t home and had
lost his way. Mrs. Tellamantez was watching beside the unconscious man
while Mrs. Kohler and Johnny went to get help.

"You better go home now, I think," said Mrs. Tellamantez, in closing her
narration.

Thea hung her head and looked wistfully toward the blanket.

"Couldn't I just stay till they come?" she asked. "I'd like to know if
he's very bad."

"Bad enough," sighed Mrs. Tellamantez, taking up her work again.

Thea sat down under the narrow shade of one of the trestle posts and
listened to the locusts rasping in the hot sand while she watched Mrs.
Tellamantez evenly draw her threads. The blanket looked as if it were
over a heap of bricks.

"I don't see him breathing any," she said anxiously.

"Yes, he breathes," said Mrs. Tellamantez, not lifting her eyes.

It seemed to Thea that they waited for hours. At last they heard voices,
and a party of men came down the hill and up the gulch. Dr. Archie and
Fritz Kohler came first; behind were Johnny and Ray, and several men
from the roundhouse. Ray had the canvas litter that was kept at the
depot for accidents on the road. Behind them trailed half a dozen boys
who had been hanging round the depot.

When Ray saw Thea, he dropped his canvas roll and hurried forward.
"Better run along home, Thee. This is ugly business." Ray was indignant
that anybody who gave Thea music lessons should behave in such a manner.

Thea resented both his proprietary tone and his superior virtue. "I
won't. I want to know how bad he is. I'm not a baby!" she exclaimed
indignantly, stamping her foot into the sand.

Dr. Archie, who had been kneeling by the blanket, got up and came toward
Thea, dusting his knees. He smiled and nodded confidentially. "He'll be
all right when we get him home. But he wouldn't want you to see him like
this, poor old chap! Understand? Now, skip!"

Thea ran down the gulch and looked back only once, to see them lifting
the canvas litter with Wunsch upon it, still covered with the blanket.

The men carried Wunsch up the hill and down the road to the Kohlers'.
Mrs. Kohler had gone home and made up a bed in the sitting-room, as she
knew the litter could not be got round the turn in the narrow stairway.
Wunsch was like a dead man. He lay unconscious all day. Ray Kennedy
stayed with him till two o'clock in the afternoon, when he had to go out
on his run. It was the first time he had ever been inside the Kohlers'
house, and he was so much impressed by N