"But you didn't leave me a motor-car and, my visit being at an end, I ce'tainly had to get back to Corbett's." As he spoke he climbed slowly into the rig. "That leg of mine is acting like sixty, Doctor. When you happened along I was wondering how in time I was ever going to make it."
"You may have lamed yourself for life. It's the most idiotic thing I ever heard of. I don't see why Miss Valdés let you come. Dad blame it, have I got to watch my patients like a hen does its chicks? Ain't any of you got a lick of sense? Why didn't she send a rig if you had to come?" the doctor demanded.
"Seems to me she did mention a rig, but I thought I'd rather walk," explained Gordon casually, much amused at Dr. Watson's chagrined wonder.
"Walk!" snorted the physician. "You'll not walk, but be carried into an operating-room if you're not precious lucky. You deserve to lose that leg, and I don't say you won't."
"I'm an optimistic guy, Doctor. I'll say it for you. I ain't got any legs to spare."
"Huh! Some people haven't got the sense of a chicken with its head cut off."
"Now you're shouting. Go for me, Doc. Then, mebbe, I'll do better next time."
The doctor gave up this incorrigible patient and relapsed into silence, from which he came occasionally with an explosive "Huh!" Once he broke out with: "Didn't she feed you well enough, or was it just that you didn't know when you were well off?"
For he was aware that his patient's fever was rising and, like a good practitioner, he fumed at such useless relapse.
The knee had been doing fine. Now there would be the devil to pay with it. The utter senselessness of the proceeding irritated Watson. What in Mexico had got into the young idiot to make him do such a fool thing? The doctor guessed at a quarrel between him and Miss Valdés. But the close-mouthed American gave him no grounds upon which to base his suspicion.