He had an itching desire to ask if this night traveller, too, was in quest of the doctor, but caution held him silent. He had need to proceed warily. He rode briskly along until he judged he had gone far enough to allay suspicion, then he halted suddenly. Very wide-awake was Jim now. His hand rested unconsciously on the Colt’s 45, protruding from his loosely hanging belt. His impulse was to ride boldly back and up to Williston’s door, and thus satisfy himself as to what was doing so mysteriously. There was not a cowardly drop in Jim’s circulation. But if foul play was abroad for Williston that night, he, Jim, of course, was spotted and would never be permitted to reach the house. It would mean a useless sacrifice. Now, he needed to be alive. There was a crying need for his good and active service. Afterwards—well, it was all in the day’s work. It wouldn’t so much matter then. He touched spurs lightly, bent his head against the friction of the air and urged his horse to the maddest, wildest race he had ever run since that day long ago, to be forgotten by neither, when he had been broken to his master’s will. * * * * * Paul Langford dropped one shoe nervelessly to the wolfskin in front of his bed. Though his bachelor room was plain in most respects, plain for the better convenience of the bachelor hands that had it to put to rights every day,—with the exception of a cook, Langford kept no servant,—the wolfskin here, an Indian blanket thrown over a stiff chair by the table, a Japanese screen concealing the ugly little sheet-iron stove that stood over in its corner all the year round, gave evidence that his tastes were really luxurious. An oil lamp was burning dimly on the table. The soot of many burnings adhered to the chimney’s inner side. “One would know it was Jim’s week by looking at that chimney,” muttered the Boss, eyeing the offending chimney discontentedly as he dropped the other shoe. “He seems to have an inborn aversion to cleaning chimneys. It must be a birthmark, or maybe he was too anxious to get to town to-night. I see I’ll have to discipline Jim. I have to stop and think even now, sometimes, who’s boss of this shebang, he or I. Sometimes I’m inclined to the opinion that he is. Come to think of it, though,” whimsically, “I lean to a vague misgiving that I didn’t touch that low-down chimney myself last week. We’re kind of an ornery set, I’m thinking, every mother’s son of us—and I’m the worst of the lot. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for the bunch of us, if one of the boys were to marry and bring his girl to the Three Bars. But I’ll be hanged if I know which one I’d care to give up to the feminine gender. Besides, she’d be bossy—they all are—and she’d wear blue calico wrappers in the morning—they all do.” He began pacing the floor in his stocking feet.