he spoke to
me. 'Doctor'--then she hesitated. 'Is that Abe Hawk's funeral?' 'It
is,' I says. She looked at it and kept looking at it. The tail-end of
the procession was passing Hill Street. I noticed the girl bite her
lip; she was as restless as her horse. 'Doctor,' she says, hesitating
just the same way the second time, 'do you think people would think it
awfully strange if I--rode to the cemetery with them?'

"I never was more dashed in my life. 'Well,' I says, 'I expect they
would, Kate.' 'I feel as if I ought to do it,' she says. 'Don't do it
for the fun of the thing, Kate. The boys wouldn't like that.' 'Oh,'
she says, looking at me mighty hard. 'I've got the best of reasons for
doing it.' 'Then,' says I, 'do it, no matter what they think or don't
think. That's what Abe Hawk would 'a' done!' 'I'm such a coward,' she
says, but I want to tell you there was fire in her words. 'Go ahead,'
says I. 'Doctor, will you ride with me?' 'Hell!' says I, 'I never
went to a funeral in my life.' 'Will you ride to this one with me? I
can't ride alone; all the rest are men.' 'Dog gone it! Come over to
the barn,' says I, 'till I get a horse.'

"That's the way it happened.

"When we got to the graveyard we kept back to one side. All the same,
she saw the whole thing. But just the minute the boys turned from the
grave, away we went down the hill lickety-cut. We took the back
streets till we struck the divide road, and she turned for home. When
we stopped there, she says: 'Doctor, tell me the truth: Did Abe Hawk
drown?' 'No,' I says, 'he didn't drown. I reckon he strained himself.
Anyway, one of his wounds opened up. The old man bled to death."

Laramie felt no inclination that night to go home. In his depression,
he could think only of Kate Doubleday and reflect that the years were
passing while he faced the future without an aim, and life without an
outlook.

It was not the first time this conviction had forced itself on him.
And it was getting harder and harder, he realized, to shake it off.
But tonight, talk served in some degree as an anodyne, and he sat with
the idlers late. The one bit of news that did stir him in his torpor
was that Kate Doubleday had had at least the feeling to appear at the
funeral of the man who, though rightly regarded as her father's enemy,
had, Laramie knew, let go his own life, without a thought, to save hers.

This was the last reflection on his mind before he went