midnight
`` Hmp ! I was n't thinking of him , but of you . Could n't be in better hands , but it 's an imposition for him to go racing all over these hills with a game leg and expect you to pull him through . '' Before midnight Dick was in a raging fever . In delirium he tossed from side to side , sometimes silent for long stretches , then babbling fragments of forgotten scenes rescued by his memory automatically from the wild and picturesque past of the man . Now he fancied himself again a schoolboy , now a ranger in Arizona , now mushing on the snow trails of Alaska . At times he would imagine that he was defending his mine against attacking strikers , or that he was combing the Rincons for horse thieves .