“I’ll look after your things, Miss Peck,” called Tommy, now springing down from his horse.  The egg tragedy had momentarily stunned him.

“You’ll attend to the mail first, Mr. Postmaster!” said the lady, but favoring him with a look from her large eyes.  “There’s plenty of gentlemen here.”  With that her glance favored Lin.  She went into the cabin, he following her close, with the Taylors and myself in the rear.  “Well, I guess I’m about collapsed!” said she, vigorously, and sank upon one of Tommy’s chairs.

The fragile article fell into sticks beneath her, and Lin leaped to her assistance.  He placed her upon a firmer foundation.  Mrs. Taylor brought a basin and towel to bathe the dust from her face, Mr. Taylor produced whiskey, and I found sugar and hot water.  Tommy would doubtless have done something in the way of assistance or restoratives, but he was gone to the stable with the horses.

“Shall I get your medicine from the valise, deary?” inquired Mrs. Taylor.

“Not now,” her visitor answered; and I wondered why she should take such a quick look at me.

“We’ll soon have yu’ independent of medicine,” said Lin, gallantly.  “Our climate and scenery here has frequently raised the dead.”

“You’re a case, anyway!” exclaimed the sick lady with rich conviction.

The cow-puncher now sat himself on the edge of Tommy’s bed, and, throwing one leg across the other, began to raise her spirits with cheerful talk.  She steadily watched him—­his face sometimes, sometimes his lounging, masculine figure.  While he thus devoted his attentions to her, Taylor departed to help Tommy at the stable, and good Mrs. Taylor, busy with supper for all of us in the kitchen, expressed her joy at having her old friend of childhood for a visit after so many years.

“Sickness has changed poor Katie some,” said she.  “But I’m hoping she’ll get back her looks on Bear Creek.”

“She seems less feeble than I had understood,” I remarked.

“Yes, indeed!  I do believe she’s feeling stronger.  She was that tired and down yesterday with the long stage-ride, and it is so lonesome!  But Taylor and I heartened her up, and Tommy came with the mail, and to-day she’s real spruced-up like, feeling she’s among friends.”

“How long will she stay?” I inquired.

“Just as long as ever she wants!  Me and Katie hasn’t met since we was young girls in Dubuque, for I left home when I married Taylor, and he brought me to this country right soon; and it ain’t been like Dubuque much, though if I had it to do over again I’d do just the same, as Taylor knows.  Katie and me hasn’t wrote even, not till this February, for you always mean to and you don’t.  Well, it’ll be like old times.  Katie’ll be most thirty-four, I expect.  Yes.  I was seventeen and she was sixteen the very month I was married.  Poor thing!  She ought to have got some good man for a husband, but I expect she didn’t have any chance, for there was a big fam’ly o’ them girls, and old Peck used to act real scandalous, getting drunk so folks didn’t visit there evenings scarcely at all.  And so she quit home, it seems, and got a position in the railroad eating-house at Sidney, and now she has poor health with feeding them big trains day and night.”