r ag'in."

"I don't understand."

"'Course you don't! You see, me and Gary mixed onct--and--"

Doris' gray eyes grew big as Pete spoke rapidly of his early life, of
the horse-trader, of Annersley and Bailey and Montoya, and young Andy
White--characters who passed swiftly before her vision as she followed
Pete's fortunes up to the moment when he was brought into the hospital.
And presently she understood that he was trying to tell her that if the
newspaper report was authentic he was a free man. His eagerness to
vindicate himself was only too apparent.

Suddenly he ceased talking. The animation died from his dark eyes.
"Mebby it wa'n't the same Steve Gary," he said.

"If it had been, you mean that you could go back to your friends--and
there would be no trouble--?"

Pete nodded. "But I don't know."

"Is there any way of finding out--before you leave here?" she asked.

"I might write a letter and ask Jim Bailey, or Andy. They would know."

"I'll get you a pen and paper."

Pete flushed. "Would you mind writin' it for me? I ain't no reg'lar,
professional writer. Pop Annersley learned me some--but I reckon Jim
could read your writin' better."

"Of course I'll write the letter, if you want me to. If you'll just
tell me what you wish to say I'll take it down on this pad and copy it
in my room."

"Can't you write it here? Mebby we might want to change somethin'."

"Well, if you'll eat your dinner--" And Doris went for pen and paper.
When she returned she found that Pete had stacked the dishes in a
perilous pyramid on the floor, that the bed-tray might serve as a table
on which to write.

He watched her curiously as she unscrewed the cap of her fountain pen
and dated the letter.

"Jim Bailey, Concho--that's over in Arizona," he said, then he
hesitated. "I reckon I got to tell you the whole thing first and mebby
you kin put it down after I git through." Doris saw him eying the pen
intently. "You didn't fetch the ink," he said suddenly.

Doris laughed as she explained the fountain pen to him. Then she
listened while he told her what to say.

The letter written, Doris went to her room. Pete lay thinking of her
pleasant gray eyes and the way that she smiled understandingly and
nodded--"When most folks," he soliloquized, "would say something or ask
you what you was drivin' at."

To him she was an altogether wonderful person, so quietly cheerful,
natural, and unobtrusively competent . . . Then,