bird, struck into
his long lope that ate up the ground like a strip of macaroni. In two
hours and a quarter Raidler, from a gentle swell, saw the branding
camp by a water hole in the Guadalupe. Sick with expectancy of the
news he feared, he rode up, dismounted, and dropped Paisano's reins.
So gentle was his heart that at that moment he would have pleaded
guilty to the murder of McGuire.

The only being in the camp was the cook, who was just arranging the
hunks of barbecued beef, and distributing the tin coffee cups for
supper. Raidler evaded a direct question concerning the one subject
in his mind.

"Everything all right in camp, Pete?" he managed to inquire.

"So, so," said Pete, conservatively. "Grub give out twice. Wind
scattered the cattle, and we've had to rake the brush for forty mile.
I need a new coffee-pot. And the mosquitos is some more hellish than
common."

"The boys--all well?"

Pete was no optimist. Besides, inquiries concerning the health of
cow-punchers were not only superfluous, but bordered on flaccidity.
It was not like the boss to make them.

"What's left of 'em don't miss no calls to grub," the cook conceded.

"What's left of 'em?" repeated Raidler in a husky voice. Mechanically
he began to look around for McGuire's grave. He had in his mind a
white slab such as he had seen in the Alabama church-yard. But
immediately he knew that was foolish.

"Sure," said Pete; "what's left. Cow camps change in two months.
Some's gone."

Raidler nerved himself.

"That--chap--I sent along--McGuire--did--he--"

"Say," interrupted Pete, rising with a chunk of corn bread in each
hand, "that was a dirty shame, sending that poor, sick kid to a cow
camp. A doctor that couldn't tell he was graveyard meat ought to be
skinned with a cinch buckle. Game as he was, too--it's a scandal among
snakes--lemme tell you what he done. First night in camp the boys
started to initiate him in the leather breeches degree. Ross Ha