His suspicions, however, during the two weeks which followed, were swallowed up in the anxiety that attended this, the first "case" where he had been obliged to assume all responsibility. The care and interruptions to his rest wore on him. Never had one of Aunt Anne's hair mattresses invited sleep as did the blankets laid on the dirt floor when he found time to lie on them. Often he fell asleep sitting on the hard bench, his head on his arms crossed on the table, while Hank was frying flapjacks and boiling thick black coffee. As for the patient, he accepted Ross's ministrations with but few remarks. As his thigh bone began to knit, he became querulous, and finally passively enduring. "When you goin' to let me out of this?" he asked on the day when Ross last measured the injured leg. The boy settled back on his heels. "I have sent for some plaster of Paris," he explained, "and, by the time it gets here, your leg will be healed and ready for a cast. Then you can be taken back to Cody and let the doctor there see you. If it was not for that ugly fracture you would have been out of here before. If you'd only have the Cody doctor to look you over now----" The man grunted, and worked restlessly at the sand-bag, which, on the outside of his leg, reached his armpit. "Cody doctor be hanged!" he remarked unaffably. "He don't know half as much as you do." It was the nearest approach to thanks or praise he had given Ross. "That Cody doctor ain't worth shucks," confirmed Hank, who occupied a box beside the stove. "He tended a feller that I knew, and let 'im die." The speaker looked from Ross to his patient with an expression which plainly said that the former could not be guilty of any such charge. The brown eyes of the patient rolled slowly in their sockets until their gaze could rest on Ross. Then the lids dropped over them. "The Cody doctor be hanged!" he remarked again more affably, and fell asleep. Ross continued to sit on his heels until his patient commenced to snore. Then he glanced at the occupant of the box seat and asked softly: "Hank, has Weston ever told you where he came from?" "Nope," responded Hank absently. "Not where he hails from ner where he's started fer, ner why, ner what fer. That's nothin' though, Doc." Here Hank looked sidewise at Ross. "You'll find, if ye stay in these parts long, that there's lots of men who ain't partin' with every fact they know within ten minutes after ye're introduced to 'em. And you'll find, too, that it ain't always healthy to ask questions. Ye have th' sort of sense who ye can question and who ye can't." "And this fellow----" Ross jerked his head in the direction of the sleeper. Hank yawned and reached for the poker and a stick of wood. "I ain't aimin' to inquire fer into his history--unless I could inquire of some one else besides himself, that is. Hello!" he interrupted himself suddenly with the stick held over the stove. "Who's that hikin' over the Creek?"