But it never would be an arm for quick work with a gun again, the doctor said. It would be shortened a little, very likely with a permanent crook, but for riding or driving, or even holding the handle of a plow, it would be as good an arm as any man could want. The wound in Simpson's side was not serious. A bullet had nicked his ribs and gone on. It was the shattered arm that brought on the fever and made his mending slow.
They took him out to the Block E ranch in the liveryman's spring wagon, on a bed of fresh, jolt-breaking hay, starting early in the morning, taking the whole day for it. He came through stronger than he started, cheered and invigorated by the bright sun and blue distances of that untramelled land in which he never had expected to stretch his eyes again.
During the days of Tom's convalescence Waco Johnson had been doing a lively business in bones, getting off no less volume than two carloads a week. Waco had taken the bits of the business in his teeth and was showing himself to be a competent trader, even though he had made such a late beginning in life. He hired a man to drive the extra wagon, and stimulated the homesteaders to greater efforts. He was becoming such a figure in the business world that even the station agent called him Mr. Johnson.
It was after the Christmas holidays before Tom was able to mount a wagon again and bear his part in this merry adventure among the bones. The winter was favorable to their operations, dry, clear and frosty, with occasional wild outbursts of storm and snow which blocked all vehicular operations. But these blizzards were of few days' duration, and with clearing weather the bone men
