“I surely will,” replied Columbine, gladly, and she sat down on the edge of the bed.  “Ben, you fetch that box and put his dinner on it.”

While Wade complied, Columbine, shyly aware of her nearness to the cowboy, sought to keep up conversation.  “Couldn’t you help yourself with your left hand?” she inquired.

“That’s one worse,” he answered, taking it from under the blanket, where it had been concealed.

“Oh!” cried Columbine, in dismay.

“Broke two bones in this one,” said Wilson, with animation.  “Say, Collie, our friend Wade is a doctor, too.  Never saw his beat!”

“And a cook, too, for here’s your dinner.  You must sit up,” ordered Columbine.

“Fold that blanket and help me up on it,” replied Moore.

How strange and disturbing for Columbine to bend over him, to slip her arms under him and lift him!  It recalled a long-forgotten motherliness of her doll-playing days.  And her face flushed hot.

“Can’t you move?” she asked, suddenly becoming aware of how dead a weight the cowboy appeared.

“Not—­very much,” he replied.  Drops of sweat appeared on his bruised brow.  It must have hurt him to move.

“You said your foot was all right.”

“It is,” he returned.  “It’s still on my leg, as I know darned well.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Columbine, dubiously.  Without further comment she began to feed him.

“It’s worth getting licked to have this treat,” he said.

“Nonsense!” she rejoined.

“I’d stand it again—­to have you come here and feed me....  But not from him.”

“Wilson, I never knew you to be facetious before.  Here, take this.”

Apparently he did not see her outstretched hand.

“Collie, you’ve changed.  You’re older.  You’re a woman, now—­and the prettiest—­”

“Are you going to eat?” demanded Columbine.

“Huh!” exclaimed the cowboy, blankly.  “Eat?  Oh yes, sure.  I’m powerful hungry.  And maybe Heaven-Sent Wade can’t cook!”

But Columbine had trouble in feeding him.  What with his helplessness, and his propensity to watch her face instead of her hands, and her own mounting sensations of a sweet, natural joy and fitness in her proximity to him, she was hard put to it to show some dexterity as a nurse.  And all the time she was aware of Wade, with his quiet, forceful presence, hovering near.  Could he not see her hands trembling?  And would he not think that weakness strange?  Then driftingly came the thought that she would not shrink from Wade’s reading her mind.  Perhaps even now he understood her better than she understood herself.

“I can’t—­eat any more,” declared Moore, at last.

“You’ve done very well for an invalid,” observed Columbine.  Then, changing the subject, she asked, “Wilson, you’re going to stay here—­winter here, dad would call it?”

“Yes.”

“Are those your cattle down in the valley?”