When her timid knock came her host brought in a steaming cup.  “You drink this.  It’ll warm you good.”

“What is it?” she asked shyly.

“Medicine,” he smiled.  “Doctor’s orders.”

While she sipped the toddy Johnnie brought from the kitchen a tray upon which were tea, fried potatoes, ham, eggs, and buttered toast.

The girl ate ravenously.  It was an easy guess that she had not before tasted food that day.

Clay kept up a flow of talk, mostly about Johnnie’s culinary triumphs.  Meanwhile he made up a bed on the couch.

Once she looked up at him, her throat swollen with emotion.  “You’re good.”

“Sho!  We been needin’ a li’l’ sister to brace up our manners for us.  It’s lucky for us I found you.  Now I expect you’re tired and sleepy.  We fixed up yore bed in here because it’s warmer.  You’ll be able to make out with it all right.  The springs are good.”  Clay left her with a cheerful smile.  “Turn out the light before you go to bed, Miss Colorado.  Sleep tight.  And don’t you worry.  You’re back with old home folks again now, you know.”

They heard her moving about for a time.  Presently came silence.  Tired out from tramping the streets with out food and drowsy from the toddy she had taken, Kitty fell into deep sleep undisturbed by troubled dreams.

The cattleman knew he had found her in the nick of time.  She had told him that she had no money, no room in which to sleep, no prospect of work.  Everything she had except the clothes on her back had been pawned to buy food and lodgings.  But she was young and resilient.  When she got back home to the country where she belonged, time would obliterate from her mind the experiences of which she had been the victim.

It was past midday when Kitty woke.  She heard a tuneless voice in the kitchen lifted up in a doleful song: 

  “There’s hard times on old Bitter Creek
    That never can be beat. 
  It was root hog or die
  Under every wagon sheet. 
  We cleared up all the Indians,
  Drank all the alkali,
    And it’s whack the cattle on, boys—­
  Root hog or die.”

Kitty found her clothes dry.  After she dressed she opened the door that led to the kitchen.  Johnnie was near the end of another stanza of his sad song: 

  “Oh, I’m goin’ home
    Bull-whackin’ for to spurn;
  I ain’t got a nickel,
  And I don’t give a dern. 
  ’T is when I meet a pretty girl,
  You bet I will or try,
    I’ll make her my little wife—­
  Root hog—­”

He broke off embarrassed.  “Did I wake you-all, ma’am, with my fool singin’?  I’m right sorry if I did.”

“You didn’t.”  Kitty, clinging shyly to the side of the doorway, tried to gain confidence from his unease.  “I was already awake.  Is it a range song you were singing?”

“Yes’m.  Cattle range, not kitchen range.”