hought I'd rather walk,"
explained Gordon casually, much amused at Dr. Watson's chagrined wonder.

"Walk!" snorted the physician. "You'll not walk, but be carried into an
operating-room if you're not precious lucky. You deserve to lose that
leg, and I don't say you won't."

"I'm an optimistic guy, Doctor. I'll say it for you. I ain't got any
legs to spare."

"Huh! Some people haven't got the sense of a chicken with its head cut
off."

"Now you're shouting. Go for me, Doc. Then, mebbe, I'll do better next
time."

The doctor gave up this incorrigible patient and relapsed into silence,
from which he came occasionally with an explosive "Huh!" Once he broke
out with: "Didn't she feed you well enough, or was it just that you
didn't _know_ when you were well off?"

For he was aware that his patient's fever was rising and, like a good
practitioner, he fumed at such useless relapse.

The knee had been doing fine. Now there would be the devil to pay with
it. The utter senselessness of the proceeding irritated Watson. What in
Mexico had got into the young idiot to make him do such a fool thing?
The doctor guessed at a quarrel between him and Miss Valdes. But the
close-mouthed American gave him no grounds upon which to base his
suspicion.

The first thing that Dick did after reaching Corbett's was to send two
telegrams. One was addressed to Messrs. Hughes & Willets, 411-417
Equitable Building, Denver, Colorado; the other went to Stephen Davis,
Cripple Creek, of the same state.

Doctor Watson hustled his patient to bed and did his best to relieve the
increasing pain in the swollen knee. He swore gently and sputtered and
fumed as he worked, restraining himself only when Mrs. Corbett came into
the room with hot water, towels, compresses, and other supplies.

"What about a nurse?" Watson wanted to know of Mrs. Corbett, a large
motherly woman whose kind heart always found room in it for the weak and
helpless.

"I got no room for one. Juanita and I will take care of him. The work's
slack now. We'll have time."

"He's going to take a heap of nursing," the doctor answered, rubbing his
unshaven chin dubiously with the palm of his hand. "See how the fever's
climbed up even in the last half hour. That boy's going to be a mighty
sick _hombre_."

"I'm used to nursing, and Juanita is the best help I ever had, if she
_is_ a Mexican. You may trust him to us."

"Hmp! I wasn't thinking of him, but of you. Couldn't be in better han