"Does it make any difference," he said, "to Dan?"
She went slowly back to her place.
"No," she admitted, "no difference."
"If you came by relays for twenty-four hours," said the doctor, numbering his points upon accurate fingertips, "it is humanly impossible that this man could have followed you very closely. It will probably take him another day to arrive."
But here his glance fell upon old Joe Cumberland, and found the cattleman smiling faintly to himself.
Buck Daniels was considering the last remark seriously.
"No," he said, "it ain't possible. Besides, what Kate says may be true. She ought to know—she says he'll wait for Mac Strann. I didn't think of that; I thought I was savin' Dan from another—well, what a damn fool I been!"
He unknotted his bandana and with it mopped his face to a semblance of cleanliness.
"It was the ridin' that done it," he explained, shame-faced. "You put a man on a hoss for a certain time, and after a while he gets so he can't think. He's sort of nutty. That was the way with me when I come in."
"Open the window on the veranda," said Joe Cumberland. "I want to feel the wind."