"Nell! Bless your heart, you'd help any man get on his feet. Someday, please God, I will be able to give you everything money can buy."
"Nothing you could buy would make me as happy as knowing I am able to help you," she smiled through a mist of tears.
"I must go out and see what the boys are doing," and with head erect Allan Traynor passed through the door. Soon Nell heard his whistle--the first time for many days.
The regular round-up had been deferred until Fall, as the cattle were too weak to be handled and branded. The Diamond H men were kept busy, however, working the cattle at the watering places or riding the range where the weakest stock was "cut out" and driven slowly to the ranch and fed at the big stacks of native hay, or in the pastures that Traynor's foresight had reserved for such an emergency. Other ranchers, who had been amused at his idea of fencing pastures when the whole country was an open range, now saw his plans had been good judgment, and looked with chagrin at their own dying cattle which might have been saved by such measures.
One afternoon near sunset, Paddy Lafferty appeared at the Diamond H stables. Tying his dejected, flea-bitten grey horse in a stall, he unbuckled his rusty spurs and hung them over the horn of his saddle.
"Whar's Limber?" he asked Bronco, who passed the door of the building.
"Hot Springs," Bronco returned, in gasps of lighting a cigarette. "Doc's at--Tucson."
Paddy waited no longer, but stalked through the Court and knocked at the door of the sitting-room.
Nell met him and her eyes lighted with pleasure, for his quaint, Irish humour was never tiresome to her. Then, too, she saw the sincerity under the surface. Paddy stepped with awkward care across the room and seated himself on the edge of a chair.
"How do he bye a doin'?" he asked in his customary hoarse whisper, jerking his head toward the lounge where Jamie lay in uneasy sleep.
"Not as well as usual, Paddy. He tires easily," she answered sadly, knowing only too well that the little life was slipping away hour by hour, though she had kept the thought to herself, believing that Traynor was still blind to the truth and not wishing to add to his many anxieties. She was unaware that Powell and Traynor had warned the boys not to speak to her of the child's serious condition.