"I used to sleep in a box like that myself," he went on. "But the year it was so dry the grasshoppers got into it." John coughed again unobtrusively. "I raffled that bed off," he continued, low and reminiscently. "A conductor won it. But it didn't fool him. He knew the bed as well as I did; he'd slept in it. So I bought it in again, cheap, and traded it to an old Indian buck--a one-eyed man--for a pony. Many a time I've laughed, thinking of that bed up on the Reservation. Those bucks, you know, are desperate gamblers. I understand they've been playing hearts with that blamed bed ever since and putting it on the high man." At this, John laughed harder than ever, Belle sputtering as she watched him. Then he turned his amiable face on Kate: "How are you all at the home?" "Very well." "What's the news up your way?" "Not a thing since the Fourth of July." "Father pretty well?" "Quite." "When did you see him last?" It was an odd question: "Last night--why?" asked Kate in turn. "He didn't come in town with you today?" countered John. "He rarely does," said Kate. John nodded soothing assent to her explanation: "How's Van Horn?" he asked casually. "And Stone?" he added, with undiminished interest. "All well," was his echo to her perfunctory answers. "Say, Belle, was Jim Laramie in town yesterday?" Belle shook her head. "How about the day before?" he asked. Again she said, "no"; and went on with an impatient comment of her own: "You're always asking questions. What for? That's what I want to know." John laid his cigarette on the rim of his plate and appealed to Kate: "Did you ever in your life see a more unreasonable woman than Belle? How am I to find things out without asking questions of my friends? And among them I number you both," he added. Leaning forward, he spoke on: "Now I'll tell you why I asked those harmless little questions--for I wouldn't ask either of you any other kind. This news will get to each of you, about evening. By morning it will be all over Sleepy Cat and by tomorrow noon across the Spanish Sinks. This morning, early, Van Horn, Tom Stone, Pettigrew with Bradley, and a bunch of Texas men and cowboys rode over into the Falling Wall country and there's been hell to pay there every minute since daylight--that's the word I got about half an hour ago, by telephone, from a little ranch away up on the head-waters of the Crazy Woman." He drew his handkerchief and wiped his brow. "The only man up there--Belle knows that--that I'm any ways interested in, is Jim Laramie. According to what I can hear, Jim is home. That's worrying me just a little.