and dusting and cleaning from morning till night. The Little Doctor,
as the bunk house had christened her, was away attending the State
Medical Examination at Helena.

"Gee-whiz!" sighed Cal on Sunday afternoon. "It seems mighty queer
without the Little Doctor around here, sassing the Old Man and putting
the hull bunch of us on the fence about once a day. If it wasn't for
Len Adams--"

"It wouldn't do you any good to throw a nasty loop at the Little
Doctor," broke in Weary, "'cause she's spoken for, by all signs and
tokens. There's some fellow back East got a long rope on her."

"You got the papers for that?" jeered Cal. "The Little Doctor don't
act the way I'd want my girl t' act, supposin' I was some thousand or
fifteen hundred miles off her range. She ain't doing no pining, I tell
yuh those."

"She's doing a lot of writing, though. I'll bet money, if we called
the roll right here, you'd see there's been a letter a week hittin' the
trail to one Dr. Cecil Granthum, Gilroy, Ohio."

"That's what," agreed Jack Bates. "I packed one last week, myself."

"I done worse than that," said Weary, blandly. "I up and fired a shot
at her, after the second one she handed me. I says, as innocent: 'I
s'pose, if I lost this, there'd be a fellow out on the next train with
blood in his eye and a six-gun in both hands, demanding explanations'--
and she flashed them dimples on me and twinkled them big, gray eyes of
hers, and says: 'It's up to you to carry it safe, then,' or words to