indifferently.

"Oh, I know," drawled Creede. "Got a letter from her."

A single hawk-like glance was the only answer to this sally.

"She says: 'Why the hell don't you write!'" volunteered the cowboy.

"'S that so!" commented Hardy, and then he went on with his cooking.

For a minute Creede stood watching him, his eyes keen to detect the
slightest quaver, but the little man seemed suddenly to have forgotten
him; he moved about absently, mechanically, dropping nothing, burning
nothing, yet far away, as in a dream.

"Huh!" exclaimed Creede, disgusted with his own make-believe, "you
don't seem to care whether school keeps or not. I'll excuse you from
any further work this evenin'--here's your mail."

He drew a bundle of letters from behind his back and dropped it
heavily upon the table, but even then Hardy did not rise.

"Guess the Old Man must've forwarded my mail," he remarked, smiling at
the size of the pack. "I've been knocking around so, I haven't
received a letter in a year. Chuck 'em on my desk, will ye?"

"Sure," responded Creede, and stepping across the broad living-room he
threw the bundle carelessly on the bed.

"You're like me," he remarked, drawing his chair up sociably to
supper, "I ain't got a letter fer so long I never go near the dam'
post office."

He sighed, and filled his plate with beans.

"Ever been in St. Louis?" he inquired casually. "No? They say it's a
fine burg. Think I'll save up my _dinero_ and try it a whirl some
day."

The supper table was cleared and Creede had lit his second cigarette
before Hardy reverted to the matter of his mail.

"Well," he said, "I might as well look over those letters--may be a
thousand-dollar check amongst them."

Then, stepping into his room, he picked up the package, examined it
curiously, and cut the cords with his knife.

A sheaf of twenty or more letters spilled out and, sitting on the edge
of the bed, he shuffled them over in the uncertain light of the fire,
noting each inscription with a quick glance; and as he gathered up the
last he quietly tucked three of them beneath the folds of his
blankets--two in the same hand, bold and dashing yet stamped with a
certain feminine delicacy and grace, and each envelope of a pale blue;
the third also feminine, but inscribed in black and white, a crooked
little hand that strayed across the page, yet modestly shrank from
trespassing on the stamp.

With the remainder of his mail Hardy blundered over to