"When he got through, Burleigh merely answered:
"'Mac, take that blanket and go to bed. I'll talk to you in the morning.'
"When the Ranger woke, a little after daylight, the grazer sat beside his blanket, smoking. He began without wasting any time.
"'Mac,' he said, 'I'm going to take my sheep out to-day. Not because of any of your little bits of printed orders—I could drive a whole herd through them; and not because of any of your bosses back in Washington, who wouldn't know a man's country if they ever got into it, and couldn't find their way out; and not entirely because, as you say, "the little white lady" trusts me, though perhaps that's got a good deal to do with it. But when I find a man who is so many different kinds of a fool as you seem to be, it looks some like my moral duty to keep him out of an asylum.' And that's the story I heard about Burleigh.
"But I interrupted you," the boy continued, "you were going to tell me about Doctor Davis. Didn't you ever go back to the city?"
"Oh, yes," she replied. "The doctor had to take his hospital service, and for three years he spent six months in the hospital in the city, and six months out here in the mountains. But there were several good surgeons in the city, and only one on the great wide Sierras, and, as you know, he is strong enough for the hardest work. So,—I remember well the night,—he came to me, and hesitatingly suggested that we should live out here for always, but that he didn't wish to take me away from my city friends. And I—oh, I had been wanting to come all the time. I was just one out of so many in the city, paying little social calls, but here I found so many people to be fond of. I think I know every one on the mountains here, and they are all so kind to me. And," she added proudly, "so appreciative of the doctor."
Wilbur laughed as she gathered up the things on the tray.
"Well," he said, "I don't believe the old hunter ever did a better thing when he got Doctor Davis to come to the forest—unless, it was the day 'the little white lady' came with him. Haven't I had a broken head, and am I not her patient? You bet!"
But Mrs. Davis only smiled as she passed from the room.
Wilbur spent the rest of the morning in the doctor's library, and was more than delighted to learn that these books were there for borrowing, on the sole condition that they should be returned. He learned, later, that under the guise of a library to lend books, all sorts of little plans were done for the cheering of the lives of those who lived in isolated portions of the mountain range. The boy had not been twenty-four hours under the doctor's roof, yet he was quite at home, and sorry to go when the Supervisor rode up. He had been careful to groom Kit very thoroughly, and she was standing saddled at the door, half an hour before the time appointed. He was ready to swing into the saddle as soon as Merritt appeared.