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Patsy was a slave of precedent. Many seasons had he cooked beneath a round-up tent, and never had he stocked the mess-wagon for a long trip and left canned corn off the list. It was good to his palate and it was easy to prepare, and no argument could wean him from imperturbably opening can after can, eating plentifully of it himself and throwing the rest to feed the gophers.

“Ain’t there anything to give him?” asked Jack, relenting. “That Three-H would fix him up all right–“

“Dig it up, then,” snapped Cal. “There’s sure something got to be done, or we’ll have a dead cook on our hands.”

“Not even a drop uh whisky in camp!” mourned Weary. “Slim, you ought to be killed for getting away with that liniment.”

Slim was too downhearted to resent the tone. “By golly, I can’t think what I done with it after I used it on Banjo. Seems like I stood it on that rock–“

“Oh, hell!” snorted Cal. “That’s forty miles back.”

“Say, it’s sure a fright!” sympathized Jack Bates as a muffled shriek came through the cloth wall of the tent. “What’s good for tincaneetis, I wonder?”

“A rattling good doctor,” retorted Chip, throwing things recklessly about, still searching. “There goes the damn butter–pick it up, Cal.”

“If old Dock was sober, he could do something,” suggested Weary. “I guess I’d better go after him; what do yuh think?”

“He could send out some stuff–if he was sober enough; he’s sure wise on medicine.”

Weary made him a cigarette. “Well, it’s me for Dry Lake,” he said, crisply. “I reckon Patsy can hang on till I get back; can poison doesn’t do the business inside several hours, and he hasn’t been sick long. He was all right when Happy Jack hit camp about two o’clock. I’ll be back by dark–I’ll ride Glory.” He swung up on the nearest horse, which happened to be Chip’s and raced out to the saddle bunch a quarter of a mile away. The Happy Family watched him go and called after him, urging him unnecessarily to speed.

Weary did not waste time having the bunch corralled but rode in among the horses, his rope down and ready for business. Glory stared curiously, tossed his crimpled, silver mane, dodged a second too late and found himself caught.

It was unusual, this interruption just when he was busy cropping sweet grasses and taking his ease, but he supposed there was some good reason for it; at any rate he submitted quietly to being saddled and merely nipped Weary’s shoulder once and struck out twice with an ivory-white, daintily rounded hoof–and Weary was grateful for the docile mood he showed.

He mounted hurriedly without a word of praise or condemnation, and his silence was to Glory more unusual than being roped and saddled on the range. He seemed to understand that the stress was great, and fairly bolted up the long, western slope of the creek bottom straight toward the slant of the sun.

For two miles he kept the pace unbroken, though the way was not of the smoothest and there was no trail to follow. Straight away to the west, with fifteen miles of hills and coulees between, lay Dry Lake; and in Dry Lake lived the one man in the country who might save Patsy.

“Old Dock” was a land-mark among old-timers. The oldest pioneer found Dock before him among the Indians and buffalo that ran riot over the wind-brushed prairie where now the nation’s beef feeds quietly. Why he was there no man could tell; he was a fresh-faced young Frenchman with much knowledge of medicine and many theories, and a reticence un-French. From the Indians he learned to use strange herbs that healed almost magically the ills of man; from the rough out-croppings of civilization he learned to swallow vile whiskey in great gulps, and to thirst always for more.