"We need the touch of a woman's hand here," said he. They brought Jerry's tent and set it up for her. She was asleep at dusk. * * * * * Mrs. Boyle arrived next morning, having started as soon as the messenger bearing news of the tragedy reached the ranch. She was a slight, white-haired woman, who had gone through hardships before coming to prosperity on that frontier, so the fifty-mile ride in a wagon was no unusual or trying experience for her. Whatever tears she had for her son's sad plight she had spent on the rough journey over. As she sat beside him stroking his heavy hair back from his pallid brow, there was in her face a shadow of haunting anxiety, as if the recollection of some old time of terror added its pangs to those of the present. Her presence in camp, and her constant ministrations at her son's side, relieved Dr. Slavens of considerable professional anxiety, as well as labor. It gave him time to walk about among the gigantic stones which cast their curse of barrenness over that broken stretch, Agnes with him, and make a further investigation of the land's mineral possibilities. "Ten-Gallon was telling the truth, in my opinion," said he. "I have explored these rocks from line to line of this claim, and I reached the conclusion a good many days ago that somebody had been misled in supposing it was worth money. It was nothing but Boyle's persistent determination to get hold of it that gave it a color of value in my mind." "Still, it may be the means, after all, of yielding you as much as you expected to get out of it at the first," she suggested. He looked at her questioningly. "I mean the Governor's declaration yesterday morning that he would pay you twice what you expected to get out of it if you would save Jerry's life." "Oh, _that_!" said he, as if he attached little importance to it. "He's a millionaire many times over," she reminded him. "He can afford to do it, and he should." "I may be out of the case entirely before night," he told her, explaining that another physician would arrive on the first train from Cheyenne. "You know best," said she, resigning hope for his big fee with a sigh. "Smith will come over with your tent and goods today, very likely," said he, "and then we can leave. I had planned it all along, from the time we used to take those moonlight walks to the river, that we should leave this country together when it came our time to go." "It would be wrong for you to waste your life here, even if you could make more money than elsewhere, when the world with more people and more pain in it needs you so badly," she encouraged him. "Just so," he agreed. "It's very well for Smith to stay here, and men of his kind, who have no broader world. They are doing humanity a great service in smoothing the desert and bringing the water into it." "We will leave it to them," she said.