scattered, and the branding had been accomplished but slowly.
The camp was now in the valley of the Guadalupe, twenty miles away.

"By the way," said Raidler, suddenly remembering, "that fellow I sent
along with them--McGuire--is he working yet?"

"I do not know," said Ylario. "Mans from the camp come verree few
times to the ranch. So plentee work with the leetle calves. They no
say. Oh, I think that fellow McGuire he dead much time ago."

"Dead!" said Raidler. "What you talking about?"

"Verree sick fellow, McGuire," replied Ylario, with a shrug of his
shoulder. "I theenk he no live one, two month when he go away."

"Shucks!" said Raidler. "He humbugged you, too, did he? The doctor
examined him and said he was sound as a mesquite knot."

"That doctor," said Ylario, smiling, "he tell you so? That doctor no
see McGuire."

"Talk up," ordered Raidler. "What the devil do you mean?"

"McGuire," continued the boy tranquilly, "he getting drink water
outside when that doctor come in room. That doctor take me and pound
me all over here with his fingers"--putting his hand to his chest--"I
not know for what. He put his ear here and here and here, and listen--
I not know for what. He put little glass stick in my mouth. He feel my
arm here. He make me count like whisper--so--twenty, /treinta/,
/cuarenta/. Who knows," concluded Ylario, with a deprecating spread of
his hands, "for what that doctor do those verree droll and such-like
things?"

"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
s