is face full toward her, made a kissing
motion with his lips.

"You quit that!" the Kid commanded him sharply. "She's my girl I guess I
found her first 'fore you did, and you ain't goin' to kiss her."

After that there was no lovemaking but the most decorous conversation
between these two.

Flying U Coulee lay deserted under the warm sunlight of early forenoon.
Deserted, and silent with the silence that tells where Death has stopped
with his sickle. Even the Kid seemed to feel a strangeness in the
atmosphere--a stillness that made his face sober while he looked around
the little pasture and up at the hill trail. In all the way home they
had not met anyone--but that may have been because Andy chose the way up
Flying U Creek as being shorter and therefore more desirable.

At the lower line fence of the little pasture Andy refused to believe
the Kid's assertion of having opened and shut the gate, until the Kid
got down and proved that he could open it--the shutting process being
too slow for Andy's raw nerves. He lifted the Kid into the saddle and
shut the gate himself, and led the way up the creek at a fast trot.

"I guess Doctor Dell will be glad to see me," the Kid observed
wistfully. "I've been gone most a year, I guess."

Neither Andy nor Miss Allen made any reply to this. Their eyes were
searching the hilltop for riders, that they might signal. But there was
no one in sight anywhere.

"Hadn't you better shout?" suggested Miss Allen. "Or would it be better
to go quietly--"

Andy did not reply; nor did he shout. Andy, at that moment, was fighting
a dryness in his throat. He could not have called out if he had wanted
to. They rode to the stable and stopped. Andy lifted the Kid down and
set him on his two feet by the stable door while he turned to Miss
Allen. For once in his life he was at a loss. He did not know how best
to bring the Kid to the Little Doctor; How best to lighten the shock
of seeing safe and well the manchild who she thought was dead. He
hesitated. Perhaps he should have ridden on to the house with him.
Perhaps he should have fired the signal when first he came into the
coulee. Perhaps...

The Kid himself swept aside Andy's uncertainties. Adeline, the cat, came
out of the stable and looked at them contemplatively. Adeline still had
the string tied to her tail, and a wisp of paper tied to the string. The
Kid pounced and caught her by the middle.

"I guess I can tie knots so they stay, by cripe