We must stick to that thought. We had been told by persons who knew. If once we began to fuss and not believe, and experiment, then we both would get muddled and we might lose ourselves completely. I remembered what old Jerry the prospector once had said: "When you're on a trail, and you've been told that it goes somewhere, keep it till you get there. Nobody can describe a trail by inches." We went on and on and on. It was down-hill and up-hill and across and through; but we pegged along. Van was about discouraged; and it was a horrible sensation, to suspect that after all we might have got upon a wrong trail, and that we were not heading for the doctor but away from him, while Fitz and Ward were doing their best to save Tom, thinking that we would come back bringing the doctor. We didn't talk much. Van was dubious, and I was afraid to discuss with him, or I might be discouraged, too. I put all my attention to making time at fast walk and at trot, and in hoping. Jiminy, how I did hope. Every minute or two I was thinking that I saw a light ahead--the light of the mines. But when it did appear, it appeared all of a sudden, around a shoulder: a light, and several lights, clustered, in a hollow before! "There it is, Van!" I cried; and I was so glad that I choked up. "Is that the mines?" "Sure. Must be. Hurrah!" "Hurrah!" The sight changed everything. Now the night wasn't dark, the way hadn't been so long after all, we weren't so tired, we had been silly to doubt the trail; for we had arrived, and soon we would be talking with the doctor. The trail wound and wound, and suddenly, again, it entered in among sheds, and the dumps of mines. At the first light I stopped. The door was partly open. It was the hoisting house of a mine, and the engineer was looking out, to see who we were. "Is the doctor here?" I asked. "Guess so. Want him?" "Yes." "He has a room over the store. Somebody hurt? Where you from?" "Harden's ranch. Where is the store?" "I'll show you. Here." He led the way. "Somebody hurt over there?" "No. Sick." We halted beside a platform of a dim building, and the engineer pounded on the door. "Oh, doc!" he called. And when that doctor answered, through the window above, and we knew that it was he, and that we had him at last, I wanted to laugh and shout. But now we must get him back to the major. "You're needed," explained the man. "Couple of kids." And he said to us: "Go ahead and tell him. I'm due at the mine." And off he trudged. We thanked him. "What's the trouble?" asked the doctor. "Appendicitis, we think. We're from the Harden ranch." "Great Scott!" we heard the doctor mutter. Then he said. "All right, I'll be down." And we waited. He came out of a side door and around upon the porch. He was buttoning his shirt. "Who's got it? Not one of _you_?" "No, another boy. He was sick on the trail and we took him to the ranch. Then we rode over here." "What makes you think your friend has appendicitis?"