"Supposing," he introduced baldly, "a fellow--an old fellow like myself," he corrected precisely, "was to be going about his business as an old fellow should, in a two-seated surrey with canvas curtains such as you've seen me drive sometimes." The speaker paused a second to clear his throat. "Supposing this old fellow was just riding through the country easy, taking his time and with nothing particular on his mind, and all of a sudden he should feel as though someone had sneaked up and stuck him from behind with a long, sharp knife. Supposing this should happen, and, although it was the middle of the day, everything should go black as night and he should wake up, he couldn't tell how much later, and find himself all heaped up in the bottom of the rig and the team stock still out in the middle of the prairie." Deliberately as it had left, the cigar returned to the speaker's lips, was puffed hard until it glowed furiously; and was again critically examined. "Supposing such a fat old fellow as myself should tell you this. As a doc and a specialist, would you think there was something worth while the matter with him?"

Still Chantry did not speak, but the burned-out stump in his fingers sought a remote corner of the room, consorted with a goodly collection of its mates, and the drooping eyelid tightened.

"Supposing," continued Landor, "the thing should happen the second time, and the old fellow, who wasn't good at walking, should be spilled out and have to foot it home three miles. What would you think then?"

One of Chantry's hands, itself not over clean, dusted the ash off his vest absently.

"When was it, this last time?" he questioned.

"Yesterday," impa.s.sively. "I'd started for here to meet my nephew when the thing struck me; and when I managed to get home I sent How over instead." He halted reminiscently. "I wrote the boy to come a couple of weeks ago--that's when it caught me first."

"Your nephew, Craig, knows about it, does he?"

Landor puffed anew with a shade of embarra.s.sment.

"No. I thought there was no call to tell the folks at the ranch. Mary'd have a cat-fit if she knew. I told them I got out to shoot at a coyote, and the bronchos ran away." He glanced at the other explanatorily, deprecatingly. "Clayton is my sister's son and the only real relative I have, you know. I just asked him to come on general principles."

Chantry made no comment. Opening a drawer of the desk, he fumbled amid a litter of articles useful and useless, and, extracting a battered stethoscope, shifted his chair forward until it was close to the other and stuck the tiny tubes to his ears. Still without comment he opened the rancher's shirt, applied the instrument, listened, shifted it, listened, shifted and listened the third time--slid his chair back to the former position.

"What else do you know?" he asked.

Landor b.u.t.toned up the gap in his shirt methodically.

"Nothing, except that the thing is in the family. My father went that way when he was younger than I am, and his father the same." The stogie had gone dead in his fingers, and he lit a fresh one steadily. "I've been expecting it to catch up with me for years."

"Your father died of it, you say?"

"Yes; on Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position, and in sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was waiting, I remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner with a stuffed sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks in the air. Mother and Frances--that's my sister--were waiting, and they sent me running to call father. He was a lawyer, and a great hand to shut himself up and work. I was starved hungry, and I remember I hot-footed it proper upstairs to his den and threw open the door." Puff! puff! went the big stogie. "An Irish plasterer with seven kids ate that turkey, I recollect," he completed, "and I've never kept Thanksgiving from that day to this."

"And your grandfather?" unemotionally.

"Just the same. He was a preacher, and the choir was singing the opening anthem at the time."

The doctor threw one thin leg over the other and stared impa.s.sively out the single window. It faced the main street of the town.

"The doings are over for this time, I fancy," he digressed evenly. "I see a row of bronchos tied down in front of Red's place."

Landor did not look around.

"Mary and Mrs. Burton will count them, never fear," he recalled in mock sarcasm. "What I want to know is your opinion."

"In my opinion there's nothing to be done," said Chantry.

Landor shifted again, and again the chair groaned in mortal agony.

"I know that. What I mean is how long is it liable to be before--" he halted and jerked his thumb over his shoulder--"before Bob and the rest will be doing that to me?"

Chantry's gaze left the window, met the shrewd grey eyes beneath the other's drooping lids.

"It may be a day and it may be ten years," he said.

Unconsciously Landor settled deeper into his seat. His jaws closed tight on the stump of the stogie. Unwaveringly he returned the other's gaze.

"You have a more definite idea than that, though," he pressed. "Tell me, and let's have it over with."

For five seconds Chantry did not speak; but the restless black eyes bored the other through and through, at first impersonally, as, scalpel in hand, he would have studied a patient before the first incision in a major operation; then, as against the other's will, a great drop of sweat gathered on the broad forehead, personally, intimately.

"Yes, my opinion is more definite than that," he corroborated evenly. He did not suggest that he was sorry to say what he was about to say, did not qualify in advance by intimating that his prognosis might be wrong.

"I think the next attack will be the last. Moreover, I believe it will come soon, very soon." Impa.s.sively as he had spoken, he produced a book of rice paper from his pocket and a rubber pouch of tobacco. The long fingers were skilful, and a cigarette came into being as under a machine. Without another word he lit a match and waited until the flame was well up on the wood. Of a sudden a great cloud of kindly smoke separated him from the other.

With an effort the big rancher lifted in his seat, pa.s.sed his sleeve across his forehead clumsily.

"Thank you, Chantry." He cleared his throat raspingly. "As I said, I expected this; that's why I came to see you to-day." For the second time his cigar was dead, but he did not light it again. There was no need of subterfuge now. "I want you to do me a favour." He looked at the other steadily through the diminishing haze. "Will you promise me?"

"No," said Chantry.

Landor stared as one who could not believe his ears.

"No!" he interrogated.

"I said so."

A trace of colour appeared in the rancher's mottled cheeks as, with an effort, he got to his feet.

"I beg your pardon then for disturbing you," he said coldly. "I was labouring under the delusion that you were a friend."

The brief career of the cigarette was ended. Chantry's long fingers had locked over his knee. He did not move.

"Sit down, please," he said. "It is precisely because I am your friend that I will not promise."

Landor halted, a question in every line of his face.

"I think I fail to understand," he groped. "I suppose I'm dense."

"No, you're merely transparent. You were going to ask the one thing I can't promise you."

Landor stared, in mystified uncertainty.

"Please sit down. You were going to ask me to take charge of your affairs if anything was to happen. Is it not so?"

"Yes. But how in the world--" "Don't ask it then, please," swiftly. He ignored the other's suggestion. "Get someone else, someone you've known for a long time."

"I've known you for a long time--five years."

"Or leave everything in your wife's hands." Again Chantry scouted the obvious. "If there should be need she could get a lawyer from the city--"

"Lawyer nothing!" refuted Landor. "That's just what I wish to avoid.

Mary or the girl, either one, have about as much idea of taking care of themselves as they have of speaking Chinese. They'd be on the county inside a year, with no one interested to look out for them."