"Ha, ha!" exclaimed Ross aloud and then checked his voice. "Probably he didn’t want us to know his name, his real name," he thought. "How all that dovetails together. If I could only get hold of Sheepy now!"
On further reflection, however, he decided that Sheepy could throw no more light on the subject. It was evident that the herder did not know the name of the puncher who had ridden alone past his wagon, for he had not connected Weston’s name with the other. Nor would Weston, if he were the same puncher, be likely to recognize Sheepy who, as he himself said, was in his wagon preparing supper when the puncher, his eyes on his horse’s ears, passed.
That night, when Ross rolled up in his blankets beside Weston he was sure he was lying beside the fourth cowboy of old man Quinn’s search. But in the cold clear dawn he was not so sure. It might have been vanity that had led Weston to stain his hair, tow not being a manly color. Then, too, even if he had been on the North Fork, so were dozens of other cow punchers. As to his name, Weston would naturally have been astonished at perfect strangers addressing him rightly where he believed himself unknown.
Ross, eating his breakfast, and only half listening to Hank, looked down at the prostrate man speculatively, his mind full of suspicion, but not so sure as on the previous day that there was no flaw in his reasoning. He had not had an opportunity, the day before, of speaking to Hank about the matter, and now he decided to keep his suspicions to himself for the present.
His suspicions, however, during the two weeks which followed, were swallowed up in the anxiety that attended this, the first "case" where he had been obliged to assume all responsibility. The care and interruptions to his rest wore on him. Never had one of Aunt Anne’s hair mattresses invited sleep as did the blankets laid on the dirt floor when he found time to lie on them. Often he fell asleep sitting on the hard bench, his head on his arms crossed on the table, while Hank was frying flapjacks and boiling thick black coffee.
As for the patient, he accepted Ross’s ministrations with but few remarks. As his thigh bone began to knit, he became querulous, and finally passively enduring.
"When you goin’ to let me out of this?" he asked on the day when Ross last measured the injured leg.
The boy settled back on his heels. "I have sent for some plaster of Paris," he explained, "and, by the time it gets here, your leg will be healed and ready for a cast. Then you can be taken back to Cody and let the doctor there see you. If it was not for that ugly fracture you would have been out of here before. If you’d only have the Cody doctor to look you over now––"
The man grunted, and worked restlessly at the sand-bag, which, on the outside of his leg, reached his armpit.
"Cody doctor be hanged!" he remarked unaffably. "He don’t know half as much as you do."