"Not What is it then?" asked the western ranch lad. "It's a stethoscope," declared Nort. "Whew! x I didn't know Yellin' Kid could play one of _them_!" exclaimed Bud. "He must be more musical than any of us thought!" "'Tisn't musical, I tell you!" cried Nort, half laughing. "This is a _stethoscope_--it's what a doctor listens to your lungs or heart with when you're sick." "He never listened to mine!" boasted Bud, "at least not since I can remember, for I've never been sick." "Well, I have," admitted Nort, "and so has Dick. You remember Dr. Thompson using one of these, don't you?" he asked his stout brother. "Sure I do! And there's some other name for it besides plain stethoscope," declared Dick. "It's a long word--bi--di--" "Binaural stethoscope! That's it!" broke in Nort. "I remember, now. I thought I'd never be able to say those words, but they come back to me now. Binaural stethoscope." "'Tisn't good to eat, or shoot with, is it!" asked Bud, as he again took the instrument and turned it over and over in his hands. "Eat! Shoot!" laughed Nort. "No, I tell you it's to listen to your heart beats, or lungs. Binaural means, simply, that it's fixed so you can listen with both ears at the same time. And stethoscope comes from two Greek words, stethos, the breast, and skopen, to view. It means, literally, to view inside the chest, but of course the doctors who use the stethoscope don't really do that. They only listen through the ear pieces--these," and he held up the two rubber tubes ending in hard nipples, pierced with small holes. "What's the other end for!" asked Bud, indicating the shiny disk of metal that dangled from the single tube. "That's the part the doctor holds on your chest or over your heart," Dick answered. "Sometimes the doctor puts it to your back to listen to your breathing from that side." "Well, who in the world would have a--a binaural stethoscope out here!" asked Bud. "Yon reckon Doc. Tunison dropped it!" he went on, referring to the local veterinarian. "Shucks no! Cow doctors don't use 'em, not that I ever heard of," declared Nort. "Though Doc. Tunison is up to date." "He sure was in discovering that it was germs which caused the epidemic outbreak in our stock last year," remarked Bud. "Yes, we got out of that mighty lucky," chimed in Dick. "What's become of Pocut Pete?" he asked, referring to a scoundrel of a cowboy.