whiskey, and I found sugar and hot water. Tommy would doubtless have
done something in the way of assistance or restoratives, but he was gone
to the stable with the horses.

"Shall I get your medicine from the valise, deary?" inquired Mrs.
Taylor.

"Not now," her visitor answered; and I wondered why she should take such
a quick look at me.

"We'll soon have yu' independent of medicine," said Lin, gallantly. "Our
climate and scenery here has frequently raised the dead."

"You're a case, anyway!" exclaimed the sick lady with rich conviction.

The cow-puncher now sat himself on the edge of Tommy's bed, and,
throwing one leg across the other, began to raise her spirits with
cheerful talk. She steadily watched him--his face sometimes, sometimes
his lounging, masculine figure. While he thus devoted his attentions to
her, Taylor departed to help Tommy at the stable, and good Mrs. Taylor,
busy with supper for all of us in the kitchen, expressed her joy at
having her old friend of childhood for a visit after so many years.

"Sickness has changed poor Katie some," said she. "But I'm hoping she'll
get back her looks on Bear Creek."

"She seems less feeble than I had understood," I remarked.

"Yes, indeed! I do believe she's feeling stronger. She was that tired
and down yesterday with the long stage-ride, and it is so lonesome! But
Taylor and I heartened her up, and Tommy came with the mail, and to-day
she's real spruced-up like, feeling she's among friends."

"How long will she stay?" I inquired.

"Just as long as ever she wants! Me and Katie hasn't met since we was
young girls in Dubuque, for I left home when I married Taylor, and he
brought me to this country right soon; and it ain't been like Dubuque
much, though if I had it to do over again I'd do just the same, as
Taylor knows. Katie and me hasn't wrote even, not till this February,
for you always mean to and you don't. Well, it'll be like old times.
Katie'll be most thirty-four, I expect. Yes. I was seventeen and she was
sixteen the very month I was married. Poor thing! She ought to have got
some good man for a husband, but I expect she didn't have any chance,
for there was a big fam'ly o' them girls, and old Peck used to act real
scandalous, getting drunk so folks didn't visit there evenings scarcely
at all. And so she quit home, it seems, and got a position in the
railroad eating-house at Sidney, and now she has poor health with
feeding them big trains day and