"I don't quite know. She got sick 'most two weeks ago, and talks of a pain that only leaves her when she's sleeping. One of the boys drove in to the railroad for the doctor, but he's busy down there. Any way, it would have taken him 'most a week to get here and back, and I guess he knew I hadn't the dollars to pay him with." Grant recognized the hopeless evenness of the tone, but Breckenridge, who was younger, did not. "But you can't let her lie here without help of any kind," he said. "Well," said the man slowly, "what else can I do?" Breckenridge could not tell him, and appealed to his comrade. "We have got to take this up, Larry. She looks ill." Grant nodded. "I have friends down yonder who will send that doctor out," he said. "Here are your dollars from the fund. Ten of them this time." The man handed him one of the bills back. "If you want me to take more than five you'll have to show your book," he said. "I've been finding out how you work these affairs, Larry." Grant only laughed, but Breckenridge turned to the speaker with an assumption of severity that was almost ludicrous in his young face. "Now, don't you make yourself a consumed ass," he said. "You want those dollars considerably more than we do, and we've got quite a few of them doing nothing in the bank. That is, Larry has." Grant's eyes twinkled. "It's no use, Breckenridge. I know the kind of man he is. I'm going to send Miss Muller here, and we'll come round and pound the foolishness out of you if you try to send back anything she brings with her. This place is as cold as an ice-store. What's the matter with your stove?" "The stove's all right," and the man pointed to his leg. "The trouble is that I've very little wood. Axe slipped the last time I went chopping in the bluff, and the frost got into the cut. I couldn't make three miles on one leg, and pack a load of billets on my back." "But you'd freeze when those ran out, and they couldn't last you two days," said Breckenridge, glancing at the little pile of fuel. "Yes," said the man grimly. "I guess I would, unless one of the boys came along." "Anything wrong with your oxen?" asked Grant. "Well," said the man drily, "we've been living for 'most two months on one of them. I salted a piece of him; the rest's frozen. I had to sell the other to a Dutchman. Since the cattle-boys stopped me ploughing I hadn't much use for them, any way." "Then," said Breckenridge, "why the devil did you bring a woman out to this forsaken country?" Perhaps the man understood what prompted the question, for he did not resent it. "Where was I to take her to? I'm a farmer without dollars, and I had to go somewhere when I'd lost three wheat crops in Dakota. Somebody told me you had room for small farmers, and when I heard the land was to be opened for homesteading, I sold out everything, and came on here to begin again. Never saw a richer soil, and there's only one thing wrong with the country." "The men in it?" asked Breckenridge.