The Professor felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, and nodded sapiently.

"You've been drinking the water of that new spring."

"I hev. I helped open it up."

"Did you drink much of it?"

"Oceans!"

"My poor fellow, I am distressed beyond words. I promise you that you shall have every care and attention. I won't leave this ranch till-- till the end."

"The end?"

"You are a remarkable specimen--probably you will make a gallant fight--but I cannot disguise from you--it would be criminal to do so-- that you ought to put your house in order."

"Hav'n't got no house," said Dan, not quite comprehending, but sadly frightened. "Me and Mame expected to build next year, but that's off."

"Next year!" echoed the Professor testily. "The question is: Where will you be next week?"

Dan staggered. The Professor, having long retired from active practice, remembered with a qualm that he might have broken this appalling news more considerately. He said quietly--

"I beg your pardon. I ought to have tempered this; but you are an American, and strong enough at this moment to know the truth. I may pull you through. Without boasting, there is not another man in America, or Europe either, who would say as much."

"Christopher Columbus!"

"I don't call myself that," said the Professor modestly, "but I may claim to have discovered pathogenic continents. Now, my boy"--he took hold firmly of Dan's arm--"I am going to put you to bed."

"No, you ain't," said Dan. "I've ch.o.r.es to do. I can't be spared."

The Professor nodded.

"You're a stout fellow. After all, half-an-hour won't make any material difference."

"In half-an-hour you'll find me in the bunk-house. I'm obligated to ye," he added hastily. "So long!"

He strode off. The Professor nodded approvingly. He had grit himself, and esteemed it highly in others.

"I must pull him through," he muttered.

When the Professor reached the bunk-house, he found three tall strong men awaiting him. Their faces, tanned by many suns, exhibited a curious uniformity of tint--the colour of dirty gruel.

Dan said in a voice that trembled--

"These are my friends, Jimmie Barker and Pete Holloway. They helped open up that derned spring. They drank a plenty of the water. Jimmie, here, couldn't git enough of it. They've the same symptoms as I hev."

Jimmie and Pete writhed.

"Pins and needles all over," said Pete.

"Went to sleep on an ants' nest onst," said Jimmie faintly. "This is a heap worse."

"Heaven help you!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Professor.

"'Pears to me," said Dan solemnly, "from what you said just now, we're in the mulligatawny."

The Professor muttered something encouraging, but he remembered the cow.

"To bed with you," he commanded.

Within half-an-hour everyone on the ranch had heard the news. The Professor alone remained monumentally impa.s.sive.

"All that is humanly possible shall be done," he affirmed.

"And your treatment?" said I.

"I have no drugs here, but already I have despatched a man to San Lorenzo for strychnia, which in the first stage is invaluable.

Meantime I must do what I can with whisky. Have you plenty of whisky?"

"Yes, but----"

"I want a gallon of it."

"Of course you are aware--you know, I mean----"

The Professor waved a powerful arm; beneath his s.h.a.ggy brows his grey eyes sparkled angrily.

"I know what I am doing," he said sharply, "and I cannot waste valuable time imparting to a layman knowledge gathered during a lifetime. The whisky, please--_at once_."

I obeyed meekly. Five minutes later, the Professor was walking towards the bunk-house with a gallon demijohn tucked under his arm. A quarter of an hour afterwards he might have been seen returning. His eyes were positively snapping with vigour and excitement, for he loved a fight for a fight's sake. Ajax met him.

"Professor," he said, "I don't want you to impart the knowledge of a lifetime to me, but do, please, tell us something. We are on edge with anxiety."

The man of science melted. With a shrug of his ma.s.sive shoulders, he said, mildly for him--

"My dear sir, I will try to gratify a not unreasonable curiosity. I did not wish to alarm you prematurely this morning, but the worst has happened. The silicious fragments in that confounded earth have lacerated terribly the mucous membranes of these three unfortunate young men. That in itself is a matter of small importance. The mucous membrane is most delicate, but it has quite amazing capacities of repairing itself. The point is this. The water in that spring, and-- I'll be perfectly frank--the water in most of the surface springs in this particular locality, is simply swarming with pathogenic germs, and amongst them I identified this morning the as yet unnamed _coccus_ which I had the honour to discover, and which is as deadly as the _coma bacillus_ of Asiatic cholera, or--shall I say?--the highly specialised venom of the rattlesnake."

"Great Scot!"

"This _coccus_, my dear friend, increases and multiplies under certain conditions. It exacts a highly lacerated condition of the mucous membrane into which it burrows. Fortunately it is rare; fortunately, also, it is seldom found in water which has filtered through diatomaceous earth; for these fossilised deposits are only found here and there, and, as a rule, not near water."

"They are three good fellows."

"I hope to pull them through," said the Professor stoutly. "For the moment there is nothing more to be done. They are in bed, and, not to put a fine point on it, half-drunk. Alcohol stupefies the _cocci_, but it does not destroy them. I shall pour whisky down their throats till the drugs I have ordered arrive from San Lorenzo. I have told your foreman that my patients are not to be disturbed. After supper I shall administer another dose of whisky."

An hour later, the Professor, accompanied by me, returned to the bunk- house.