kitchen one night when the old
postmaster suddenly said to Roy: "Seems to me I remember you. Did I know
you before I was sick?" His memory had been affected by his "stroke,"
and he took up the threads of his immediate past with uncertain fingers.

"I reckon so; leastwise I used to get my mail here," answered Roy, a bit
startled.

The old man looked puzzled. "Yes; but it seems a little more special
than that. Someway your face is associated with trouble in my mind. Did
we have any disagreement?"

After the postmaster returned to his chair in the office, Roy said to
Lida, "They're going to throw your uncle out in a few weeks."

"You don't mean it!"

"Sure thing. He really ain't fit to be here any more. Don't you see how
kind o' dazed he is? They're going to get him out on a doctor's
certificate--loss of memory. Now, why don't you get deputized, and act
in his place?"

"Goodness sakes! I don't want to live here."

"Where do you want to live--on a ranch?"

"Not on your life! Colorado Springs is good enough for me."

"That's hard on Roy. What could I do to earn a living there?"

"You don't have to live there, do you?"

"Home is where you are." She had come to the point where she received
such remarks in glassy silence. He looked at her in growing uneasiness,
and finally said: "See here, Lida, I've got something to tell you. You
heard the old man kind o' feelin' around in his old hay-mow of a mind
about me? Well, him and me did have a cussin'-out match one day, and he
drawed a gun on me, and ordered me out of the office."

"What for?"

"Well, it was this way--I think. He was probably sick, and didn't feel a
little bit like sorting mail when I asked for it. He sure was
aggravatin', and I cussed him good and plenty. I reckon I had a clove on
my tongue that day, and was irritable, and when he lit onto me, I was
hot as a hornet, and went away swearing to get square." He braced
himself for the plunge. "That was _my_ gang of cowboys that came
hell-roaring around the night I met you. They were under my orders to
scare your uncle out of his hole, and I was going to rope him."

"Oh!" she gasped, and drew away from him; "that poor, sick old man!"

He hastened to soften the charge. "Of course I didn't know he was sick,
or I wouldn't 'ave done it. He didn't look sick the day before; besides,
I didn't intend to hurt him--much. I was only fixin' for to scare him up
for pullin' a gun on me, that was all."

"That's the m