rom this. But at that moment the front door opened
again, a brisk greeting was called out and a heavy tread crossed the
uneven floor of the outer room.

"John Lefever!" Laramie got up to welcome the big deputy marshal.
"Just in time. Take off your manners and sit down."

A bubbling laugh greeted the sally: "Jim, I just can't do it."

"Oh, yes, you'll eat with me. Where you from?"

"Bear Dance; and Medicine Bend on the next train. Heard you were in
town and dropped off for just one hour. Say, this is more like life's
fitful fever to set eyes on you. Heard you were threatened last night
with appendicitis. How about it?" and John bubbled over again. In the
next breath he greeted Belle as gaily. Laramie asked for another plate
and Lefever promptly resumed: "You look kind of down in the mouth, Jim.
What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing's the matter with me."

Lefever shrugged his shoulders: "You're a kind of low-spirited Indian,
anyway. What you doing up in the Falling Wall?"

"Nothing."

"Always nothing," repeated Lefever.

"Better come up," suggested Laramie. "What are you doing?"

Lefever's eyes expanded with cheer, but his voice choked with emotion:
"Doing? Rusting!"

"That doesn't sound much like 'life's fitful fever.'"

John glared at his companion: "Life's fitful _fever_! Why, this is
only a passing flash! How about it when you can't raise even a normal
temperature? Fever? I haven't felt so much as a gentle perspiration
for months! The rust is eating into my finger tips," he declared with
violence. "I'm a fat man. A fat man must have action,"--his voice
fell--"else he gets fatter. I've got to do something. Once or twice
I've come pretty near having to go to work."

Laramie's expression may have been skeptical; at all events John
pointed a corroborating finger at him: "You don't believe it! Just the
same," he added, moodily, "it's straight."

"What's de Spain doing, John?"

The tone of the answer bordered on the morose: "Running a nursery at
Medicine Bend."

"Trees?"

"Trees!" John snortingly invoked the hottest place he could think of.
"Trees? Babies! Jim," he exclaimed, "I'm no family man--are you?"

"You like Medicine Bend, don't you?"

"Too many people there." John settled gloomily back. Then with
wide-open eyes he started suddenly forward: "Give me a gun, Jim," he
said wildly, "a gun and a horse."

"And a north wind!" exclaimed Laramie.

"And a high country,"