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  believe that I will go with you, if you don't mind. I should like to look around a bit.'

There's little enough to see,' growled McAdoo, but his tone was growing wary. 'I'll ask ye to bide here for a bit.'

" 'Thanks,' said Lynch, and there was actually a sing-song tone of sarcastic ennui in his voice, 'but I've conceived such a fondness for your society that I really can't bear to have you out of my sight, friend McAdoo. We'll go together; the Doctor does not mind being left alone.'

"This to that desperado whom we both believed to be an escaped Australian convict, whose presence in the mission-house was still to be explained. Lynch was armed, of course—armed with one of the big revolvers your cowboys carry, and, in fact, he had been a plainsman for a while after leaving college, and I knew that, for all his languid air, if McAdoo laid a hand on the butt of either of the two revolvers which he carried he would be a dead man before the weapon was half-drawn, [ 97 ]