ter of the litter; the
girl stepped quickly to this door, shutting out the vision of a
helter-skelter of feminine apparel.

"It is your hand?" she asked, as in most thoroughly matter of fact
fashion she put out her own for it. "Let me see it."

But for a moment he bestowed upon her merely a slow look of question.

"You don't mean that you are Dr. Page?" he asked. Then, believing that
he understood: "You're the nurse?"

"Is a physician's life in San Juan likely to be so filled with his
duties that he must bring a nurse with him?" she countered. "Yes, I am
Dr. Page."

He noted that she was as defiant about the matter as the Kid had been
about the killing of Bisbee of Las Palmas; plainly she had foreseen
that the type of man-animal inhabiting this out-of-the-way corner of
the world would be likely to wonder at her hardihood and, perhaps, to
jeer.

"I came to-day," she explained in the same matter-of-fact way.
"Consequently you will pardon the looks of things. But I am one of the
kind that believes in hanging out a shingle first, getting details
arranged next. Now may I see the hand?"

"It's hardly anything." He lifted it now for her inspection. "Just a
slight cut, you know. But it's showing signs of infection. A little
antiseptic . . ."

She took his fingers into hers and bent over the wound. He noted two
things, now: what strong hands she had, shapely, with sensitive fingers
ignorant of rings; how richly alive and warmly colored her hair was,
full of little waves and curls.

She had nothing to say while she treated him. Over an alcohol lamp she
heated some water; in a bowl, brought from the adjoining room, she
cleansed the hand thoroughly. Then the application of the final
antiseptic, a bit of absorbent cotton, a winding of surgeon's tape
about a bit of gauze, and the thing was done. Only at the end did she
say:

"It's a peculiar cut . . . not a knife cut, is it?"

"No," he answered humorously. "Did it on a piece of lead. . . . How
much is it, Doctor?"

"Two dollars," she told him, busied with the drying of her own hands.
"Better let me look at it again in the morning if it pains you."

He laid two silver dollars in her palm, hesitated a moment and then
went out.

"She's got the nerve," was his thoughtful estimate as he went to his
corner table in the dining-room. "But I don't believe she is going to
last long in San Juan. . . . Funny she should come to a place like
this, anyhow. . . .