-fashioned doctors carried. He drew it out and examined if
critically. This, also, was locked, but he shook it tentatively and
heard the faintest possible jingle inside.

"Bottles," he said briefly, and grinned satisfaction. Something
brushed against his hat and he looked up into a very dusty bunch of
herbs. "You too," he told them, breaking the string with one yank.
"For all I know, yuh might stand ace-high in this game. Lord! if I
could trade brains with the old devil, just for to-night!"

He took a last look around, decided that he had found all he wanted,
and went out and pulled the door shut. Then he tied the black medicine
case to the saddle in a way that would give it the least jar, stuffed
the bunch of dried herbs into his pocket and mounted for the homeward
race. As he did so the sun threw a red beam into his eyes as though
reminding him of the passing hours, and ducked behind the ridge which
bounds Lonesome Prairie on the east.

The afterglow filled sky and earth with a soft, departing radiance when
he stopped again in front of the saloon. Old Doc was still
gesticulating wildly, and the sheet of fly-paper still clung to the
back of his coat. The crowd had thinned somewhat and displayed less
interest; otherwise the situation had not changed, except that a pinto
pony stood meekly, with head drooping, at the hitching-pole.

"There's your horse," Rusty Brown called to Weary. "Yours played out?"

"Not on your life," Weary denied proudly. "When yuh see Glory played
out, you'll see him with four feet in the air."

"I seen him that way half an hour ago, all right," bantered Bert Rogers.

Weary passed over the joke. "Mamma! Has it been that long?" he cried
uneasily. "I've got to be moving some. Here, Dock, you put on that
coat--and never mind the label; it's got to go--and so have you."

"Aw, he's no good to yuh, Weary," they protested. "He's too drunk to
tell chloroform from dried apricots."

"That'll be all right," Weary assured them confidently. "I guess he'll
be some sober by the time we hit camp. I went and dug up his dope-box,
so he can get right to work when he arrives. Send him out here."

"Say, he can't never top off Powderface, Weary. I thought yuh was
going to ride him yourself. It's plumb wicked to put that old
centurion on him. He wouldn't be able to stay with him a mile."

"That's a heap farther than he could get with Glory," said Weary,
unmoved. "Yuh don't seem to realiz