et out.

The settlers came that day with their widow's mite of food and clothes;
the women's clothing too large, the children's too small. But it covered
us--after a fashion. The store at Presho sent out a box of supplies.
Coyote Cal and Sourdough rode up.

"Beats tarnation, now don't it," Coyote Cal consoled us.

"I told you this country wasn't fit for nothin' but cowhands," growled
Sourdough. "Here, the punchers rounded up a little chicken feed." He
fairly threw at us a dirty tobacco pouch, filled with coins. "Coming
before pay day like this, tain't much," he grumbled, as though the
catastrophe might have waited for pay day--things couldn't be done to
suit Sourdough.

A wagonload of Indians drove up, men and squaws and papooses. They
climbed out, unhitched, turned the team loose to graze. They came in
mumbling in a sort of long wail, "No-print-paper, hu-uh, hu-uh," but
gleeful as children over the gifts they carried. A bright-hued shawl,
thick hot blankets, beaded moccasins. There was a sack of "corn in the
milk" (roasting ears) which had been raised over by the river, and
stripped (dried) meat. We did not know whether it was cow, horse or dog,
but we knew it had been black with flies as it hung on the lines
drying--we had seen them drying meat. However, parboiling should make it
clean.

And early that morning we saw Imbert coming from Presho, hurrying to Ida
Mary, his face drawn and haggard. They went into each other's arms
without a word, and at last Ida Mary was able to cry, tears of sorrow
and relief, with her face against his breast.

I lay weak and ill, wasting from a slow fever. I slept fitfully, while
streams of cool water went gurgling by, and cool lemonade, barrels of
it. But every time I stooped to take a drink the barrels went rattling
across the plain into a prairie fire.

"Maybe you've got typhoid," Ma would say as she bathed my hot head and
hands with towels wrung out of vinegar and warm water, fanning them to
coolness. "You'll be all right, Sis," Ida Mary would say; "just hold
on--" We did not call a doctor. There was no money left for doctors.

Rest, sleep, and nourishment were what I needed, but conditions were far
from favorable for such a cure. The deserted shack was baking hot. It
was not the cheerful place it had seemed while Margaret lived in it,
with the bare floor, the old kitchen stove, the sagging wire couch and a
couple of kitchen chairs. We had scanty, sticky food, and warm,
sick