"There!" said the surgeon. "That assurance will do him more good than all the medicine in the dispensary. Sit down and talk to him," he added, handing Oscar a chair. "I'll give him a tonic and go out for half an hour. He will be all right at the end of that time."
When the surgeon had seen Leon swallow the medicine he prepared for him, he left the room, and Oscar drew his chair up beside the sofa and sat down.
Leon pinched himself to make sure that he was not dreaming, and then took Oscar's hand in his own and clung to it as if he were afraid that his friend might vanish into thin air.
"Oscar," said he, "I don't deserve this treatment at your hands."
"Yes, you do," replied Oscar cheerfully. "I shall do all I can for you, and then I shall not begin to cancel the debt I owe your father."
"But you don't owe me anything but ill-will. It was I who shot Bugle."
"I know it; but you didn't hurt him. You only made him angry. Now, drop that—it is all forgotten—and tell me what in the world brought you to the plains. If I had met my own mother in the fort, I certainly could not have been more surprised."
"I came out to be a hunter," confessed Leon.
"You did? So did I."