“I know it,” said the young man, translating the glances which met his eye.  “You fellows think I don’t amount to much, anyway.  Perhaps I don’t.  I came out here because I fell out with a girl I thought I loved.  She acted like a fool, and I made up my mind all women were fools.  But that wife of Blizzer’s has shown me more about true womanliness than all the girls I ever knew, and I’m going back to try it over again.”

One morning a small crowd of early drinkers at Sim Ripson’s dropped their glasses, yet did not go briskly out to work as usual.  In fact, they even hung aloof, in a most ungentlemanly manner, from Jerry Miller, who had just stood treat, and both these departures from the usual custom indicated that something unusual was the matter.  Finally, Topjack remarked: 

“He’s a stranger, an’ typhus is a bad thing to hev aroun’, but somethin’ ’ort to be done for him.  ’Taint the thing to ax fur volunteers, fur it’s danger without no chance of pleasin’ excitement.  We might throw keerds aroun’, one to each feller in the camp, and him as gets ace of spades is to tend to the poor cuss.”

“I think Jerry ought to go himself,” argued Flipp.

“He’s been exposed already, by lookin’ in to the feller’s shanty, an’s prob’bly hurt ez bad as he’s goin’ to be.”

“I might go,” said Sim Ripson, who, in his character of barkeeper, had to sustain a reputation for bravery and public spirit, “but ’twouldn’t do to shut up the store, ye know, an’ specially the bar—­nobody’d stan’ it.”

“Needn’t trouble yerselves,” said Arkansas Bill, who had entered during the conversation; “she’s thar.”

“Thunder!” exclaimed Topjack, frowning, and then looking sheepish.

“Yes,” continued Bill; “she stopped me ez I wuz comin’ along, an’ sed she’d jist heerd of it, an’ was a-goin’.  I tol’ her ther’ wuz men enough in camp to look out fur him, but she said she reckoned she could do it best.  Wants some things from ‘Frisco, though, an’ I’m a-goin’ for ’em.”

And Arkansas Bill departed, while the men at Sim Ripson’s sneaked guiltily down to the creek.

For many days the boys hung about the camp’s single street every morning, unwilling to go to work until they had seen Mrs. Blizzer appear in front of the sick man’s hut.  The boys took turns at carrying water, making fires, and serving Mrs. Blizzer generally, and even paid handsomely for the chance.

One morning Mrs. Blizzer failed to appear at the usual hour.  The boys walked about nervously—­they smoked many pipes, and took hurried drinks, and yet she did not appear.  The boys looked suggestingly at her husband, and he himself appeared to be anxious; but being one of the shiftless kind, he found anxiety far easier than action.

Suddenly Arkansas Bill remarked, “I can’t stan’ it any longer,” and walked rapidly toward the sick man’s hut, and knocked lightly on the door, and looked in.  There lay the sick man, his eyes partly open, and on the ground, apparently asleep, and with a very purple face, lay Mrs. Blizzer.