silent, except to keep his mind from its half-fixed
idea of the sorrel. As he grew more fluent she hastened still more,
listening to head off that notion of return, skilfully inventing
questions to engage him, so that when she brought him to her gate
she held him in a manner subjected, answering faithfully the shrewd
unrealities which she devised, whatever makeshifts she could summon to
her mind; and next she had got him inside her dwelling and set him down
docile, but now completely wandering; and then--no help was at hand,
even here. She had made sure of aid from next door, and there she
hastened, to find the Taylor's cabin locked and silent; and this meant
that parents and children were gone to drive; nor might she be luckier
at her next nearest neighbors', should she travel the intervening mile
to fetch them. With a mind jostled once more into uncertainty, she
returned to her room, and saw a change in him already. Illness had
stridden upon him; his face was not as she had left it, and the whole
body, the splendid supple horseman, showed sickness in every line
and limb, its spurs and pistol and bold leather chaps a mockery of
trappings. She looked at him, and decision came back to her, clear and
steady. She supported him over to her bed and laid him on it. His head
sank flat, and his loose, nerveless arms stayed as she left them. Then
among her packing-boxes and beneath the little miniature, blue and
flaxen and gold upon its lonely wall, she undressed him. He was cold,
and she covered him to the face, and arranged the pillow, and got from
its box her scarlet and black Navajo blanket and spread it over him.
There was no more that she could do, and she sat down by him to wait.
Among the many and many things that came into her mind was a word he
said to her lightly a long while ago. "Cow-punchers do not live long
enough to get old," he had told her. And now she looked at the head upon
the pillow, grave and strong, but still the head of splendid, unworn
youth.

At the distant jingle of the wagon in the lane she was out, and had met
her returning neighbors midway. They heard her with amazement, and came
in haste to the bedside; then Taylor departed to spread news of the
Indians and bring the doctor, twenty-five miles away. The two women
friends stood alone again, as they had stood in the morning when anger
had been between them.

"Kiss me, deary," said Mrs. Taylor. "Now I will look after him--and
you'll need some looki