Payson, in the meantime, had started the work going again, though most of his men toiled with far less spirit than before the accident.
Ten minutes later Tom mounted his horse and rode slowly back toward camp. By the time he reached there he made out the automobile of a Paloma physician coming in haste.
Tom was still weak enough to tremble as Harry stepped outside and helped him to the ground.
“Harry,” Reade remarked dryly, “I'm not going to bother to thank you for such a simple little thing as saving my life out yonder. I am well aware that you had the time of your life in doing it.”
“I might have had the time of my life,” returned Harry, with an imitation of his chum's calmness, “if there had been more excitement about it. It was all rather dull, wasn't it, old chap?”
Smiling, both stepped inside. Then Tom's face became grave when he saw that the rescued laborer had not yet recovered consciousness.
“Somewhere in the world,” murmured Reade, as he dropped to one knee and rested a finger-tip on the laborer's pulse, “there's someone—a woman, or a child, or a white-haired old man—who wouldn't wish us to let this man die. What have you men been doing for him?”
Before the answer could be given a honk sounded at the door. Then a young doctor clad in white duck and carrying a three-fold medicine case, stepped inside.
“Sucked down by the sand and hauled out again, Doc,” Tom explained.
The physician looked closely at his patient and Harry drove out the men who had no especial business there.