The miner saw some one sitting on the veranda of the second story, back in the shade, but paid no attention. He dismounted, tied his horse and, with a feeling of profound awkwardness, climbed the broad front steps and walked on tiptoe through the open doors into the clean, hard-wood corridor. Should a feller ring a bell, or yell, or--what did anybody do, anyhow, when they came to visit some one who was a patient in a hospital? If you rang a bell, you might disturb some poor cuss, and if you yelled, maybe they’d come and throw you out. Further perplexities were spared by the opportune entrance of a cool young person in immaculately clean clothes and a funny cap and apron who had addressed him, heard and answered his question before he recovered presence of mind sufficient to drag off his weather-beaten and dust-covered hat. “Oh, yes. Mr. Ring is all right now. No complications. Will be out in a week or two. He is sitting in the top veranda. You can go right up those stairs and out front to see him, if you wish.” He tiptoed up the smooth wooden stairs and down the hallway, feeling that, despite his efforts, he was making noise enough to wake the dead, blinked in the sunlight that seemed intent on invading the wide porch, and then stopped, gasping, with widely opened eyes and mouth. Two were sitting there in chairs drawn as closely as they could be drawn, one a man whose flaring red head was half covered with bandages, the other a woman whose arm was thrust protectingly about his neck and shoulders, as if to shield him from any or everything in an inimical world. The woman saw him first and, springing to her feet, came to meet him with both hands outstretched. “Brown! Pearl Brown!” Trigger Smith exclaimed in a voice of amazement. “Wrong, Smith. You’re wrong,” she said, catching his hand and looking up at him with a warmth that never before had he seen in her eyes, a warmth that told that she was still young, still had recesses in her heart that were unhardened, was still a woman well worth while. He couldn’t get it all. Surely she was Brown--Pearl Brown who owned the Alamo up there in Murdock and yet--Pearl Brown hadn’t ever looked like this. His gaze swept over her head to that young fellow with the red head, that fellow Ring, and that fellow had a grin as wide as all outdoors and was trying to make signs with bandaged arms and, putting his feet on the floor in the first efforts to rise, come forward and greet him. Her voice came as a positive interruption.