"You have earned all I've given you, lad; and I'd be ashamed to take even a dollar from a plucky little shaver like you."
"But I've got ten dollars, an' can pay my way. If I'd thought the prospectors meant to give me the money instead of buyin' the rifle, I'd got along without it; but they said twice over that they wanted the gun, an' I believed 'em."
"No one can accuse you of being a beggar; but if it's the same to you, I'd rather let this go on account, and some day perhaps, when you've struck it rich, come around and we'll have a settlement."
"Doctor, you're a man, every inch of you!" Mr. Mason said in a loud tone, as he slapped the physician on the shoulder with a force that caused him to wince with absolute pain. "You're a man; an' if the people in this town don't know it already, they shall find it out from yours truly. I reckon we can ante up a little something in this 'ere matter, so the kid won't go home empty-handed; for I tell you there's nothin' in Antelope Spring too good for him."
Again Dick looked about him in surprise that such praise should be bestowed for what seemed to him a very simple act. The kindly manner in which the physician bade him good-by, with the assurance that he would himself go to Buffalo Meadows if it should become necessary, served to increase the boy's astonishment; and instead of thanking the gentleman, he could only say, because of his bewilderment,—
"I did it for daddy, sir; an' it would be a mean kind of fellow who wouldn't do as much."
Then Mr. Mason hurried him away, and despite Dick's protests insisted on leading him from one place to another, until it was as if he had been introduced to every citizen in the settlement.
He was not called upon to tell his story again, because his conductor did that for him; and the details of the narrative were magnified with each repetition, until Dick believed it absolutely necessary he should contradict certain portions wherein he was depicted as a hero of the first class.
When Mr. Mason had shown the boy fully around the town, he said by way of parting,—
"Now you go down to Mansfield's, an' wait there till I come."