a-plenty, right around here. I don't know nothing about the
Reserve. Who told you?"

"A man, last night late. Said there was a man hurt up in the timber
camp, for me to go up fast as I could. Tree fell on him. They left
him up there alone, because they couldn't bring him out."

"That so?" commented Wid Gardner grimly.

--"So that elected me, you see. Every time I try to get a night's
sleep, here comes some damn sagebrusher and wants me to come out and
cure his sick cow, or else mamma's got a baby, or a horse has got in
the wire, or papa's broke a leg, or something. Damn the country
anyhow! I wish I'd never seen it. I'm a doctor, yes, but I'm the
Company doctor, and I don't have to run on these fool trips. But of
course I do," he added, smiling sunnily after his usual fashion. "So I
come along here. And you hold me up. What do _you_ want?"

"I want you to wait and come in and see Nels Jensen with me, Doc," said
Wid Gardner. "Hell's to pay."

"What's wrong?" Doctor Barnes' face grew graver.

"We don't know what. When Sim and me come home, some one had been here
when we was gone. Sim's barn is burned, and all his hay, and all mine,
and my house--I haven't got lock, stock nor barrel left of my ranch,
and nothing to make a crop with."

"What do you think?" asked Doctor Barnes gravely.

"We don't know what to think. It's like enough a hold-on from that old
Industrial work--they been threatening all down the valley, since times
are hard and wages fell a little after the war work shut down. There
was some hay burned down below there. Folks said it was spontaneous
combustion, or something--said it got hot workin' in the stacks. I
ain't so sure now. It's them old ways. As if they ever got anything
by that!"

Dr. Barnes puckered his lips into a long whistle. "I wonder if there's
any two and two to put together in _this_ thing!" said he. "I came up
here to get that poor devil out of the woods. But who can tell what in
the merry hell has really happened up there?"

"We got to go and see," said Wid Gardner. "You know that woman?"

The doctor nodded.

"She's gone too. Whoever it was took her off in a car from up at the
head of Sim Gage's lane."

Doctor Barnes got down out of the car, and the two walked through Nels
Jensen's gate. Jensen was afoot, ready for the day's work. He agreed
that one of his boys would carry the news to the Company dam.

"Better give us a little something to eat al