"Another patient here, they tell me," he grunted in the brusque way that failed to conceal the kindest of hearts.

Buck nodded toward Flandrau.

"Let's have a look at your arm, young fellow," the doctor ordered, mopping his bald head with a big bandanna handkerchief.

"What about the boss?" asked Jake presently.

"Mighty sick man, looks like. Tell you more to-morrow morning."

"Do you mean that he--that he may not get well?" Curly pumped out, his voice not quite steady.

Doctor Brown looked at him curiously. Somehow this boy did not fit the specifications of the desperado that had been poured into his ears.

"Don't know yet. Won't make any promises." He had been examining the wound in a businesslike way. "Looks like the bullet's still in there. Have to give you an anesthetic while I dig it out."

"Nothin' doing," retorted Flandrau. "You round up the pill in there and I'll stand the grief. When this lead hypodermic jabbed into my arm it sorter gave me one of them annie-what-d'ye-call-'em--and one's a-plenty for me."

"It'll hurt," the little man explained.

"Expect I'll find that out. Go to it."

Brown had not been for thirty years carrying a medicine case across the dusty deserts of the frontier without learning to know men. He made no further protest but set to work.

Twenty minutes later Curly lay back on the bunk with a sudden faintness.

He was very white about the lips, but he had not once flinched from the instruments.

The doctor washed his hands and his tools, pulled on his coat, and came across to the patient.

"Feeling like a fighting c.o.c.k, are you? Ready to tackle another posse?" he asked.

"Not quite." The prisoner glanced toward his guards and his voice fell to a husky whisper. "Say, Doc. Pull Cullison through. Don't let him die."

"Hmp! Do my best, young fellow. Seems to me you're thinking of that pretty late."

Brown took up his medicine case and went back to the house.

CHAPTER III

AT THE END OF THE ROAD

Curly's wooden face told nothing of what he was thinking. The first article of the creed of the frontier is to be game. Good or bad, the last test of a man is the way he takes his medicine. So now young Flandrau ate his dinner with a hearty appet.i.te, smoked cigarettes impa.s.sively, and occasionally chatted with his guards casually and as a matter of course.

Deep within him was a terrible feeling of sickness at the disaster that had overwhelmed him, but he did not intend to play the quitter.

Dutch and an old fellow named Sweeney relieved the other watchers about noon. The squat puncher came up and looked down angrily at the boy lying on the bunk.

"I'll serve notice right now that if you make any breaks I'll fill your carca.s.s full of lead," he growled.

The prisoner knew that he was nursing a grudge for the blow that had floored him. Not to be bluffed, Curly came back with a jeer. "Much obliged, my sawed-off and hammered-down friend. But what's the matter with your face? It looks some lopsided. Did a mule kick you?"

Sweeney gave his companion the laugh. "Better let him alone, Dutch. If he lands on you again like he did before your beauty ce'tainly will be spoiled complete."

The little puncher's eyes snapped rage. "You'll get yours pretty soon, Mr.

Curly Flandrau. The boys are fixin' to hang yore hide up to dry."

"Does look that way, doesn't it?" the boy agreed quietly.

As the day began to wear out it looked so more than ever. Two riders from the Bar Double M reached the ranch and were brought in to identify him as the horse thief. The two were Maloney and Kite Bonfils, neither of them friends of the young rustler. The foreman in particular was a wet blanket to his chances. The man's black eyes were the sort that never soften toward the follies and mistakes of youth.

"You've got the right man all right," he said to Buck without answering Flandrau's cool nod of recognition.

"What sort of a reputation has he got?" Buck asked, lowering his voice a little.

Kite did not take the trouble to lower his. "Bad. Always been a tough character. Friend of Bad Bill Cranston and Soapy Stone."

Dutch chipped in. "Shot up the Silver Dollar saloon onct. Pretty near beat Pete Schiff's head off another time."

Curly laughed rather wildly. "That's right. Keep a-coming, boys. Your turn now, Maloney."

"All right. Might as well have it all," Buck agreed.

"I don't know anything against the kid, barring that he's been a little wild," Maloney testified. "And I reckon we ain't any of us prize Sunday school winners for that matter."

"Are we all friends of Soapy Stone and Bad Bill? Do we all rustle stock and shoot up good citizens?" Dutch shrilled.

Maloney's blue Irish eyes rested on the little puncher for a moment, then pa.s.sed on as if he had been weighed and found wanting.

"I've noticed," he said to n.o.body in particular, "that them hollering loudest for justice are most generally the ones that would hate to have it done to them."

Dutch bristled like a turkey rooster. "What do you mean by that?"

The Irishman smiled derisively. "I reckon you can guess if you try real hard."

Dutch fumed, but did no guessing out loud. His reputation was a whitewashed one. Queer stories had been whispered about him. He had been a nester, and it was claimed that calves certainly not his had been found carrying his brand. The man had been full of explanations, but there came a time when explanations no longer were accepted. He was invited to become an absentee at his earliest convenience. This was when he had been living across the mountains. Curly had been one of those who had given the invitation. He had taken the hint and left without delay. Now he was paying the debt he owed young Flandrau.

Though the role Curly had been given was that of the hardened desperado he could not quite live up to the part. As Buck turned to leave the bunk house the boy touched him on the arm.

"How about Cullison?" he asked, very low.

But Buck would not have it that way. "What about him?" he demanded out load, his voice grating like steel when it grinds.

"Is he--how is he doing?"

"What's eatin' you? Ain't he dying fast enough to suit you?"