“They’re down at the south pasture,” she answered readily. “Tex thinks it will be better to move the cattle to where it won’t be so easy for those rustlers to get at them. I’m just going down there and we can ride together, if you like.” She turned toward the door. “When you’re through with Rick you’ll find me out at the corral.”
“Don’t you want me to saddle up for you?”
“Pedro will do that, thank you. Tell Rick if he wants anything while I’m gone all he has to do is to ring the bell beside his bed and Maria will answer it.”
She departed, and Buck walked briskly into the bedroom. Bemis lay in bed propped up with pillows and looking much better physically than he had done that morning. But his face was still strained, with that harassed, worried expression about the eyes which Stratton had noted before.
“Yuh saw Doc Blanchard, didn’t yuh?” he asked, as Buck sat down on the side of his bed. “What’d he say?”
“Why, that you were doing fine. Not a chance 78 in a hundred, he said, of your having any trouble with the wound.”
“Oh, I know that. But when’d he say I’d be on my feet?”
Buck shrugged his shoulders. “He didn’t mention any particular time for that. I should think it would be two or three weeks, at least.”
“Hell!” The young fellow’s fingers twisted the coverlet nervously. “Don’t yuh believe I could—er—ride before that?” he added, almost pleadingly.