ago that Doctor
Carpy doesn't tell all he knows," she observed dryly. "But I do know
he wants Mr. Laramie to stay in his room. He says his shoulder will
never heal if he doesn't keep still."

Belle made no response, but when Laramie knocked at the door in the
evening she knew who it was. Kate received him.

Talking in leisurely fashion to her, he walked to the door of Belle's
room, looked in, wanted to know whom she had been fighting with and
asked if she would get up and get supper for him.

He carried his right arm at his side with the thumb hooked into his
belt: "Where's your sling?" demanded Belle, tartly. Laramie pulled it
out of his pocket: "I put it on when Carpy comes around," he explained.

"You keep fooling around the streets this way and they'll get you
sometime," said Belle, tartly.

He turned the remark: "That idea doesn't seem to worry me as much as it
used to. Have I got to cook my own supper?"

This venture after discussion was assumed by Kate. She put on her hat
to go across the street to get a steak. Laramie insisted on going with
her. She asked him not to.

"Why not?" he asked.

Kate was keyed up with apprehension: "Why take chances all the time?"
she asked in turn. "Someone might shoot from the dark."

Belle answered for him: "Nobody in this country would shoot a man when
a woman's with him," she said. "Go along."

The butcher stumping in from the back room to wait on them showed no
surprise at the two from hostile camps asking for one steak, but he
tried so hard to watch the pair and to hear what they were saying that
he nearly ruined one quarter of beef before he got what Kate wanted.
What he finally cut off and trimmed looked more like a roast than a
steak but neither customer seemed disturbed by this.

Laramie paid, over indignant protests, and placing the package in the
loop of his left arm, opened the shop door for his companion. He
passed out behind her in excellent spirits. The butcher, looking after
them, took his surreptitious pipe from his pocket, watched the shop
door close, shook his head and ramming the burnt tobacco down hard with
the finger that lacked the first joint, stumped back to his lonely
stove.

The kitchen was farthest removed from Belle's room. Laramie started
the fire with kerosene. When he lighted it there was a flare-back that
alarmed Belle in her bed, but she could hear nothing of what was going
on in the kitchen. While the supper was being