"When?" he asked.
In a torrent of Spanish and gesticulation, the man explained that the child had been struck by a rattlesnake three times, fortunately, a small one, just half an hour before the train came in, and that he was going to take her to the nearest doctor, who was in Marfa, a town some few stations down the line.
"Well," said the big man, "I can fix her, I guess. That is, I've got the regular serum here, but I haven't a syringe. Any gentleman got a hypodermic needle?"
But none of the passengers would confess to the use of a needle, because of its implication that its owner would be a "dope fiend," and the querist shrugged his shoulders.
"Are you a doctor?" asked one of the men in the car.
"I'm not a little girl doctor, I'm a cattle doctor," answered the big man with a laugh, "or at least I'm a government inspector, and I haven't anything smaller than this!" He pulled out of his case a hypodermic syringe used for injecting fluid into cattle.
But the father sent up a cry of protest at the sight of the instrument, and would not allow it to be used. The matter was explained to him in Spanish, in English, and in half a dozen different dialects of each, but he only shook his head.
"Has anybody got a sharp knife? I mean really sharp," next asked the inspector, who had assumed control of the situation and was in no wise disconcerted by the opposition of the girl's father. There was a moment's pause and then Roger stepped forward.
"I was taught on the Survey," he emphasized the words to give them weight with the government official, "to keep a blade sharp, and I guess this is about as good steel as you can get."
The inspector took it, opened it, and ran his thumb along the blade.