“Leaving us?”

“Yes.”

“Not really!”

“D’you think I ought to stay?” asked Buck, with something of a sneer.

The doctor hesitated, frowning in a puzzled way.  At length he threw out his hands in a gesture of mute abandonment.

“My dear fellow,” he said with a faint smile, “I’ve about stopped trying to think.”

At this Buck Daniels grinned mirthlessly.

“Now you’re talkin’ sense,” he nodded.  “They ain’t no use in thinking.”

“But why do you leave so suddenly?”

Buck Daniels shrugged his broad shoulders.

“I am sure,” went on Byrne, “that Miss Cumberland will miss you.”

“She will not,” answered the big cowpuncher.  “She’s got her hands full with—­him.”

“Exactly.  But if it is more than she can do, if she makes no headway with that singular fellow—­she may need help——­”

He was interrupted by a slow, long-drawn, deep-throated curse from Buck Daniels.

“Why in hell should I help her with—­him?”

“There is really no reason,” answered the doctor, alarmed, “except, I suppose, old friendship——­”

“Damn old friendship!” burst out Buck Daniels.  “There’s an end to all things and my friendship is worn out—­on both sides.  It’s done!”

He turned and scowled at the house.

“Help her to win him over?  I’d rather stick the muzzle of my gun down my throat and pull the trigger.  I’d rather see her marry a man about to hang.  Well—­to hell with this place.  I’m through with it.  S’long, doc.”

But Doctor Byrne ran after him and halted him at the foot of the steps down from the veranda.

“My dear Mr. Daniels,” he urged, touching the arm of Buck.  “You really mustn’t leave so suddenly as this.  There are a thousand questions on the tip of my tongue.”

Buck Daniels regarded the professional man with a hint of weariness and disgust.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll hear the first couple of hundred.  Shoot!”

“First:  the motive that sends you away.”

“Dan Barry.”

“Ah—­ah—­fear of what he may do?”

“Damn the fear.  At least, it’s him that makes me go.”

“It seems an impenetrable mystery,” sighed the doctor.  “I saw you the other night step into the smoking hell of that barn and keep the way clear for this man.  I knew, before that, how you rode and risked your life to bring Dan Barry back here.  Surely those are proofs of friendship!”

Buck Daniels laughed unpleasantly.  He laid a large hand on the shoulder of the doctor and answered:  “If them was the only proofs, doc, I wouldn’t feel the way I do.  Proofs of friendship?  Dan Barry has saved me from the—­rope!—­and he’s saved me from dyin’ by the gun of Jim Silent.  He took me out of a rotten life and made me a man that could look honest men in the face!”