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."

A wan little smile greeted his joke. The effect on Johnnie himself was
more pronounced. It gave him confidence in his ability to meet the
situation. He had not known before that he was a wit and the discovery
of it tickled his self-esteem.

"'Course we didn't really clean up no Indians nor drink all the alkali.
Tha's jes' in the song, as you might say." He began to bustle about in
preparation for her breakfast.

"Please don't trouble. I'll eat what you've got cooked," she begged.

"It's no trouble, ma'am. If the's a thing on earth I enjoy doin' it's
sure cookin'. Do