Lefever's eyes expanded with cheer, but his voice choked with emotion: "Doing? Rusting!" "That doesn't sound much like 'life's fitful fever.'" John glared at his companion: "Life's fitful _fever_! Why, this is only a passing flash! How about it when you can't raise even a normal temperature? Fever? I haven't felt so much as a gentle perspiration for months! The rust is eating into my finger tips," he declared with violence. "I'm a fat man. A fat man must have action,"--his voice fell--"else he gets fatter. I've got to do something. Once or twice I've come pretty near having to go to work." Laramie's expression may have been skeptical; at all events John pointed a corroborating finger at him: "You don't believe it! Just the same," he added, moodily, "it's straight." "What's de Spain doing, John?" The tone of the answer bordered on the morose: "Running a nursery at Medicine Bend." "Trees?" "Trees!" John snortingly invoked the hottest place he could think of. "Trees? Babies! Jim," he exclaimed, "I'm no family man--are you?" "You like Medicine Bend, don't you?" "Too many people there." John settled gloomily back. Then with wide-open eyes he started suddenly forward: "Give me a gun, Jim," he said wildly, "a gun and a horse." "And a north wind!" exclaimed Laramie. "And a high country," cried Lefever with flashing eyes, "a country where you can't see a damned thing in any direction for a hundred and fifty miles!" Though talking vigorously he was eating, without protest from Laramie, everything in sight. Kate could not help listening; Lefever's high spirits were contagious. "Jim," came next between mouthfuls. "What was that story about you being up at the Junction the day I wanted you to serve those papers on old Barb Doubleday?" "I went up there that day because I had business of a different kind with Barb." "About the wire ripping, yes. But I heard you got sewed up by a skirt and didn't talk wire to Barb at all." "No more of that, John." "What was there to it?" "I guess there was." "A ride or something--what?" "Something, John." "Thunder! It must have been the ride. I had a deputy marshalship all lined up for you if that hadn't happened. And believe me, boy, a deputy marshalship isn't lying around loose every day!" Kate listened keenly for Laramie's comment: "The ride was worth the price, John," was all he said. "Some skirt, eh?" Laramie squirmed and with an expletive protested: "Hang it, John----" "No matter, no matter. I'll get it all from Belle some day. And after you get through with your wire thieves we'll tell the story of your brief romance----" "Over my grave." "Right, Jim--over your grave." "John," Laramie ran on, "do you remember that song Tommie Meggeson used to sing on the round-up--a pretty little thing. It had one good line in it: 'Death comes but once, and then, sometimes--too late.'"