need of sleep. His new _aparejos_, stacked as they were
finished, had gradually crowded poor Mrs. Pete into her last stronghold,
the corner between the wood-box and the bunk. Fiercely she resented the
filling of her only room with harness, of her bunk with scrap leather,
which scratched her, she said. Wedged into her last corner, she would
patch disgraceful old socks, while Pete at his sewing crooned _One More
River_, or some indecent ballad of the gold mines.

"Mother," Pete would look up from his bench. "You mind when I brung her
here right to this very cabin, with Father Jared, and the Baby, David?"

"What makes you hover, Pete?"

"D'ye mind Baby David?"

"Didn't I nurse him?" said the old woman softly. "He'd red hair like his
stuck-up mother, blue eyes same as Jesse, and a birthmark on his off
kidney. Now, did you ask her about that birthmark?"

"I told her," said Pete, "that a suspicious female, with a face like a
grebe and an inquirin' mind is wishful to inspeck Dave's kidneys."

Mother wagged her head. "I own I'd like to believe Kate Smith is back in
this country, but you're such a continuous and enduring liar."

"That's so," said Pete.

One day when the sun shone brightly into the cabin, Billy arrived with a
letter from Captain Taylor. Pete would not give it to mother, or read it
aloud, or even tell the news. He danced an ungainly hornpipe, and mother
had to shake him.

"Can a woman's tender care
Cease toward the child She--Bear?
In the Old town
To-night my ba-Bee!"

"Now what on airth's the matter with yew?" mother boiled over.

"Yes, she may forgetful Bee,
Yet will I--remember Me.

"Finish them riggings by first May, says he.

"Says the old Obadiah
To the young Obadiah,
Obadiah, Obadiah!
Oh, be damned!

"Says I'm partner and boss of the outfit, and running the whole shootin'
match, and I'll get more wealth than'll patch hell a mile, and

"Thar's none like Nancy Lee, I trow,
Ow! Ow!

"Oh, mother, Bolt's give me a half-interest, and ain't this a happy
little home, my darlin'!"

At that Mrs. Pete flung her skinny arms around his neck, and the two
silly old things sobbed together.

A week later, when, to save Pete a long tramp, Billy rode down with the
rations, he found the old people concerned "about this yere
partnership."

"Mother allows this Brooke is trash," said Pete, wagging his snowy head,
"and for all the inter