District Forester, Ross thanked him, but ordered him to
go into camp across the river, and to warn everybody to keep clear of the
cabin. "Put your packages down outside the door," he added, "and take
charge of the situation on the outside. I'll take care of the business
inside."

Wetherford was in great pain, but the poison of the disease had misted his
brain, and he no longer worried over the possible disclosure of his
identity. At times he lost the sense of his surroundings and talked of his
prison life, or of the long ride northward. Once he rose in his bed to
beat off the wolves which he said were attacking his pony.

He was a piteous figure as he struggled thus, and it needed neither his
relationship to Lee nor his bravery in caring for the Basque herder to
fill the ranger's heart with a desire to relieve his suffering. "Perhaps I
should have sent for Lize at once," he mused, as the light brought out the
red signatures of the plague.

Once the old man looked up with wide, dark, unseeing eyes and murmured, "I
don't seem to know you."

"I'm a friend--my name is Cavanagh."

"I can't place you," he sadly admitted. "I feel pretty bad. If I ever get
out of this place I'm going back to the Fork; I'll get a gold-mine, then
I'll go back and make up for what Lize has gone through. I'm afraid to go
back now."

"All right," Ross soothingly agreed; "but you'll have to keep quiet till
you get over this fever you're suffering from."

"If Lize weren't so far away, she'd come and nurse me--I'm pretty sick.
This stone-cutting--this inside work is hell on an old cow-puncher like
me."

Swenson came back to say that probably Redfield and the doctor would reach
The Station by noon, and thereafter, for the reason that Cavanagh expected
their coming, the hours dragged wofully. It was after one o'clock before
Swenson announced that two teams were coming with three men and two women
in them. "They'll be here in half an hour."

The ranger's heart leaped. Two women! Could one of them be Lee Virginia?
What folly--what sweet, desperate folly! And the other--she could not be
Lize--for Lize was too feeble to ride so far. "Stop them on the other side
of the bridge," he commanded. "Don't let them cross the creek on any
pretext."

As he stood in the door the flutter of a handkerchief, the waving of a
hand, made his pulses glow and his eyes grow dim. It was Virginia!

Lize did not flutter a kerchief or wave a hand, but when Swenson stop