“Why, we don’t just know how to find him,” said Charmian, winking at the two men. “But he’s calling on us to-day, you’ll remember. I guess we’ll just have to stay here and wait for him. Well, we’re all through eating, and I suppose, as hostess, I ought to rise first. But I’m so stiff from yesterday’s ride. Won’t you get up and help me on my feet, Andy?” “‘Mr. Jerome’ would sound better, wouldn’t it, Charmian?” There was a decided corrective note in Mary’s tone. “Oh, we can’t bother with mistering and missising and missing one another,” protested the girl. “I call Doctor Shonto ‘Doctor,’ and I’ve simply got to have a brief name for Mr. Jerome. Andy’s mighty handy. And, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have you two gentlemen, or overgrown boys, or whatever you call yourselves, address me as Charmian. It takes all the kick out of camp life to go about mistering and missising one another. Which would sound more practical, Mary Temple?--‘Doctor Inman Shonto, I think that rattlesnake is about to bite you’ or ‘_Jiggers, Doc! Rattlesnake!_’ I think our eminent physician would jiggers more promptly if he heard the latter, don’t you? Why, I seem to be in pretty good spirits this morning, don’t I?” “You’re talking a lot,” said Mary, and rose to gather up the “dead and wounded” and place them in the dishwater. The doctor had fed and watered the stock while Mary was completing her breakfast-getting. This ascertained, Charmian proposed a ride in search of the opal mines of their vanished dreams. They were only two miles farther in the buttes, the prospectors had revealed, and the girl wanted to visit them while they awaited the coming of the devoted weather man. Also, she wished to limber up again in preparation for the ride to the mountains. Mary Temple refused to be lured from the domestic duties of the camp, so the girl and the two men rode off without her. As they started Mary shrilled after them: “Andy Jerome--if I _must_ call you Andy--did you forget to take your medicine this morning?” Andy grinned sheepishly, stopped his horse, and dismounted. “Humph!” sniffed Mary. “I thought as much.” Andy went to his tent and took a tablet from a pasteboard box. As he carried it to the spring for water to wash it down, he asked: “How did you know I am taking medicine, Mary?--if I _must_ call you Mary.” “Humph! Haven’t I seen you swallow one of those little tablets regularly every morning since I first met you? And I know medicine must be taken regularly in order to get the full benefit of it. I don’t know what you’re taking those tablets for, and I don’t care, but I do know that, so long as I am one of the idiots in this Bonehead Country, you’ll not miss a morning while the medicine lasts.” “Thanks for your thoughtfulness, Mary,” Andy laughed. “I don’t wonder that Charmian finds you indispensable. But did you call the Shinbone Country the Bonehead Country by accident, or--” “Or,” Mary interjected decisively.