ng this system,
Gordon. Hanged if I didn't think that fellow was too soft." He called
the flagman over. "Tell Whitmyer we will stay at Cold Springs
to-night."

"I thought you were going through to Medicine Bend," suggested Smith
as the trainman disappeared.

"McCloud," repeated Bucks, taking up his cigar and throwing back his
head in a cloud of smoke.

"Yes," assented his companion; "but I am going through to Medicine
Bend, Mr. Bucks."

"Do."

"How am I to do it?"

"Take the car and send it back to-morrow on Number Three."

"Thank you, if you won't need it to-night."

"I sha'n't. I am going to stay at Cold Springs to-night and hunt up
McCloud."

"But that man is in bed in a very bad way; you can't see him. He is
going to die."

"No, he isn't. I am going to hunt him up and have him taken care of."

That night Bucks, in the twilight, was sitting by McCloud's bed,
smoking and looking him over. "Don't mind me," he said when he entered
the room, lifted the ill-smelling lamp from the table, and, without
taking time to blow it out, pitched it through the open window. "I
heard you were sick, and just looked in to see how they were taking
care of you. Wilcox," he added, turning to the nurse he had brought
in--a barber who wanted to be a railroad man, and had agreed to step
into the breach and nurse McCloud--"have a box of miner's candles sent
up from the roundhouse. We have some down there; if not, buy a box and
send me the bill."

McCloud, who after the rioting had crawled back to bed with a
temperature of 105 degrees, knew the barber, but felt sure that a
lunatic had wandered in with him, and immediately bent his feeble
mental energies on plans for getting rid of a dangerous man. When
Bucks sat down by him and continued talking at the nurse, McCloud
caught nothing of what was said until Bucks turned quietly toward him.
"They tell me, McCloud, you have the fever."

The sick man, staring with sunken eyes, rose half on his elbow in
astonishment to look again at his visitor, but Bucks eased him back
with an admonition to guard his strength. McCloud's temperature had
already risen with the excitement of seeing a man throw his lamp out
of the window. Bucks, meantime, working carefully to seem unconcerned
and incensing McCloud with great clouds of smoke, tried to discuss his
case with him as he had already done with the mine surgeon. McCloud,
thinking it best to humor a crazy man, responded quietly. "The doctor
sa