ped awhile there to
rest, but I had friends to take care of me."

"And you were not homesick or lonely?"

"No! I made friends on the cars. I have been taking care of a sick lady
and her three children, who are all on their way to Europe, and wanted
to pay my expenses if I would go with them."

"I don't wonder!" said Mrs. Murray with an unusual burst of sympathy.

No sooner had they fairly reached the house than Esther came to see the
stranger and found her aunt in high spirits. "She is as natural and
sweet as a flower," said Mrs. Murray. "To be sure she has a few Western
tricks; she says she stopped awhile at Chicago, and that she has a raft
of things in her trunks, and she asks haeow, and says aeout; but so do
half the girls in New York, and I will break her of it in a week so that
you will never know she was not educated in Boston and finished in
Europe. I was terribly afraid she would wear a linen duster and
water-waves."

Catherine became a favorite on the spot. No one could resist her hazel
eyes and the curve of her neck, or her pure complexion which had the
transparency of a Colorado sunrise. Her good nature was inexhaustible,
and she occasionally developed a touch of sentiment which made Mr.
Murray assert that she was the most dangerous coquette within his
experience. Mr. Murray, who had a sound though uncultivated taste for
pretty girls, succumbed to her charms, while George Strong, whose good
nature was very like her own, never tired of drawing her out and
enjoying her comments on the new life about her.

"What kind of a revolver do you carry?" asked George, gravely, at his
first interview with her; "do you like yours heavy, or say a 32 ball?"

"Don't mind him, Catherine," said Mrs. Murray; "he is always making poor
jokes."

"Oh, but I'm not strong enough to use heavy shooting-irons," replied
Catherine quite seriously. "I had a couple of light ones in my room at
home, but father told me I could never hurt any thing with them, and I
never did."

"Always missed your man?" asked George.

"I never fired at a man but once. One night I took one of our herders
for a thief and shot at him, but I missed, and just got laughed at for a
week. That was before we moved down to Denver, where we don't use
pistols much."

Strong felt a little doubt whether she was making fun of him or he of
her, and she never left him in perfect security on this point.

"What is your name in Sioux, Catherine," he would ask; "Laug