“It isn’t bad,” she murmured. “But it must be painful. And it ought to be cleaned. I’ll get some stuff and dress it.”
She returned in a minute with a basin, scissors and carbolic acid. Very deftly she snipped the hair away from about the wound, cleaned it with a solution that burned like fire, and drew the edges together with a patch of court-plaster. Then she sat down on the bed beside Rock and said earnestly:
“Now tell me about it.”
“Nothing much to tell,” Rock demurred.
“You mean you won’t?”
“Not just now,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you, anyway. Buck seems to want me out of the way. I am quite a bit wiser about things than I was this morning, but I still have a few guesses coming. There’s nothing to worry about. Don’t let on to any one that I have been shot at. I will say a horse fell with me and cut my head.”
“But it does worry me,” she protested. “I feel uneasy. Something’s got to be done about this, if a man riding for me can’t go anywhere except in danger of his life.”
“Something is going to be done about it,” Rock assured her. “Darned quick, too! It isn’t because I am riding for you. It is because I am supposed to be dangerous, just as Doc was dangerous for something he knew or guessed. He was foolish enough to tip his hand to Buck. I am not going to talk. I’m going to get busy. All you can do is to wish me luck.”
“I do,” she murmured. “I wish the Maltese Cross had never come into this country.”
“In that case I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “And I’m darned glad I came.”