"He got off," Mac explained gravely to the increasing audience.

Denver nodded with an imperturbable face. "He got off."

Mac introduced Miss Messiter to such of her employees as were on
hand. " Shake hands with Miss Messiter, Missou," was the formula,
the name alone varying to suit the embarrassed gentlemen in
leathers. Each of them in turn presented a huge hand, in which
her little one disappeared for the time, and was sawed up and
down in the air like a pump-handle. Yet if she was amused she did
not show it; and her pleasure at meeting the simple, elemental
products of the plains outweighed a great deal her sense of the
ludicrous.

"How are your patients getting along?" she presently asked of her
foreman.

"I reckon all right. I sent Reddy for a doc, but--"

"He got off," murmured Mac pensively.

"I'll go rope another hawss," put in the man who had got off.

"Get a jump on you, then. Miss Messiter, would you like to look
over the place?"

"Not now. I want to see the men that were hurt. Perhaps I can
help them. Once I took a few weeks in nursing."