A half hour later the men presented themselves for breakfast, to be utterly ignored by the bustling women. They were given coffee and steak and made to sit on the kitchen steps while they ate, that they might not be in the way. Bruce was amused and rebuked the women gently for the seriousness with which they went about their work, but for Tommy the whole procedure was a grave matter. He ate distractedly, hurriedly, covering his embarrassment by astonishing gastronomic feats, glancing sidelong at Bayard whenever the rancher spoke to the others, as though those scarcely heeded remarks were something which made heavy demands upon human courage. The interior of the house had been changed greatly. The kitchen range was new, the walls were papered instead of covered with whitewash. The room in which Ned Lytton had slept and fretted and come back toward health was no longer a bed chamber. Its windows had been increased to four that the light might be of the best. Its floor was painted and carpeted with new Navajo blankets and a bear skin. A piano stood against one wall and on either side of the new fireplace were shelves weighted with books that were to be opened and read and discussed by the light of the new reading lamp which stood on the heavy library table. Tommy was obviously relieved when his meal was finished. He drew a long sigh when, wiping his mouth on a jumper sleeve, he stepped from the house and followed Bruce toward the corral where the saddle horses ate hay. "It's a wonder you ain't ruined that horse, th' way you baby him," Clary remarked, when Bayard, brush in hand, commenced grooming Abe's sleek coat. "Now, with my Nig horse there, I figure that if he's full inside, he's had his share. I'm afraid that if I brushed him every day he'd get dudish an' unreliable, like me.... I'm ready to do a lot of rarin' an' runnin' every time I get good an' clean!" "I guess th' care Abe's had hasn't hurt him much," Bruce replied. "He was ready when the pinch came; th' groomin' I'd been givin' him didn't have much to do with it, I know, but th' fact that we were pals ... that counted." His companion sobered and answered. "You're right, there, Bruce, he sure done some tall travelin' that day." "If he hadn't been ready ... we wouldn't be plannin' a weddin' this noon. That's how much it counted!" Tommy moved closer and twined his fingers in the sorrel's mane. Neither spoke for a moment; then Clary blurted: "She's got th' same kind of stuff, Bruce, or she wouldn't come through neither. Abe made th' run of his life and wasn't hurt by it; she went through about four sections of hell an'.... She looked like a Texas rose when she got off th' train last week!" Bayard rapped the dust from his brush and answered: