and jaded from the long, heavy pull across the sandy trail of the
sagebrush desert. With funds barely sufficient for horse feed and a few
weeks' provisions, they came without definite knowledge of conditions or
plans. A rumor had reached them back there in Minnesota or Iowa,
Nebraska or Missouri, of the opportunities in this new country and,
anyway, they wanted to move--_where_ was not a matter of great moment.
Others came by rail, all bearing the earmarks of straitened
circumstances, and few of them with any but the most vague ideas as to
what they had come for beyond the universal expectation of getting rich,
somehow, somewhere, some time. They were poor alike, and the first
efforts of the head of each household were spent in the construction of
a place of shelter for himself and family. The makeshifts of poverty
were seldom if ever the subject of ridicule or comment, for most had a
sympathetic understanding of the emergencies which made them necessary.
Kindness, helpfulness, good-fellowship were in the air.

When Ephriam Baskitt loomed up on the horizon with two freight wagons
filled with the dust-covered canned goods of a defunct grocery store and
twenty-four hours later was a fixture, nobody saw anything humorous in
the headline in the _Courier_ which heralded him as "The Merchant Prince
of Crowheart." Two new saloons opened while "Curly" resigned as chef for
the Lazy S Outfit to become the orchestra in a new dance hall which
arrived about midnight in a prairie schooner.

As Dr. Harpe made friends with the newcomers and continued to ingratiate
herself with the old, she sometimes felt that the death of Alice Freoff
was not after all the tragedy it had at first seemed. She missed the
woman--not the woman so much either, as the association--and there was
no one in Crowheart to fill her place, so she was frequently lonely,
often bored, with the intensely practical, unsophisticated women whom
she attracted strongly. Sometimes she thought of Augusta Kunkel and a
derisive smile always curved her lips as she attempted to picture her in
a worldly setting and the smile grew when she tried to imagine Symes's
sensations while presenting her to his friends. She indulged, too, in
speculation as to the outcome of the marriage, but could not venture a
prophecy since it was one of those affairs to which no ending would be
improbable.

But while Dr. Harpe speculated, observation and the suggestions of Andy
P. Symes were working wo