lt like the return of
pain through a dying opiate; and so it was with Kate as she lay
wide-eyed on the bunk to-night with both the door and window open,
while a warm wind, faintly scented with the wild peas that purpled the
side of the gulch, blew across her face.

The rivulet gurgled under the overhanging willows and alder brush. A
belated kildeer broke the night stillness with its cry. The hobbles
clanked as the horses thumped their fore feet in working their way
slowly to the top of the gulch. Bowers fired his evening salute before
retiring as a hint to the coyotes, and, sometimes, when the wind veered,
a far-off tinkle as a bell-sheep stirred on the bed-ground came to
Kate's ears--all were familiar sounds, so familiar that she heard them
only subconsciously. In the same way she saw the dark outlines of
objects inside the sheep wagon--the turkey-wing duster thrust between an
oak bow and the canvas, the outline of the coffee pot on the stove, the
cherished frying pans dangling on their nails, her rifle standing on the
bench within reach. So far as she knew, she and Bowers were the only
human beings within miles, yet she felt no fear; to be alone in the
sheep wagon in the dusk of the gulch held no new sensation for her.

She was thinking of Disston as the door of the wagon swung gently to and
fro, rattling the frying pan which hung on a nail on the lower half of
it, of her brusque and ungracious reply when he had told her he was
coming again to see her, of the sorry figure she had cut beside the girl
he had brought, and of her fierce resentment at the girl's covert
ridicule. She had shocked and disgusted Disston beyond doubt by the
manner in which she had retaliated, yet she knew that in similar
circumstances she would do the same again, for her first impulse
nowadays was to strike back harder than she was struck.

It seemed, she reflected, as though everything about her, her
disposition, her history, her environment and work forbade any of the
pleasant episodes, which the average woman accepted as a matter of
course, ever happening in her life. To be an object of ridicule, the
target of somebody's wit, appeared to be her lot. At odds with humanity,
engaged almost constantly in combating the handicaps imposed by Nature,
the serenity of the normal woman's life was not for her.

Anyway, one thing was certain; her poor little romance, builded upon so
slight a foundation as an impulsive boy's ephemeral interest, was ove