ather in bed and to keep him quiet
and nurse him.

"He's so active," said Kate regretfully. "He seems to be on the go all
the time."

"Damn him!" exclaimed Carpy with blunt emphasis. "He's nervous all the
time--that's what's the matter. He's got too many irons in the fire."

Kate swallowed her astonishment at so extraordinary a medical outburst.
She reminded herself she was really out West.

Belle, when Kate saw her the following morning at the eating-house,
said much the same thing and added in her coldly philosophic way, "I
reckon the banks have got him. And say, Kate, here's a telegram just
come for your father."

Kate took the despatch up to the cottage. It was from Van Horn at
Medicine Bend, and it so upset her father that she was sorry she had
had to deliver it. After an interval, unpleasant both for the disabled
man and his nurse, Kate ventured to ask whether there was not something
she could do. There was not. Litigation against him, long dormant--he
explained between twinges--had been revived, papers issued and a United
States deputy marshal was on the way to serve him. "I thought," he
growled, "the thing was dead. But nothing against me ever dies. If
it'd gone past today it would 'a' been outlawed. You'll have to send
some telegrams for me."

He gave her the substance of them and of a letter he wanted
written--all of which she carefully took down. Then putting on her
hat, she hastened to the eating-house to send the telegrams.

It was well past noon. At the lunch-counter desk Kate copied the
messages on telegraph blanks, took them up to the operator and came
downstairs to write the letter for her father.

While she was doing this, the two o'clock Medicine Bend train pulled
in. It was the big through train of the day, the train that Belle had
said must bring the dreaded summons server from Medicine Bend, if he
came that day at all. But Kate, absorbed in her letter writing, had
forgotten all about this unpleasantness when something--she was never
able to say just what--recalled her to herself. She became all at once
conscious that she was writing a letter, and at the same time conscious
that she was no longer alone in the little room.

CHAPTER V

CROSS PURPOSES

The only thing Kate could have noticed was a slight darkening of the
room; something momentarily obscured the sunlight streaming through the
platform doorway; someone sauntered into the room itself, but Kate was
sign