Meantime, Pap Spooner had disappeared. We heard that he had gone to a mountain ranch of his about fifteen miles away. Nobody missed him; nobody cared whether he went or stayed. In the village store it was conceded that Pap's room, rain or shine, was better than his company. His name was never mentioned till it began to fall from Sissy Leadham's delirious lips. The schoolmarm first told me that the child was asking for Andrew Spooner, moaning, wailing, shrieking for "pore old Pap." George Leadham was distracted. "What in thunder she wants that ole cuss fer I can't find out. She's drivin' me plum crazy." I explained. "That's it," said George. "It's bin Pap an' her money night an' day fer forty-eight hours. She wanted ter give him--him, by Jing!--her money." The doctor heard the story half an hour later. He had not the honour of Andrew Spooner's acquaintance, and he had reason to believe that all men in the foothills were devoid of fear. "Fetch Pap," said he, in the same tone as he might have said, "Fetch milk and water!" We made no remark. "I think," said the doctor, gravely, "that if this man comes at once the child may pull through." "By Heaven! he shall come," said George Leadham to me. The doctor had hurried away. "He won't come," said Ajax. "If he don't," said the father, fiercely, "the turkey-buzzards'll hev a meal, for I'll shoot him in his tracks." Ajax looked at me reflectively. "George," said he, "shooting Pap wouldn't help little Sissy, would it? You and I can't handle this job. My brother will go. But--but, my poor old George, don't make ropes out of sand." So I went. When I started, the south-east wind, the rain-wind, had begun to blow, and it sounds incredible, but I was not aware of it. The pestilence had paralysed one's normal faculties. But riding due south-east I became, sooner or later, sensible of the change in the atmosphere. And then I remembered a chance remark of the doctor's. "We shall have this diphtheria with us till the rain washes it away," and one of the squatters had replied, bitterly, "Paradise'll be a cemetery an' nothin' else before the rain comes." Passing through some pine woods I heard the soughing of the tree-tops. They were entreating the rain to come--to come quickly. How well I knew that soft, sibilant invocation! Higher up the few tufts of bunch grass that remained rustled in anticipation. On the top of the mountain, in ordinary years a sure sign of a coming storm, floated a veil of opaline sea mist ... I found Pap and a greaser skinning a dead heifer. Pap nodded sulkily, thinking of his hay and his beans and bacon. "What's up?" he growled. "It's going to rain," said I. "Ye ain't ridden from Paradise to tell me that. An' rain's not a- comin', either. 'Twould be a miracle if it did. How's folks? I heard as things couldn't be worse."