Ermine brushed his hair from off his forehead, slapped his leggings with his quirt, and answered, "Sick all over—kind of low fever, like a man with a bullet in him."
"Bilious, probably." And the doctor felt his pulse and looked into his bright, clear eyes.
"Oh, nonsense, boy—you are not sick. I guess loafing around is bad for you. The Colonel ought to give you a hundred miles with his compliments to some one; but here is a pill which will cure you." Saying which, the physician brought out his box containing wheat bread rolled into small balls, that he always administered to cases which he did not understand or to patients whom he suspected of shirking on "sick report."
Ermine swallowed it and departed.
The doctor tipped his sombrero forward and laughed aloud in long, cadenced peals as he sorted his vials.
"Sick!" he muttered; "funny—funny—funny sick! One could not kill him with an axe. I guess he is sick of sitting round—sick to be loping over the wild plains. Humph—sick!"
Ermine rode down the officers' row, but no one was to be seen. He pulled his horse's head up before Major Searles's door, but instantly slapped him with his whip and trotted on to his tent.
"If that fool Indian boy would only show himself," he thought; but the Indian was not a fool, and did not. Again Ermine found himself lying on his back, more discontented than ever. The day waned and the shadows on the tent walls died, but still he lay. Ramon stuck his head in at the flaps.
"Well—ah got your British man hees pony, Ermine—trade twenty-five dollar in goods for five pony."
"Oh, d—— the Englishman," was the response to this, whereat Ramon took a good long stare at his friend and withdrew. He failed to understand the abruptness, and went away wondering how Ermine could know that he had gouged Mr. Harding a little on the trade. Still this did not explain; for he had confidence in his own method of blinding his trail. He was a business man and a moral cripple.