On the morning of the fourth day, Miss Georgie woke with the vague sense that something had gone wrong. True railroader as she had come to be, she thought first that there had been a wreck, and that she was wanted at the telegraph instrument. She was up and partly dressed before the steps and the voices which had broken her sleep had reached her door. Pete Hamilton's voice, trembling with excitement, called to her. “What is it? What has happened?” she cried from within, beset by a hundred wild conjectures. “Saunders--somebody shot Saunders. Wire for a doctor, quick as yuh can. He ain't dead yet--but he's goin' t' die, sure. Hurry up and wire--” Somebody at the store called to him, and he broke off to run lumberingly in answer to the summons. Miss Georgie made haste to follow him. Saunders was lying upon a blanket on the store platform, and Miss Georgie shuddered as she looked at him. He was pasty white, and his eyes looked glassy under his half-closed lids. He had been shot in the side--at the stable, he had gasped out when Pete found him lying in the trail just back of the store. Now he seemed beyond speech, and the little group of section-hands, the Chinese cook at the section-house, and the Swede foreman, and Pete seemed quite at a loss what to do. “Take him in and put him to bed,” Miss Georgie commanded, turning away. “See if he's bleeding yet, and--well, I should put a cold compress on the wound, I think. I'll send for a doctor--but he can't get here till nine o'clock unless you want to stand the expense of a special. And by that time--” Saunders moved his head a trifle, and lifted his heavy lids to look at her, which so unnerved Miss Georgie that she turned and ran to the office. When she had sent the message she sat drumming upon the table while she waited for an answer. “G-r-a-n-” her fingers had spelled when she became conscious of the fact, flushed hotly, and folded her hands tightly together in her lap. “The doctor will come--Hawkinson, I sent for,” she announced later to Pete, holding out the telegram. She glanced reluctantly at the wrinkled blanket where Saunders had lain, caught a corner of her under lip between her teeth, and, bareheaded though she was, went down the steps and along the trail to the stable. “I've nearly an hour before I need open the office,” she said to herself, looking at her watch. She did not say what she meant to do with that hour, but she spent a quarter of it examining the stable and everything in it. Especially did she search the loose, sandy soil in its vicinity for tracks.