imself when he sees a distress
signal." Then Carey added quietly: "Tell me about Shirley. What have you
been doing for him?"

He was beside Jim's bunk now and his presence seemed to fill the whole
cabin with its subtle strength.

"You know your business, doctor; I'm a farmer," Asher said, as he watched
this frontier physician moving deftly about his work.

"Well, if you mean to farm so far from pill bags you have done well to
follow my trade a little, as you seem to have done with Shirley," Carey
asserted, as he noted the evidences of careful nursing.

"Oh, Virginia--Mrs. Aydelot--helped me," Asher assured him. "She's a nurse
by instinct."

"What did you call your wife?" the doctor inquired.

"Virginia--from her own state. Pretty sick man here." Asher said this as
Dr. Carey suddenly bent over Shirley with stern eyes and tightening lips.
But the eyes grew tender when Jim looked up into his face.

"You're all right, Shirley. You must go to sleep now."

And Shirley, who in his delirium had fought his neighbor all day, became
as obedient as a child, as a very sick child, that night under Horace
Carey's hand.

The next morning Virginia Aydelot was not able to rise from her bed, and
for many days she could do nothing more than to sit in the rocking chair
by the windows and absorb sunshine.

On the fourth day after Carey had reached Shirley's Asher went down the
river in the early afternoon to find how Jim's case was progressing,
leaving his wife comfortably tucked up in the rocking chair by the west
window. The snow was gone and the early December day was as crisp and
beautiful as an Indian summer day in a colder climate. Virginia sat
watching the shadows of the clouds flow along the ground and the prairie
hues changing with the angle of the afternoon sunlight. Suddenly a sound
of ponies' feet outside was followed by a loud rap on the door.

"Come in!" Virginia called. "Lie down, Pilot!"

Pilot did not obey, but sat up alert before his mistress as Darley
Champers' bulk filled the doorway.

"Excuse me, Madam," the real estate dealer said, lifting his hat, "Me and
my friend, Mr. Smith out there, are looking up a claim for a friend of
ours somewhere out in the Grass River settlement. Can you tell me who owns
the last claim taken up down the river, and how far it is from here?"

"Mr. Shirley's claim is a few miles down the river, if you go by the short
trail and ford at the bends, but much longer if you go around