"That's right," replied Mrs. Robinson. "We're waitin' for you, Doc."
The next moment the doctor, a sallow-faced Kentuckian, swung from his saddle and clumped into the tent; he had turned up a wrong trail, he said, in apology for being late.
Harry held the lamp for him while he cleansed the wound and took a few stitches in it. He gave Harry directions for caring for it, and left lint and antiseptics. There was, he said, nothing more that he could do; fortunately all danger of concussion from the blow at the base of the skull had passed, and the other injuries were only flesh wounds. All Rob needed was to keep quiet for a few days. The sheriff, he explained, had not been able to come, because he had gone to Scalp Creek to investigate a shooting affair. While the doctor was getting ready to leave, Mrs. Robinson wrapped the baby in her shawl.
"If it's all the same to you, Doc," she said, "seein' as it's on your road, I'd be mighty obliged if you'd drive me over. The ponies are that mean to-night! You can hitch yours on behind the wagon."
Harry went down to the corral with them and stood in the moonlight holding the sleeping baby while Mrs. Robinson caught and harnessed the horses. Harry felt a generous impulse of admiration for the self-reliant, fearless ranchwoman, and when she said good night asked her cordially to come again.
"If she were only a little more civilized and congenial!" thought Harry regretfully, looking after them until they had vanished amid the moonlit ghosts of sagebrush, and the rattle of wheels had died away.
"I guess it would be better, though, if I were more like her," she suddenly confessed to herself. "Everything she does counts, while I just rush round and waste my breath. Of course she's learned how, while I have been learning civilized things; but if I'm to stay out here I'd better learn how to live here."
She took up her work the next morning with a fresh incentive and in a happy spirit. Caring for the animals was not such a bore as she thought it would be. She went first to the chickens and pigs; next she attended to the horses and heifers in the corral. The cow was nowhere in sight.
"I wonder when Jones will get back?" she thought. "Now that he might really be of some use, of course he's not here."
She finished her work, made Rob comfortable, and then went to walk over the ranch to see in which of the grassy coulees the cow had stayed to feed.