"Is that you, Doc? No one passes here. What are you doing up here?" Wid walked up to the edge of the car.
"I'm on a call, that's what I'm doing up here," replied Doctor Barnes. "Have you heard anything about an accident up on the Reserve?"
"Accidents a-plenty, right around here. I don't know nothing about the Reserve. Who told you?"
"A man, last night late. Said there was a man hurt up in the timber camp, for me to go up fast as I could. Tree fell on him. They left him up there alone, because they couldn't bring him out."
"That so?" commented Wid Gardner grimly.
—"So that elected me, you see. Every time I try to get a night's sleep, here comes some damn sagebrusher and wants me to come out and cure his sick cow, or else mamma's got a baby, or a horse has got in the wire, or papa's broke a leg, or something. Damn the country anyhow! I wish I'd never seen it. I'm a doctor, yes, but I'm the Company doctor, and I don't have to run on these fool trips. But of course I do," he added, smiling sunnily after his usual fashion. "So I come along here. And you hold me up. What do you want?"
"I want you to wait and come in and see Nels Jensen with me, Doc," said Wid Gardner. "Hell's to pay."
"What's wrong?" Doctor Barnes' face grew graver.
"We don't know what. When Sim and me come home, some one had been here when we was gone. Sim's barn is burned, and all his hay, and all mine, and my house—I haven't got lock, stock nor barrel left of my ranch, and nothing to make a crop with."
"What do you think?" asked Doctor Barnes gravely.