Overland was dumbfounded. "His sister," he muttered. "The one he writ to in New York. Huh! Yes, me and Billy's pardners."
"Is he—is he better?" asked Anne hesitatingly.
"Better! Say, lady, excuse me if I tell you he's gettin' so blame frisky that he's got me scared. Why, I left him settin' on a rock eatin' a sardine san'wich with one hand and shootin' holes in all the tin cans in sight with the other. 'So long, Red!' he hollers as I lit out with the burro to cross the range. 'So long, and don't let your feet slip.' And Pom! goes the .45 that he was jugglin' and another tin can passed over. He takes a bite from the san'wich and then, Pom! goes the gun again and another tin can bites the dust, jest as free and easy as if he wasn't keepin' guard over thirty or forty thousand dollars' worth of gold-dust and trouble, and jest as if he ain't got no lungs at all."
"Billy must have changed a little," ventured Dr. Marshall, smiling.
"Changed? Excuse me, ladies. But when I first turned my lamps on him in Los, I says to myself if there wasn't a fella with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana-peel, I was mistook. And listen! He come out to the Mojave with me. He jest almost cried to come. I was scared it was vi'lets and 'Gather at the River,' without the melodeum, for him. But you never see a fella get such a chest! Search me if I knows where he got it from, for he wasn't much bigger around in the works than a mosquito when I took him up there. And eat! My Gosh, he can eat! And a complexion like a Yaqui. And he can sleep longer and harder and louder than a corral of gradin' mules on Saturday night! 'Course he's slim yet, but it's the kind of slim like rawhide that you could hobble a elephant with. And, say, he's a pardner on your life! Believe me, and I'm listenin' to myself, too."
"His lungs are better, then?"
"Lungs? He ain't got none. They're belluses—prime California skirtin' leather off the back. Lady, that kid is a wonder."
"I'm awfully glad Billy is better. He must be, judging from what you tell me."
"I wisht I'd 'a' had him runnin' the 'Guzzuh' instead of that little chicken-breasted chaffer they three-shelled on to me in Los Angeles. I hired him because they said I 'd better take him along until I was some better acquainted with the machine. The Guzzuh ain't no ordinary bronc'."
"The 'Guzzuh'?" queried Dr. Marshall.