itted to being covered to his eyes. Then he wriggled
his chin free and demanded that she kiss him. Ward was fairly drunk
with happiness because she was there, in the cabin. The dreary weeks
behind him were a nightmare to be forgotten. His Wilhemina-mine was
there, and she liked him to pieces. Though she had not affirmed it
with words, her eyes when she looked at him told him so; and she had
kissed him when he asked her to. He wanted her to repeat the ecstasy.

"Ward Warren, you're a perfectly awful hookin'-cough man! There. Now
that's going to be the very last one-- Oh, Ward, it isn't!" She knelt
and curved an arm around his face and kissed him again and yet again.
"I do love you, Ward. I've been a weak-kneed, horrid thing, and I'm
ashamed to the middle of my bones. You're my own brave buckaroo
always--always! You've done what no other man would do, and you don't
whine about it; and I've been weak and--horrid; and I'll have to love
you about a million years before I can quit feeling ashamed." She
kissed him again with a passion of remorse for her doubts of him.

"Are you through being pals, Wilhemina?" Ward broke rules and freed an
arm, so that he could hold her closer.

"No, I'm just beginning. Just beginning right. I'm your pal for
keeps. But--"

"I love you for keeps, lady mine." Ward stifled another cough. "When
are you going to--marry me?"

"Oh, when you get over the hookin'-cough, I s'pose." Once more Billy
Louise, for the good of her patient, forced herself into safe
flippancy--that was not flippant at all, but merely a tender pretense.

"Now it's up to you to show me whether you are in any hurry at all to
get well," she said. "Keep your hands under the covers while I make
some tea. That fever of yours has got to be stopped immediately--to
once."

She went over and busied herself about the stove, never once looking
toward the bed, though she must have felt Ward's eyes worshiping her.
She was terribly worried about Ward; so worried that she put everything
else into the background of her mind and set herself sternly to the
need of breaking the fever and lessening the evident congestion in his
lungs.

She hunted through the cupboards and found a bottle of turpentine;
syrupy and yellowed with age, but pungent with strength. She found
some lard in a small bucket and melted half a teacupful. Then she tore
up a woolen undershirt she found hanging on a nail and bore
relentlessly down up