The men went out of the Howling Wilderness as the man who shot this injunction or observation in at the door went in, and to their amazement saw the woman alluded to walk rapidly on past the saloon. She did not look up, she did not turn right or left or stop at the saloon or speak to any one; she went straight to her own cabin. Then the men knew for a certainty that it was the little Widow who was ill, and they knew that it was this woman who was nursing her, and they almost worshiped the ground that the good Samaritan walked upon. Soon Bunker Hill came out again, and again took the trail for the Widow's cabin, and walking all the time rapidly as before. The men as she passed took off their hats and stood there in silence. There was a smile of satisfaction on her plain face as she climbed the hill. She went up that hill as if she had been borne on wings. Her heart had never been so light before. For the first time since she had been in camp, she had noticed that she was treated with respect. It was a rare sensation, new and most delightful. The hump on her back was barely noticed as she passed Limber Tim trying to lean up against the fence, and entered with a noiseless step, and almost tip-toe, the home of the sufferer. The men respected this woman now more than ever before. They also respected her silence. At another time they would have called out to her; sent banter after her in rough unhewn speech, and got in return as good, or better, than they sent. But now no man spoke to her. She had been dignified, sanctified, by her mission of mercy, whatever it meant or whatever was the matter, and she was to them a better woman. Men who met her on her return gave her all the trail, and held their hats as she passed. One old man gave her his hand as she crossed a little snow stream in the trail, and helped her over it as if she had been his own child. Yet this old man had despised her and all her kind the day before. She went and came many times that day, and always with the same respect, the same silent regard from the great Missourians whom the day found about the Forks. Then Captain Tommy came forth in the evening, and also went on straight to her cabin, and her face was full of concern. The Captain had not been a person of any dignity at all the day before, but now not a man had the audacity to address her as she passed on with her eyes fixed on the trail before her. When she returned, the man at his post had fallen. Poor Limber Tim! He would not leave his station, and Sandy had something else to think of now; and so he fell on the field. It was not that he had drunk so much, but that he had eaten so little. His last recollections of that day were a long and protracted and fruitless wrestle with the phial of wrath in his boot-leg, and an ineffectual attempt to screw the picket fence on to his back. It was no new thing to find a man spilt out in the trail in these days, and his fall excited no remark.