“Oh! go on and have your little joke, if it gives you any pleasure, fellows. But I’d do that same thing again, I reckon under similar circumstances. That poor chap was in a bad way, what with his cuts, and being nigh starved. I own up I didn’t just like his looks, but he was in a peck of trouble, and I just didn’t have the heart to desert him till he’d got to feeling better, and said he thought he might get on alone. Never thought to ask his name either; and when I told the boys all about it, and described him as a fellow with a squint in his left eye, why, they just laughed themselves sick over it, and told me I’d been playing nurse to the meanest rascal that ever went unhung.” “Yes, not a man around the Red Spar has a good word to say about that Tod Harkness,” ventured Donald, still grinning; “he’s been a cattle rustler and a general all-round shirk, a thief and everything that’s bad. They thought you’d been sold the worst kind. Why, some of the men wanted to know if the sneak hadn’t stolen your pocketbook while you were helping him walk to a place where you meant to camp, that night you got lost.” “Well, he didn’t, and that’s all there is about it,” said Billie, firmly. “Mebbe Tod Harkness is everything you say; but he was a mighty sick man right then and there. So please forget it. I know I’m soft, and most anybody can impose on me; but I was born that way; and they say the leopard just can’t change his spots. Let that little episode drop. I ain’t sorry one whit, I tell you. Do it again if I ran across a sick man, don’t care if he was the Old Nick himself. So there!” Donald gave Adrian a nod as if to say “just see how set he is in his ways;” but neither of them continued making any further remark upon the subject which was such a sore one with their stout chum. Indeed, further conversation was rendered out of the question by Bray, for the pack mule took a sudden notion to give tongue; and when he let out his voice no human tones could prevail against the raucous sounds. “I think I can see where we’re going to put up tonight!” Donald called out, some ten minutes afterwards. At that Billie brightened visibly. “Oh! that’s the best thing I’ve heard you say for a whole hour, Donald,” he declared, with some signs of excitement. “Then, chances are we’ll be getting busy with supper before a great while. That always pleases me, you know, boys.” “Yes, and it’s a lucky thing for all of us that the wives of those miners saw fit to make up that hunky-dory pack of supplies, when they heard where we meant to head for, before starting back to Keystone ranch,” Adrian went on to say. “Oh! I’m always free to admit that I’ve got some appetite along with me,” acknowledged Billie, complacently; for nothing they could ever say along these lines seemed to disturb him in the least.