It seemed an eternity they climbed; in reality it was scarcely twenty minutes before they reached the grassy knoll and the cabin whose crazy swinging door stood wide to the night air. She tied the horse, went in and at Prendergast's direction found matches and lit a candle. The bare, two-room interior it revealed, was unkempt and disordered. Rough bunks, a table and a couple of hewn chairs were almost its only furniture. The window was broken and the roof admitted sun and rain. Prendergast laid the man they had brought on one of the bunks and threw over him a shabby blanket.
"My dear young lady," he said, "you are a good Samaritan. How shall we thank you, my poor friend here and I?"
Jessica had taken money from her pocket and now she held it out to him. "He must have a doctor," she said. "You must fetch one."
The yellow eyes fastened on the bill, even while his gesture protested. "You shame me!" he exclaimed. "And yet you are right; it is for him." He folded it and put it into his pocket. "As soon as I have built a fire, I will go for our local _medico_. He will not always come at the call of the luckless miner. All are not so charitable as you."
He untied her horse and extended a hand, but she mounted without his help. "He will thank you one day--this friend of mine," he said, "far better than I can do."
"It is not at all necessary to tell him," she replied frigidly. "The sick are always to be helped, in every circumstance."
She gave her horse the rein as she spoke and turned him up the steep path that climbed back of the cabin, past the Knob, and so by a narrow trail to the mountain road.
Emmet Prendergast stood listening to the dulling hoof-beats a moment, then reëntered the cabin. The man on the bunk had lifted to a sitting position, his eyes were open, dazed and staring.
"That's right," the older man said. "You're coming round. How does it feel to be back in the old shebang? Can't guess how you got here, can you? You were towed on horseback by a beauty, Hughey, my boy--a rip-staving beauty! I'll tell you about it in the morning, if you're good."
The man he addressed made no answer; his eyes were on the other, industrious and bewildered.
"I heard about the row," went on Prendergast. "They didn't think it was in you, and neither did I." He looked at him cunningly. "Neither did Moreau, eh, eh? You're a clever one, Hugh, but the lost-memory racket won't stand you in anything. You hadn't any call to get scared in the first place--_I_ don't tell all I know!"