s a fellow can't sleep when he's
got a lead pill in him, doctor. Could you give me something to help him
forget the pain an' the fever?"

The doctor made up some powders. "One every two hours till he gets to
sleep. I'll come and see him in the morning. You're at the Proctor House,
aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Is Roush goin' to live?" asked Jim.

The professional man looked at the boy speculatively. He wondered whether
the young fellow was suffering qualms of conscience. Since he did not
believe in the indiscriminate shooting in vogue on the frontier, he was
willing this youngster should worry a bit.

"Not one chance for him in a hundred," he replied brusquely.

"That's good. I'd hate to have to do it all over again. Have you got the
makin's with you, Billie?" Clanton asked evenly.

"I've got a plain and simple word for such killings," the doctor said,
flushing. "I find it in my Bible."

"That's where my dad found it too, doctor."

With which cryptic utterance Clanton led the way out of the office to the
hotel.

Jimmie lay down dressed on the bed of their joint room while his friend
went down to the porch to announce to sundry loafers, from whom the news
would spread over town shortly, that Clanton had gone to sleep and was on
no account to be disturbed till morning.

Later in the afternoon Billie might have been seen fixing a stirrup
leather for Bud Proctor, the fourteen-year-old heir of the hotel
proprietor. He and the youngster appeared to be having a bully time on
the porch, but it was noticeable that the cowpuncher, for all his manner
of casual carelessness, sat close to the wall in the angle of an L so
that nobody could approach him unobserved.

In an admiring trance Bud had followed the two friends from the office of
the doctor. Now he was in the seventh heaven at being taken into
friendship by one of these heroes. At last he screwed up his courage to
refer to the affair at Tolleson's.

"Say, Daniel Boone ain't got a thing on yore friend, has he? Jiminy, I'd
like to go with you both when you leave town."

Billie spoke severely. "Get that notion right out of your haid, Bud.
You're goin' to stay right here at home. I'll tell you another thing
while we're on that subject. Don't you get to thinkin' that killers are
fine people. They ain't. Some of 'em aren't even game. They take all
kinds of advantage an' they're a cruel, cold-blooded lot. Never forget
that. I'm not talkin' about Jim Clanton, understand. H