"I'm dead tired, kid. No, I'm not hungry, nor I don't want any coffee,
or anything. Just roll this chair over to the bed, will you? I'm--dead-
tired."

Johnny was worried. He did not know what the Little Doctor would say,
for Chip had not eaten his dinner, or taken his medicine. Somehow there
had been that in his face that had made Johnny afraid to speak to him.
He went back to the easel and looked long at the picture, his heart
bursting with rage that he could not take his rifle and shoot those
merciless, grinning brutes. Even after he had drawn the curtain before
it and stood the easel in its accustomed place, he kept lifting the
curtain to take another look at that wordless tragedy of the West.






CHAPTER XIII.
Art Critics.



It was late the next forenoon when the Little Doctor, feeling the
spirit of artistic achievement within her, gathered up brushes and
paints for a couple hours' work. Chip, sitting by the window smoking
a cigarette, watched her uneasily from the tail of his eye. Looking
back to yesterday's "spasm," as he dubbed it mentally, he was filled
with a great and unaccountable shyness. What had seemed so real to
him then he feared to-day to face, as trivial and weak.