ight for a moment. "You're a canny
lad, and shall have your bite and something to drink before you take
your way back. But back you go before sunset and with this message: No
man from any paper north or south will be received here till I hang out
a blue flag. I say blue, for that is the color of my bandana. When
my patient is in a condition to discuss murder I'll hoist it from his
tent-top. It can be seen from the divide, and if you want to camp there
on the lookout, well and good. As for the police, that's another matter.
I will see them if they come, but they need not expect to talk to my
patient. You may say so down there. It will save scrambling up this
trail to no purpose."

"You may count on me," said I; "trust a New York correspondent to do the
right thing at the right time to head off the boys. But I doubt if they
will believe me."

"In that case I shall have a barricade thrown up fifty feet down the
mountain-side," said he.

"But the mail and your supplies?"

"Oh, the burros can make their way up. We shan't suffer."

"You are certainly master," I remarked.

All this time I had been using my eyes. There was not much to see, but
what there was was romantically interesting. Aside from the furnace and
what was going on there, there was little else but a sleeping-tent, a
cooking-tent, and the small one I had come on first, which, without the
least doubt, contained the sick man. This last tent was of a peculiar
construction and showed the primitive nature of everything at this
height. It consisted simply of a cloth thrown over a thing like a
trapeze. This cloth did not even come to the ground on either side, but
stopped short a foot or so from the flat mound of adobe which serves as
a base or floor for hut or tent in New Mexico. The rear of the simple
tent abutted on the mountain-side; the opening was toward the valley.
I felt an intense desire to look into this opening,--so intense that I
thought I would venture on an attempt to gratify it. Scrutinizing the
resolute face of the man before me and flattering myself that I detected
signs of humor underlying his professional bruskness, I asked, somewhat
mournfully, if he would let me go away without so much as a glance at
the man I had come so far to see. A glimpse would satisfy me I assured
him, as the hint of a twinkle flashed in his eye. "Surely there will be
no harm in that. I'll take it instead of supper."

He smiled, but not encouragingly, and I was feelin