n well enough."

"Then you got to wait a minute." She spoke to the constable as if she
had been Captain Constantine himself. "Better just go in and see the
Colonel," she said to the Boy. "He's been askin' for you."

"N-no, Maudie; I can go to Dawson all right, but I don't feel up to
goin' in there again."

"You'll be sorry if you don't." And then he knew what a temperature at a
hundred and four foreboded.

He went back into the tent, dreading to face the Colonel more than he
had ever dreaded anything in his life.

But the sick man lay, looking out drowsily, peacefully, through
half-shut eyes, not greatly concerned, one would say, about anything.
The Boy went over and stood under the gray blanket canopy, looking down
with a choking sensation that delayed his question: "How you feelin'
now, Kentucky?"

"All right."

"Why, that's good news. Then you--you won't mind my goin' off to--to do
a little prospectin'?"

The sick man frowned: "You stay right where you are. There's plenty in
that jampot."

"Yes, yes! jampot's fillin' up fine."

"Besides," the low voice wavered on, "didn't we agree we'd learned the
lesson o' the North?"

"The lesson o' the North?" repeated the other with filling eyes.

"Yes, sah. A man alone's a man lost. We got to stick together, Boy."
The eyelids fell heavily.

"Yes, yes, Colonel." He pressed the big hand. His mouth made the
motion, not the sound, "Good-bye, pardner."

CHAPTER XXII

THE GOING HOME

"Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not
With evil, casts the burden of its lot.
This Age climbs earth.
--To challenge heaven.
--Not less The lower deeps.
It laughs at Happiness."
--George Meredith

Everybody on Bonanza knew that the Colonel had left off struggling to
get out of his bed to go to work, had left off calling for his pardner.
Quite in his right senses again, he could take in Maudie's explanation
that the Boy was gone to Dawson, probably to get something for the
Colonel to eat. For the Doctor was a crank and wouldn't let the sick
man have his beans and bacon, forbade him even such a delicacy as fresh
pork, though the Buckeyes nobly offered to slaughter one of their
newly-acquired pigs, the first that ever rooted in Bonanza refuse, and
more a terror to the passing Indian than any bear or wolf.

"But the Boy's a long time," the Colonel would say wistfully.

Before this quieter phase set in, Maudie had sent into Dawson for
Potts, O'Flynn a