Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/35

Rh hills. He’s a good man—Waseche is. Prospected with him way back before the big stampede. Then he drifted across the boundary an’ I joined the Mounted. How is old Waseche, anyhow?”

“He’s just the finest man that ever swung a pick!” exclaimed the boy with eyes alight. “But just now he’s gone outside.”

“Outside! Waseche Bill! What in thunder does he want outside? Why, he’s be’n in the big country goin’ on fifteen year!”

“It’s this way: Waseche busted his leg last winter and it didn’t knit right. The doc down at the fort told him if he didn’t have it ’tended to right away he’d be lame all his life. He gave him the name of some great surgeon in the States. Waseche didn’t want to go—but I made him.”

McKeever grinned: “How long is he goin’ to be gone? An’ what will you do in the meantime?”

“About a year, the doc said—maybe more. I’ll just wait around. He wanted me to go, too. But, someway, I’d rather stay in the North. You see, my dad, he loved the North—and—well, it seems like everyone up here was his friend, and I—I kind of feel at home.”

The Sergeant laid a big hand on the boy’s