wisely--with having originated the
surprise.

They were chatting and joking when Bill Haskins appeared in the door-way,
his hand wrapped in a handkerchief.

Ma Bailey glared at him over her spectacles. "Got any stickin'-plaster?"
he asked plaintively, as though he had committed some misdemeanor. She
rose and placed a plate and chair for him as he shook hands with Pete,
led him to the kitchen and inspected and bandaged his hand, which he had
jagged on a wire gate, and finally reinstated him at the table, where he
proved himself quite as efficient as most men are with two hands. "Give
Bill all the coffee he wants and plenty stickin'-plaster, and I reckon he
never would do no work," suggested Hank Barley.

Bill Haskins grinned good-naturedly. "I see Pete's got back," he
ventured, as a sort of mild intimation that there were other subjects
worth discussing. He accompanied this brilliant observation by a modest
request for another cup of coffee, his fourth. The men rose, leaving
Bill engaged in his favorite indoor pastime, and intimated that Pete
should go with them. But Ma Bailey would not bear of it. Pete was going
to help her with the dishes. Andy could go, however, and Bill Haskins,
as soon as he was convinced that the coffee-pot was empty. Ma Bailey's
chief interest in life at the moment was to get the dishes put away, the
men out of the way, and Pete in the most comfortable rocking-chair in the
room, that she might hear his account of how it all happened.

And Pete told her--omitting no circumstance, albeit he did not accentuate
that part of his recital having to do with Doris Gray, merely mentioning
her as "that little gray-eyed nurse in El Paso"--and in such an offhand
manner that Ma Bailey began to suspect that Pete was keeping something to
himself. Finally, by a series of cross-questioning, comment, and
sympathetic concurrence, she arrived at the feminine conclusion that the
gray-eyed nurse in El Paso had set her cap for Pete--of course Pete was
innocent of any such adjustment of headgear--to substantiate which she
rose, and, stepping to the bedroom, returned with the letter which had
caused her so much speculation as to who was writing to Pete, and why the
letter had been directed to the Concho.

Pete glanced at the letter, and thanked Ma Bailey as he tucked it in his
pocket.

"I don't mind if you open it, Pete," she told him. "Goodness knows how
long it's been laying in the post-office! And it