said he, "yu' caught me--if that's much to do when a man is half-witted
with dinner and sleep." He closed his eyes again and lay with a specious
expression of indifference. But that sort of thing is a solitary
entertainment, and palls. "Starved," he presently muttered. "We are kind
o' starved that way I'll admit. More dollars than girls to the square
mile. And to think of all of us nice, healthy, young--bet yu' I know who
she is!" he triumphantly cried. He had sat up and levelled a finger at me
with the throw-down jerk of a marksman. "Sidney, Nebraska."

I nodded. This was not the lady's name--he could not recall her name--but
his geography of her was accurate.

One day in February my friend, Mrs. Taylor over on Bear Creek, had
received a letter--no common event for her. Therefore, during several
days she had all callers read it just as naturally as she had them all
see the new baby, and baby and letter had both been brought out for me.
The letter was signed,

"Ever your afectionite frend.
"Katie Peck,

and was not easy to read, here and there. But you could piece out the
drift of it, and there was Mrs. Taylor by your side, eager to help you
when you stumbled. Miss Peck wrote that she was overworked in Sidney,
Nebraska, and needed a holiday. When the weather grew warm she should
like to come to Bear Creek and be like old times. "Like to come and be
like old times" filled Mrs. Taylor with sentiment and the cow-punchers
with expectation. But it is a long way from February to warm weather on
Bear Creek, and even cow-punchers will forget about a new girl if she
does not come. For several weeks I had not heard Miss Peck mentioned, and