"Well," she shrugged her shoulder, "dig then." "But I haven't got it," he pleaded. "Sell a horse." He looked to see if she was serious; undoubtedly she was. "How am I to go on if I sell a horse?" "That's your lookout." He stared at her in real curiosity. "What kind of a doctor are you, anyhow? What kind of a woman?" "O Daddy--it's hurtin' worse!" moaned the child. Dr. Harpe laughed disagreeably-- "I'm not in Crowheart for my health." Ignoring the displeasure which came into the man's eyes, she suggested: "Can't you borrow from those fellows that came with you?" "They're strangers. We are all strangers to each other--we only fell in together on the road. The one lying under the wagon was on a tear in the last town; most likely he's broke." The child in the bunk whimpered with the increasing pain. "How much have you got yourself?" she haggled. "Twenty-two dollars and fifty cents; it's _all_ I've got and we're a hundred miles yet from the end of our road. I've got work there and I'll give you my note and send the balance as soon as I earn it." Twenty-two dollars and fifty cents--it was more than she anticipated, but every extra dollar was "velvet" as she phrased it. "See what you can do with that fellow outside." The man's dark eyes flashed and his face went blood red, but he left the wagon abruptly, and she heard distinctly the angry explanation to his travelling companion lying on a saddle blanket in the shade of the wagon. The knowledge that she was forfeiting these strangers' respect did not disturb her. These indigent campers--gone on the morrow--could do her no harm in Crowheart where her reputation for blunt kindness and imperturbable good nature was already established. It was something of a luxury to indulge her hidden traits; in other words, she was enjoying her meanness. A forceful ejaculation told her that the slumbering debauche had revived and grasped the situation. She listened intently to his response to the other's request for a loan. "So the lady doc wants money? She wants to see the color of your dust before she can set the baby's broken leg, you say? Interesting--very. By all means give the kind lady money. How much money does the lady want?" The color rose swiftly in her cheeks, not so much because of the mocking words as the intonation of the voice in which they were uttered--the most wonderfully musical speaking voice she ever had heard. The angry resentment of the child's foster-father had left her unmoved but this was different. The sneering, cutting insolence came from no ordinary person. It stung her. She thought she detected a slight foreign accent in the carefully articulated words, though the phraseology was distinctly western. The voice was high pitched without effeminacy, soft yet penetrating, polished yet conveying all the meaning of an insult. No Anglo-Saxon could express such mocking contempt by the voice alone--that accomplishment is almost exclusively a gift of the Latins.