arry aside, describing the finding of the fever-stricken
stranger.

"Who on earth can he be?" wondered Harry, curiously. "And what
can he be doing in this out of the way part of the world?"

"That's his own secret," retorted Tom, dryly; and the man is bent
on keeping it. There are only two things that we need to know--one
that he is ill, and the other that he is very plainly a gentleman,
who would be incapable of repaying our kindness with any treachery.
What do you say, Harry? Shall we bring him here and look after
him?"

"That's for you to say, Tom."

"It's half for you to say, Harry. Half the risk is also yours,
if anything goes wrong."

"Tom, I feel the same way that you do about it," Harry declared,
his eyes shining brightly. "A fellow creature in distress is
one whom we can't pass by. We can't leave him to die. Such a
thing would haunt me as long as I live. When do you want to go
after him?"

"Just as soon as it's dark," Reade replied. "That will be within
the hour, for here in the tropics night comes soon after the sun
sets."

When the time came Tom and Harry left their tent, strolling slowly.
It was very dark and the young engineers listened intently as
they went along. They found their stranger and lifted him from
the ground. He was so slight and frail that he proved no burden
whatever. Apparently without having been seen by any one Reade
and Hazelton bore their man back to camp.

"Into the cook tent," whispered Reade. "Don Luis, if he should
visit us, is less likely to look there than anywhere else."

Into the cook tent they bore the stranger, arranging a bed on
the floor, and covering the sick man with such blankets as his
condition appeared to call for.

"I am back, _caballeros_," announced Nicolas, treading softly
into the tent. "To the praise of Heaven, be it said, I secured
the medicines you told me to get."

Then Nicolas stopped short, gazing wonderingly at the fever-flushed
face of the stranger.

CHAPTER XVIII

CRAFT--OR SURRENDER?

"He's a puzzle," remarked Harry, four days later.

"Meaning our sick man?"

"Of course. But he isn't going to be a sick man much longer,
thanks to you, Tom. You were born to be a physician."

"Don't you believe it," smiled Reade. "The only previous experience
I've had was when I simply had to pull you through out on Indian
Smoke Range last winter. Harry, I was afraid you were a goner,
and I couldn't let you go. But then, j