He rode along the street, fetlock-deep in dust, and stopped at the hotel corral. Freeing Ranger of the saddle and bridle, he opened the gate and slapped the chestnut on the hip. "Go on in, fellah," said Loudon. "Yore dinner's a-comin'." He walked around to the front of the hotel. Under the wooden awning a beefy, red-faced citizen was dozing in a chair tilted back against the wall. Loudon tapped the snoring individual on the shoulder. The sleeper awoke gaspingly, his eyes winking. The chair settled on four legs with a crash. "Howdy, Bill," said Loudon, gravely. "Howdy, Tom," gurgled the other. "Hoss in the corral an' me here, Bill. Feeds for two." "Sure. We've done et, but you go in an' holler for Lize. She'll fix you up." The fat landlord waddled stableward and Loudon entered the hotel. A partition that did not reach the ceiling divided the sleeping apartments from the dining room. Carelessly hanging over the partition were two shirts and someone's chaps. The whole floor slanted, for, as has been said, the hotel leaned sidewise. The long table in the dining room, covered with cracked and scaling oilcloth, was held unsteadily upright by three legs and a cracker box. Loudon, quite untouched by this scene of shiftlessness, hooked out a chair with his foot, dropped his hat on the floor, and sat down. "Oh, Mis' Lainey!" he called. A female voice, somewhat softened by distance and a closed door, instantly began to make oration to the effect that if any lazy chunker of a puncher thought he was to eat any food he was very much mistaken. The door banged open. A slatternly, scrawny woman appeared in the doorway. She was still talking. But the clacking tongue changed its tone abruptly. "Oh, it's you, Tom Loudon!" exclaimed the lean woman. "How are yuh, anyway? I'm shore glad to see yuh. I thought yuh was one o' them rousy fellers, an' I wouldn't rustle no more chuck this noon for the likes o' them, not if they was starvin' an' their tongues was hangin' out a foot. But yo're different, an' I ain't never forgot the time you rode thirty mile for a doc when my young one was due to cash. No, you bet I ain't! Now don't you say nothin'. You jest set right patient a short spell an' I'll rustle----" The door swung shut, and the remainder of the sentence was lost in a muffled din of pans. Loudon winked at the closed door and grinned. He had known the waspish Mrs. Lainey and her paunchy husband since that day when, newly come to the Lazy River country, he had met them, their buckboard wrecked by a runaway and their one child apparently dying of internal injuries. Though Loudon always minimized what he had done, Mrs. Lainey and her husband did not. And they were not folk whose memories are short.