"An unusual combination," laughed Benson, and his eyes met Power's quizzically. "Well, so long! Let me know if I can do anything."

Beyond the purely business formalities connected with the payment of Power's salary and the acceptance of his resignation, Benson heard little of him until ten days later, when a telegram reached him in the early morning. It was from MacGonigal, and read:

"Don't like the look of Power's leg. Send doctor."

That afternoon Benson brought Dr. Stearn to the store, and MacGonigal explained that from some remark grunted by Peters when quite sober, and from personal observation, he was not satisfied with the appearance of Power's injured limb. The doctor, a fully qualified medical man, was very wroth with Peters when he had made a brief examination of the patient.

"This is the work of an incompetent quack," he said angrily. "Whoever the man may be, he is the worst sort of idiot--the sort that knows a little of what he is doing. The splints and bandaging have served their purpose only too well, because callous is forming already. Unless you wish to have one leg half an inch shorter than the other during the rest of your life, Mr. Power, you must let me put you under ether."

"Why?" came the calm-voiced question.

"To put it plainly, your leg should be broken again, and properly set."

"What is wrong with it?"

"You know you have two bones in that part of the leg which is below the knee, the tibia and the fibula? Well, they were broken--by a blow, was it? No, a fall--well, they practically amount to the same thing, though there are indications that this injury was caused by a blow----"

"He fell off one rock onto another, doctor," put in Benson.

"Ah, yes! That accounts for it. As I was saying, they were broken slantwise, and now, instead of being in correct apposition, the upper parts override the lower ones. Do you follow?"

"Suppose they are not interfered with, will they heal all right?" said Power.

"Y-yes," came the grudging admission; "but you'll walk with a limp."

"Bar that, the left leg will be as strong as the right one?"

"Stronger, in that particular place. Nature does some first-rate grafting, when the stock is young and exceptionally healthy."

Power smiled, almost with the compelling good-humor of other days. "Then I'll limp along, Doctor," he said. "I have things to do, and this enforced waste of time is the worst feature of the whole business. It is very good of you to come out here, and more than kind of Mr. Benson to accompany you; but I won't, if I can avoid it, endure another ten days like the sample I have just pa.s.sed through."

"You'll regret your decision later. There's no means of adding that half inch afterward, you know."

"I quite understand, Doctor. It's a limp for life."

Dr. Stearn felt the calf muscles and tendons again, and pressed the region of the fracture with skilled gentleness.

"It's a pity," he growled. "You've made a wonderful recovery. If, when you are able to hobble about, you meet this rascal, Peters, and shoot him, call me as a witness in your behalf. It would be a clear case of justifiable homicide!"

So that is how John Darien Power acquired the somewhat jerky movement which characterizes his walk today; though the cause of it is blurred by the mists of a quarter of a century. The red-whiskered Peters was shot long ago, not by Power, but by an infuriated miner from whose jaw he had wrenched two sound teeth before discovering the decayed stump which led to this display of misplaced energy. It was well that such impostors should be swept out of the townlets of Colorado, even if the means adopted for their suppression were drastic. They wrought untold mischief by their pretensions, and brought hundreds of men and women to needless death. They did some little good, perhaps, in communities where physicians and surgeons were few and far between; but their rough and partly successful carpentry of the human frame did not atone for the misery they inflicted in cases which demanded a delicately exact and scientific diagnosis. At any rate, they have gone, never to be seen again in Colorado, and the precise manner of their departure, whether by rum, or lead, or wise and far-reaching laws, does not concern this narrative.

What does concern it most intimately is the first use Power made of his limping steps; for upon their direction and daily increasing number depended the whole of his subsequent history. Life still held for him certain rare and noteworthy phases--developments which, when viewed through the vista of many years, seemed as inevitable and preordained as the ordered sequence of a Greek tragedy. Yet, on the day he hobbled out into the sunshine again, it was just the spin of a coin whether he rode to the Dolores ranch or took train for Denver, and it is safe to say that had he done the one thing instead of the other his future career must have been drawn into an entirely different channel.

At least, that is the way men reason when they review the past, and single out some trivial act which apparently governed their destinies; whereat, in all probability, the G.o.ds smile pityingly, for the lives of some men cannot be the outcome of idle chance, and John Darien Power's life was a.s.suredly no commonplace one.

CHAPTER IV

THE SUDDEN RISE OF PETER MACGONIGAL

A four-wheeled buggy, with springs, the only vehicle of its kind in Bison, had been hired for Power's first outing. During a whole week toward the close of July he had stumped about on a crutch, and, when the great day arrived that he was able to crawl slowly to and fro in the veranda with the aid of a stick, he announced to the watchful MacGonigal that henceforth he was "on the job again."

On that memorable occasion, while Derry was showing off the new-found accomplishment of walking, an elderly man, white-haired and wiry, but of small stature, rode by on a mettlesome mustang. Power's face grew hard when he met the rider's stare of astonishment; but the expression fled instantly, and he waved a friendly greeting, which, however, received the curtest of responses, while the horse unexpectedly found his head free for a canter.

MacGonigal, whose big eyes lost nothing within range, noted the bare nod which acknowledged Power's salute.

"Old man Willard held out the marble mitt that-a time, Derry," said he.

Power did not reply for a moment. When he answered, he quoted Dryden's couplet:

"Forgiveness to the injured doth belong; But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong."

"Good fer you, Derry!" exclaimed the storekeeper appreciatively. "I've often wondered what you was connin' to yerself up thar," and he jerked his head in the direction of Power's bedroom; "but I never allowed it was po'try."

"You were not mistaken, Mac. I was hard at work on dry prose. Those lines are not mine. They were written before Colorado was christened, and they will be true until men attain the millennium."

"Huh!"

MacGonigal took refuge in a noncommittal grunt, because he fancied that the millennium was the name of a Chicago vaudeville house, and, somehow, the notion did not seem to fit into its right place in the conversation.

"For all that," mused Power aloud, "I'll call on Mr. Francis Willard, tomorrow."

So this resolution explained the light conveyance standing outside the store next morning. Power was in the act of settling himself as comfortably as might be beside the driven, when One-thumb Jake galloped down the slope leading from the Gulch. The cowboy pulled up in the approved style of his tribe, swung out of the saddle, and banged into the veranda a decrepit portmanteau, which he had been carrying in the thumbless hand.

"Room an' drink fer a single gent!" he shouted. "I'm an orfin, I am, a pore weak critter slung out inter a crool world!"

"You're never leaving the Willard outfit, Jake?" said Power, who might well be surprised, since the man had been connected with the Dolores ranch since the first lot of cattle was turned loose on its pastures.

"That's about the size of it," said the other.

"But why?"

"The old man says, 'Git!' an' I got."

"No reason?"

"Wall, if you squeeze it outer me, I'll be squoze. In a sort of a way, it had ter do with you."

"With me?"

"Yes, sir. The boss says ter me yestiddy, 'Why is Derry Power hangin'

roun' Mac's?' Says I, 'He bruk his leg.' 'Pity he didn't break his neck,' says the boss, an', seein' as you'se a friend of mine, I didn't agree with any sich sentiments, an' tole him the same. He kind o' curled up then; but this mornin' he gev me the perlite push,--said as he was quittin' Bison fer a spell, an' the ranch would be shut down. Anyways, Derry, I'm mighty glad ter see you hoppin' aroun'. Git down outer that rig, an' hev a sociable drink."

Power consulted his watch, and seemed to arrive at some decision on the spur of the moment.