“You still get the livers,” Jim reminded his buddy.
“I like ’em better than the gizzards,” said Bob calmly. He set his lips in a tight line when the doctor’s fingers explored sore spots on his body, but although Manwell was highly efficient he was gentle and the lad realized it was better to submit to this thorough examination.
“Your disappearance yesterday caused a great deal of excitement,” he remarked. “I understand that you were sighted above the Black Range. That’s a pretty wild section, almost entirely unexplored; considered inaccessible. These marks were made by ropes, or some kind of thongs wound pretty tightly, but as far as I can see you have not suffered any serious injury; by that I mean you do not seem to have been hurt, struck or wounded. It will help me considerably if you will tell me something of your experience. There are uncivilized tribes far back among those hills. You must have been walked for hours—”
“We did walk for hours,” Jim answered, “and we fell in with an uncivilized tribe of white men, not natives—”
“White men?”
“Yes. We were captured by a gang and made to do a Marathon; no Indian came near us, but we did see a few.”
“Then I do not need to worry about the sort of treatment you might get from natives. I should have known it, for as long as the whites mind their own business, the natives attend very strictly to theirs.” The doctor finished his examination of the younger boy, then turned his attention to Austin.
“We both got the same sort of deal,” Jim explained.
“You’ll be all right shortly, I’m sure, but I should like to keep an eye on you both for a few days,” he told them, then went on chatting as he worked. “Did you happen to see the butterfly flight? I was up with a friend in the morning and saw a little of it.”
“Reckon we saw it all—or a lot of it, anyway,” said Jim.