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 wide, startled eyes that showed much of the whites and from time to time a shiver ran through his body.

Jerry saw himself faced with one of the most serious disasters that can befall a tenant farmer. Without going back to the house for his breakfast, he saddled Tuck and galloped away in search of Doc Beasley, the veterinary.

They came back a couple of hours later riding side by side. As soon as Jerry laid eyes upon the horse, he knew that he was much worse. The shivers had changed to convulsive shudders, and pain and terror looked out of the animal's dilated eyes.

The veterinary, a lean old grayhound with a face of tanned leather, shook his head.

"You'd best put a bullet into him, Jerry, an' have done with it. I cud cure him, but it'd cost yuh more'n what the hoss's woth. That damned antitoxin fer lockjaw's high's hell an' it takes so much fer a hoss 'tain't practical nohaow. If yuh wanta take a chanct on it's helpin' him, I kin give him a shot o' some other stuff that sometimes does the trick. It'll cost yuh five dollars, an' I hain't promisin' that it'll cure him. But onct in a while it does. Anyhaow whether yuh take it or whether yuh don't take it, I won't charge yuh nothin' fer comin' here, 'cause I'm on my way to Joe Patton's sick caow an' I know yuh hain't no millionaire."

"Let's try it, Jerry," implored Judith, who had come into the stable behind the men. "It seems a shame not to let him have one chanct."

"All right, Doc," agreed Jerry a bit huskily. "Go ahead an' try what you kin do. If I had the money I'd feel like tryin' the big cure. But I hain't got the money. So that settles it flat."

The horse doctor cleansed the wound, took a big syringe from his kit satchel, filled it with a yellowish fluid, and gave the horse an injection in the leg close to the wounded spot.

"There," he said as he replaced the syringe, "if he hain't a heap better agin to-morrer mornin' he hain't a-goin' to git no better. Anyhaow, you hain't got the hardest luck there is, Jerry, ole man. Two o' Jim Summerfield's hawgs has got the