on him.

"You gotta be greased all over your lungs," she announced with a
matter-of-factness that cost her something; for Billy Louise's innate
modesty was only just topped by her good sense.

Ward submitted without protest while she bared his chest--as white as
her own--and applied the warm mixture with a smoothly vigorous palm.
"That'll fix the hookin'-cough," she said, as she spread the warm
layers of woolen cloth smoothly from shoulder to shoulder. "How does
it feel?"

"Great," he assured her succinctly, and wisely omitted any love-making.

"Will your game leg let you turn over? Because there's some dope left,
and it ought to go between your shoulders."

"The game leg ought to stand more than that," he told her, turning
slowly. "If I hadn't got this cold tacked onto me, I'd have been
trying to walk on it by now."

"Better give it time--since you've been game enough to lie here all
this while and take care of it. I don't believe I'd have had nerve
enough for that, Ward." She poured turpentine and lard into her palm,
reached inside his collar and rubbed it on his shoulders. "Good thing
you had plenty of grub handy. But it must have been awful!"

"It was pretty damned lonesome," he admitted laconically, and that was
as far as his complainings went.

Billy Louise then poured the water off the sage leaves she had been
brewing in a tin basin, carefully fished out a stem or two, and made
Ward drink every bitter drop. Then she covered him to the eyes and
hardened her heart against his discomfort, while she kept the
handkerchief cool on his head and between times swept the floor with a
carefully dampened broom and wiped the dust off things and restored the
room to its most cheerful atmosphere of livableness.

"Wan' a drink," mumbled Ward, with a blanket over his mouth and a
raveled thread tickling his nose so that he squirmed.

Billy Louise went over and laid her fingers on his neck. "I can't tell
whether it's grease or perspiration," she said, laughing a little.
"What are you squinting up your nose for? Surely to goodness you don't
mind that little, harmless raveling? If you wouldn't go on breathing,
it wouldn't wiggle around so much!" Nevertheless, she plucked the
tormenting thread and threw it on the floor.

"Gimme--drink," Ward mumbled again.

"There's more sage tea--"

"Waugh!"

"I suppose that means you aren't crazy about sage tea! Well, I might
give you a teenty-weenty speck more of coff