“We’ll see about this later on,” answered Eastman. “You must accept it. And there’s another thing I want to offer. You know, Doctor Fowler’s been up from San Francisco to look over the Blue Top position. But he won’t suit. Do you think he’s been worrying about the finding of my boy? Not a bit of it. He’s been worrying for fear the bungalow wouldn’t be big enough to please his wife. There’s one thing I didn’t realise the other day, Doc. What we need is a physician that doesn’t put on so much style—the kind of a man that can meet any emergency, you understand—take a horse over a trail if it’s necessary.”
“Yas?” returned the doctor. The tray was still in his hands. And now it began to tremble so that there was a faint clink of glass. He stood looking down at it.
“In fact,” went on Eastman, “we need a doctor like you at the mine.”
The doctor raised his eyes to the girl standing at Mrs. Eastman’s side. And he saw that there was a look of great happiness on her face, like the happiness on the face of the young mother.
“Blue Top!” he said. Then: “Letty, do you think the little shingled house is too small?”
THE BOOMERANG
WHEN darkness settled a figure began to follow Patton—a tall, ungainly, heavy-shouldered figure. It shadowed him down the single street of the desert town to the depot, where he bought two tickets and checked two beribboned trunks; it lurked at his heels when he went back along the dirt sidewalk to Conley’s restaurant, the largest of the score of unpainted pine shacks that made up Searles. The restaurant faced the single track of the railroad line, and as Patton ate his supper, the figure stood on the ties, quiet and watchful. When Patton left the restaurant for the barber-shop farther along the street, it moved parallel with him, and took up its station outside a front window of the place.
Patton entered the shop hurriedly and dropped into the only chair. He was a man of, perhaps, forty, with black hair that was brushed away slickly from a narrow forehead, and black eyes set deep and near together. His nose was long and sharply pointed. His mouth was too full for his lean jaws, which gave his cheeks the appearance of being constantly sucked in. But he was far from ill-looking. And when he got out of the barber’s chair presently, fresh-shaven, there was a healthy glow to his dark skin under its trace of powder.
He arranged a spotless collar and a fresh tie, settled his soft hat on his carefully combed hair, adjusted his coat before a mirror, and went out. The figure moved with him, going toward the depot once more. A building beyond the station was brightly lighted. Patton made toward it, walking fast and whistling. The figure walked faster than he—until it was almost at his heels.
“Patton!”