"We ain't here for our health, be we?" demanded Lamb, offensively on the defensive.
"It don't look like it," Treu replied shortly.
"But he'll want for nothin' while he's under our care." Lamb's tone grew suddenly conciliatory. "You'd better go now, your presence excites him and he must have quiet. Step to the door and say good-by, if you like, but no conversation, please."
"Adios, Billy!" The deputy thrust his head and broad shoulders in the doorway. "I'll come again soon."
"Good-by, Dan, good-by for keeps, old man. I don't believe I'll be here when you come again." All the excitement was gone and the boy spoke in the quiet voice of conviction. "You're quittin' me, Dan. You don't believe me and the jig's up. You'd risk your life to save me if I was drowning or up against it in a fight, but you're walkin' away and leavin' me here to die. You don't believe me now, but I know you're goin' to find out some time for yourself that I'm tellin' the truth when I say that I've been murdered. There's more ways to kill a man than with a gun. Ignorance and neglect does the trick as well. Tell the boys 'much obliged,' Dan." He turned his white face to the wall and the tears slipped hot from beneath his lashes.
Dan Treu's troubled eyes sought Lamb's, who waited in the hallway.
"He'll be himself when you come again," said Lamb reassuringly. "We're doin' everything to git his fever down. Don't let his talk worry you."
But in spite of Lamb's confident assurance Dan Treu walked away from the hospital filled with a sense of oppression which lasted throughout the day. The next morning he heard upon the street that they had amputated Billy Duncan's arm.
"Amputated Billy Duncan's arm!" The deputy-sheriff kept saying it over and over to himself as he hurried to the hospital. He was shocked; he was filled with a regret that was personal in its poignancy. He knew exactly what such a loss meant to Billy Duncan, who earned his living with his hands and gloried in his strength—independent young Billy Duncan an object of pity in his mutilated manhood! Dan Treu could not entirely realize it yet.
Lamb met him at the hospital door as though he had awaited his coming.