"We was going to get ice t'day, but they didn't throw it off when
the train went through."

"That's comforting--to a man with a thirst like the great Sahara.
Ice! Pete, do you know what I'd like to do to a man that mentions
ice after a drink like that?"

Pete neither knew nor wanted to know, and he told Grant so. "If
you're going down to the ranch," he added, by way of changing the
subject, "there's some mail you might as well take along."

"Sure, I'm going--for a drink out of that spring, if nothing
else. You've lost a good customer to-day, Pete. I rode up here
prepared to get sinfully jagged--and here I've got to go on a
still hunt for water with a chill to it--or maybe buttermilk.
Pete, do you know what I think of you and your joint?"

"I told you I don't wanta know. Some folks ain't never
satisfied. A fellow that's rode thirty or forty miles to get
here, on a day like this, had oughta be glad to get anything that
looks like beer."

"Is that so?" Grant walked purposefully down to the front of the
store, where Pete was fumbling behind the rampart of crude
pigeonholes which was the post-office. "Let me inform you, then,
that--"

There was a swish of skirts upon the rough platform outside, and
a young woman entered with the manner of feeling perfectly at
home there. She was rather tall, rather strong and capable