“Yes, but we must first attend to the needs of your wife. Go to Captain Ranger. Tell him I sent you. Tell him I must borrow one of his tents and some physic and a bottle of ‘Number Six.’ Ask for Mrs. O’Dowd, and be sure to say that Mrs. McAlpin wants her badly.” When Captain Ranger and his man Limpy appeared on the scene, bringing the tent and medicines, water was already boiling in a black iron kettle, the only cooking utensil in sight. The tent was soon pitched, and a bed prepared for the sufferer, who was writhing in convulsions. “Any woman accustomed to the comforts of a well-ordered home would have died,” said Mrs. McAlpin the next morning, after the crisis was past. “But the average specimen of the poor white trash of the original slave States has as many lives as a cat.” “I didn’t have no doctor,” said the patient, as soon as she was able to be on her feet. “Thar was a woman yar, an’ she giv’ me some hot truck, but I jist kored myself.” The woman was telling her story to a visitor, who had called, partly from sympathy, but chiefly from curiosity; and Mrs. McAlpin, who was assisting Captain Ranger to compound the mixture for the ailing feet of the stranger’s cattle, overheard the shrill-voiced visitor add, “I never did take no stock in them women doctors.” “I wanted water,” continued the patient, “an’ couldn’t git none; so I waited till nobody was watchin’ and jist stole out o’ the tent in the night an’ swallered all I could hol’ from a canteen; and I mended from the word ‘go.’ The stuff was as warm as dish-water, but I wanted it so bad I didn’t stop to taste it.” All day the convalescent wrestled with weakness; but as the afflicted cattle could not go forward till the following morning, she moved languidly about the camp and fed her family with beans and bacon, with the never-failing accompaniment of black coffee, which Captain Ranger declared was “strong enough to bear up an iron wedge.” * * * * * The scenery became more diversified as the travellers continued their journey up the Platte. Gradually the heat became less suffocating. Desert sands gave way to alluvial valleys, and the health of man and beast improved. On the opposite, or south side of the river, the scenery was strikingly unlike that of the plain through which the emigrant road ran, winding its sinewy length in and out, over the vast, untilled fields that lay asleep in the sunshine, awaiting the fructifying power of the autumn rains, and the future labor of plough and seedsman. It was now the first of July. The heavy duties of the day were over, the short summer evening had come, and Captain Ranger lay upon the grass, playing with his own little ones, Susannah’s George Washington, and the three babies of Sally O’Dowd. The evening breezes stirred his hair and beard and filed his lungs with a sensation of vigor he had not enjoyed since bidding farewell to his faithful wife.