n you
are. There is work for you to do. Besides, there's my girl; you're
detailed to look after her."

"Would a doctor come?" asked Ross, huskily, moved by Wetherford's words.
"It's a hard climb. Would they think the dago worth it?"

Wetherford's face darkened with a look of doubt. "It _is_ a hard trip for
a city man, but maybe he would come for you--for the Government."

"I doubt it, even if I were to offer my next month's salary as a fee.
These hills are very remote to the townsfolk, and one dago more or less of
no importance, but I'll see what I can do."

Ross was really more concerned for Wetherford himself than for the Basque.
"If the fever is something malignant, we must have medical aid," he said,
and went slowly back to his own camp to ponder his puzzling problem.

One thing could certainly be done, and that was to inform Gregg and Murphy
of their herder's illness; surely they would come to the rescue of the
collie and his flock. To reach a telephone involved either a ride over
into Deer Creek or a return to the Fork. He was tempted to ride all the
way to the Fork, for to do so would permit another meeting with Lee; but
to do this would require many hours longer, and half a day's delay might
prove fatal to the Basque, and, besides, each hour of loneliness and toil
rendered Wetherford just so much more open to the deadly attack of the
disease.

Here was the tragic side of the wilderness. At such moments even the Fork
seemed a haven. The mountains offer a splendid camping-place for the young
and the vigorous, but they are implacable foes to the disabled man or the
aged. They do not give loathsome diseases like pox, but they do not aid in
defence of the sick. Coldly aloof, its clouds sail by. The night winds
bite. Its rains fall remorselessly. Sheltering rocks there are, to be
sure, but their comfort is small to the man smitten with the scourge of
the crowded city. In such heights man is of no more value than the wolf or
the cony.

It was hard to leave an old and broken man in such a drear and
wind-contested spot, and yet it had to be done. So fastening his tent
securely behind a clump of junipers, Cavanagh mounted his horse and rode
away across the boundary of the forest into the Deer Creek Basin, which
had been the bone of much contention for nearly four years.

It was a high, park-like expanse, sparsely wooded, beautiful in summer,
but cold and bleak in winter. The summers were short, and frost fell
alm