led Belle, when the
butcher told her what they were saying. In fact, all of Laramie's
intimates were out of patience with him when he announced he was going
to rebuild the cabin on his Falling Wall ranch and live there.

"Wait till this cattle fight is over," they would urge.

"It is over," he would retort. And heedless of their protests, he
spent his time getting his building materials together.

"What do you want me to do?" he demanded, stirred at length by Belle's
remonstrances against going back to the Falling Wall. "I've got to
live somewhere. Danger? Why, yes--maybe. But I can't keep dying
every day on that account. Here in town a man was run over just the
other day by a railroad train."

Kate said little either way. She heard all that Belle could urge and
held in her heart all the men said. But when Jim asked her what _she_
wanted to do she told him, simply, whatever _he_ wanted to do. Then
Belle would call her a ninny, and Laramie would kiss her, and Belle in
disgust would disappear.

There came one morning the crowning sensation in the suspense of the
situation. Barb Doubleday drove into town in the buckboard, headed his
team into Kitchen's barn to put up and gave McAlpin a cigar.

An earthquake, where one had never been known, could not have stirred
the town more. When McAlpin ran up street to the Mountain House to be
first with his news, he was reviled as a vender of stories calculated
to start a shooting.

But McAlpin, with a cigar in his mouth--where no cigar, except a free
cigar, was ever seen--his face bursting red with import, stuck to his
guns. He walked straight to the billiard room bar, and attracted
attention by brusquely ordering his own drink. This, it was known,
always meant something serious.

When Sawdy saw the commotion about the barn boss, he walked in and
after listening began a stern cross-examination.

"Explain?" McAlpin echoed scornfully. "I don't explain. No, he wasn't
drinking! Nor he wasn't crazy!" McAlpin took the burning cigar from
his mouth. "That's the cigar he give me, right there--and a bum one.
Barb never smoked a good one in his life--you know that, Henry? I
don't explain--I drink. Hold on!" he exclaimed, as he emptied his
glass with a single gulp. He was looking across the street and
pointing. "Who's that over there comin' out of the lumber yard with
Barb Doubleday right now--blanked if it ain't! It's Jim Laramie,
that's who it is."

Doubled