The doctor indicated a chair close to his desk, and then sank back in his own seat with the air of one who is about to say something weighty and important.
"Don't you try to scare me about anything, doc," said Clancy apprehensively, as he slid into the chair.
"Tush!" and the physician wagged his head. "You haven't got sense enough to be scared at anything. That's the main trouble with you. It's two weeks since you went to Wickenburg and got in front of that bullet. We kept you in bed for a week, and now you have been on your feet for another week. So far as the wound is concerned, Clancy, you are all right, but so far as something else is concerned, you are all wrong." Ferguson's eyes narrowed and he leveled a forefinger at his patient. "What happened, up there at Wickenburg?" he demanded.
"What happened?" repeated Clancy. "Why, you just spoke of that. I got in front of a bullet."
"Stop, trying to play horse with me!" went on the doctor sourly. "Something took place between you and your partner, Lafe Wynn, at Wickenburg, and I want to know what it was."
Clancy stiffened.
"That's a personal matter, Doctor Ferguson," he answered, "and I don't have to explain it to anybody."
"Well, you needn't get hot about it. There's something on your mind, and it's holding back your complete recovery. I'm asking questions and talking from the standpoint of your physician. If I knew the nature of the thing that bothered you, very possibly I could take means to counteract it."
Clancy was impressed by Ferguson's shrewdness. Yet he had no intention of revealing the cause of his secret worry.
How could he tell Ferguson, or anybody else, what really happened at Wickenburg? Only two or three people knew that Lafe Wynn had forged Clancy's name to a check and had absconded with that money, and with all the cash assets of the firm of Clancy & Wynn. Only two or three knew how Clancy had trailed Wynn to Wickenburg and had sent him back to Phoenix to take charge of the Square-deal Garage, as usual, while he–Clancy–was in bed in the other town for a week.