"Not a bit of it," was the reply. "He was back at work in about four days, and within two weeks after his hand had bothered him very little. But he certainly had scars enough afterward." About a week after this narrow escape, Barrs told Roger that in a day or two the work on the quadrangle they were engaged on would be completed and that they would upstake two days later and strike for the next section to the westward, where the first mapping of the contour had yet to be made. Then Barrs turned to Roger. "I don't quite know," he said, "whether that letter you brought me means that you are to stay as long as you like, or as long as I want you, or what. You have not received a recall, of course, but as for the next few weeks, we will simply be getting a general view of the country, I shall not need an extra man, and I think you ought to report in Washington. If you are really going to Alaska next year, I don't know what time they intend to start, and you ought to have a rest first. Don't think I'm driving you away, but it is better so, that is, if Rivers is really going to take you as you seem to think." "As I hope," the boy corrected. "Well, as you hope, then. You ought to be in pretty good trim for it, Doughty; you've had a fairly wide experience, and you don't seem to have grown thin under it. What's more, I've taught you a few of the things you will need to know in the theoretical side of the work, so that you can be some help to a topographic assistant, and Masseth has given you a start in geology. So, I think the best thing I can do is to give you a letter to Mr. Herold, and wish you good luck on your journey." This farewell message, the boy thought, would be his last word in the Pecos country, but riding in to Marfa, the town on the railroad nearest to the point where the camp had broken up, he found great excitement. So far as he could gather, it was the winding up of a feud which had begun some two or three months before. The prisoner, it seemed, some months ago had been shot in the knee by a man who was almost a stranger to him, and as a result of the shot had become paralyzed from the waist down. The man who had shot him had got away. Whereupon the wounded man, certain that the would-be murderer must return to his home some time, had rigged up a little tent in a cactus grove near the man's house, and although semi-paralyzed, had lain there for seven weeks, waiting for the time when his foe should pass along the trail. At last, late one evening, he heard horse's hoofs, and looking out, saw his enemy approaching. As he passed, the half-paralyzed man emptied his revolver almost at point-blank distance, and the other dropped from his horse, dead.