e morning, and reach home about noon.

It was well in the turn of the following afternoon when Slavens decided
that he would wait in camp for her no longer. Fears were beginning to
rise in him, and doubt that all was with her as it should be. If she
went toward Comanche, she must return from Comanche; he might meet her
on the way to his own camp. If not, in the morning he would go on to
Comanche in search of her.

His horse, fresh and eager, knowing that it was heading for home,
carried him over the road at a handsome gait. At the first stage-station
out of Comanche, a matter of twenty-five miles, and of fifteen beyond
his camp, he made inquiry about Agnes.

She had passed there the morning before, the man in charge said,
measuring Slavens curiously with his little hair-hedged eyes as he stood
in the door of his shanty, half a cabbage-head in one hand, a
butcher-knife in the other. Slavens thanked him and drew on the reins.

"I'm breaking in on your preparations for supper."

"No; it's dinner," the man corrected.

"I didn't know that you'd come to six-o'clock dinners in this part of
the country," the doctor laughed.

"Not as I know of," the cook-horse-wrangler said. "This dinner that I'm
gittin' ready, stranger, is for tomorrow noon, when the stage comes by
from Comanche. I always cook it the day before to be sure it'll be ready
on time."

With that the forehanded cook turned and went back to his pot. As
Slavens rode away he heard the cabbage crunching under the cook's knife
as he sliced it for the passengers of the Meander stage, to have it hot
and steaming, and well soaked with the grease of corned beef, when they
should arrive at noon on the morrow.

Dusk was settling when the doctor reached his tent. Before he dismounted
he rode to a little clear place among the bewilderment of stones which
gave him a view of half a mile, and he sat there looking a while down
the stage-trail toward Comanche. Beyond him a few hundred yards another
tent had been planted. In front of it a man sat cooking his supper over
a little blaze.

"Boyle lost no time in getting here," muttered the doctor, turning to
his own shelter and kindling a fire on the ashes of other days.

Ashes were graying again over the embers long after he had boiled his
pot of coffee and put away his can of warmed-over beans. Night was
charged with a threat of frost, as is not uncommon in those altitudes at
the beginning of September. It was so chilly tha