CHAPTER X

THE RAH-RAH BOY FUNCTIONS

Big Bill grumbled a good deal at the addition to the party. It would be
decidedly awkward if this stranger should become rational and understand
the status of the camp he had joined. The word of old Holt alone might
be negligible, but supported by that of a disinterested party it would
be a very different matter. Still, there was no help for it. They would
have to take care of the man until he was able to travel. Perhaps he
would go in with them as an additional guard. At the worst Big Bill
could give him a letter to Selfridge explaining things and so pass the
buck to that gentleman.

Gid Holt had, with the tacit consent of his guards, appointed himself as
a sort of nurse to the stranger. He lit a smudge fire to the windward
side of him, fed him small quantities of food at intervals, and arranged
a sleeping-place for him with mosquito netting for protection.

Early in the evening the sick man fell into a sound sleep from
which he did not awake until morning. George was away looking after the
pack-horses, Dud was cooking breakfast, and Big Bill, his rifle close at
hand, was chopping young firs fifty feet back of the camp. The cook also
had a gun, loaded with buckshot, lying on a box beside him, so that they
were taking no chances with their prisoner. He could not have covered
twenty yards without being raked by a cross-fire.

The old miner turned from rearranging the boughs of green fir on the
smudge to see that his patient was awake and his mind normal. The quiet,
steady eyes resting upon him told that the delirium had passed.

"Pretty nearly all in, wasn't I?" the young man said.

The answer of Gid Holt was an odd one. "Yep. Seven--eleven--fifteen.
Take 'er easy, old man," he said in his shrill, high voice as he moved
toward the man in the blankets. Then, in a low tone, while he pretended
to arrange the bedding over the stranger, he asked a quick question.

"Are you Elliot?"

"Yes."

"Don't tell them. Talk football lingo as if you was still out of your
haid." Holt turned and called to Dud. "Says he wants some breakfast."

"On the way," the cook answered.

Holt seemed to be soothing the delirious man. What he really said was
this. "Selfridge has arranged a plant for you at Kamatlah. The camp has
been turned inside out to fool you. They've brought me here a prisoner
so as to keep me from telling you the truth. Pst! Tune up now."

Big Bill had put down his axe and was