CHAPTER XVI
A TALK WITH JUDGE RILEY
Dr. Wilkes investigated the naked torso of Angus Mackay with skilled fingers.
"Two ribs cracked," he announced, "and you're lucky at that, young man. The scalp wound is nothing. The ribs will be all right in a few weeks, if you give them a chance. Mind, you, Angus, no hard riding, no lifting; move gently and rest all you can."
"But the fall work—" Angus began. The doctor cut him short.
"Work!" he exploded irritably. "There's that word again. By heaven, you all say it! It's 'I can't go away, doc, I can't take a holiday, I can't rest. I've got to work.' Lord knows how many times I've heard it, and from men who wouldn't work a sick or lame horse on a bet. You'd think health was the least important thing on earth, something to be fixed up in a day or two with a Blaud's pill. Work is a fine thing to keep folks out of mischief, but it isn't the chief end of man, and it isn't a damned fetich that demands human sacrifice. Who'll do your work when you're dead?" He glared at Angus ferociously beneath shaggy, red-and-gray brows.
"Well, I won't worry about that," Angus laughed. "I hope it's a long way off."
"It missed your head by about an inch yesterday," Wilkes told him. "There you stand, over six feet, and nearly two hundred pounds of as fine bone and sinew and flesh and blood as I've ever seen, every organ of you, as far as I can tell, as sound as clear pine. And you may be good for seventy years more—or seventy hours. A long way off! Your horse steps in a hole, or a team bolts and you happen to fall wrong, or a little drop of blood clots somewhere. And puff! away you go like a pinch of dust on the trail, which is exactly what you are. A long way off! Of all the blasted but blessed cocksureness of youth!" And he grumbled and growled as he strapped up the injured side.
But Angus paid little attention to the doctor's homily. From the latter's office he went to see Judge Riley who, much to everybody's surprise, had cut his drinking down if not out, and in consequence was much busier than of old. Before him Angus laid the puzzle of Faith Winton's property, Godfrey French's connection therewith, and Braden's attempt to sell part of it.
"There may be a perfectly good explanation," said the lawyer. "For instance, there may have been other properties or other transactions involved. Then as to Braden's attempt to sell to Chetwood, he may have been acting for French, who may be Winton's executor. In any event, if half of this land could be sold for as much as was paid for the whole, nobody but the purchaser would be apt to make subsequent objection."