Then his mother came to the door and the Doctor willingly made an excuse to leave his patient for a little. When he returned an hour later and Mother Burton had yielded her place to him and left the room, old Thad smiled up at him.
“That mother of yourn is a plumb wonder, sir. I always suspicioned it on account of what she’s done for Marta, but I know now that I hadn’t even begun to appreciate it. I reckon I’ll be gettin’ up now.”
“And I reckon you won’t,” retorted the Doctor, putting out a firm hand and pushing him back on the pillow. “You’ll stay right where you are until to-morrow morning. You have already talked too much. Here, let me fix the bandage. There, that will do. Now take this and turn your face to the wall—and keep quiet.”
The old prospector obeyed.
But the next morning he was out of the house before either Saint Jimmy or his mother had left their beds. When Mrs. Burton went to call him for breakfast, she found him beside the grave under the mesquite trees.
“You see, ma’am,” he explained with childish confusion, “I got to imaginin’ ’long in the night that my Pardner Bob must be feelin’ all-fired lonesome an’ left-out like, with me sleepin’ in the house an’ him out here all alone. Bob an’ me ain’t never been very far apart, you see, for a good many years now, an’ so I felt like he’d kind of want me ’round somewheres. It’s funny, ain’t it, how an old desert rat like me could get fussed up that-a-way! I think mebby that Bob would feel some better too if only our gal was here. I’m plumb sure I would. But I know she’ll be back all right. That Injun can hang to a trail like the smell follers a skunk, an’ the boy will be here too, with both feet, when it comes to gettin’ her away from them again. That half Mex an’ the Lizard won’t stand a show agin Natachee an’ our Hugh. I wish they’d hurry back, though.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m comin’.
“So long, Pardner, I got to get my breakfast. I’ll be back again directly.”
Every day he spent the greater part of his time under the mesquite trees with Bob, and in the night they would hear him going out “to see,” as he said, “if his pardner was all right.”
It was there that Marta found him the morning of her return with Hugh and Natachee.