go up and see that wife of Tom's. She'll think we're right unfriendly. And I'll bet it's lonely out there. Don't talk to me about that place you've got. It's a good ranch, but it's too shut off for a woman."
She felt warmed and cheered. They helped her with her ordering.
"Now say, here's a good coffee. Not so dear as that Tom's been buying. He always gets the best, Tom does."
"I'll say he does!" said Mrs. George, smiling at her.
Kay expanded under their friendliness. She even bought, while Tom was filling up with gasoline, a dreadful little necktie for him. It was a bow, already tied, and it had an elastic which went around the collar and hooked in the back. She had it carefully wrapped, and when they were on their way back she handed it to him.
"I bought you a little present," she said, her eyes demure.
"A present!"
He was as eager as a boy while she steadied the wheel and he unwrapped it.
"Well, look what's here!" he said. "Say, now, I sure call that pretty."
He never knew that it was a joke! Long afterwards she was to find the absurd thing among some odds and ends where she had hidden it for fear he would wear it, and to shed tears over it.
But, although she was no longer a prisoner, she was still very nervous. The drought was continuing, and the prospects for winter browse on the Reservation increasingly bad. Even the well was very low; she had to be saving with her wash water. Her skin was dry and cracking, her hands so rough that mending Tom's socks was a torture. She began to feel as though she had a tight band around her head. She was even fretful, and any little thing, in that surcharged atmosphere, sufficed to bring on a storm between them.
"Are you going to eat without your coat, Tom?"
"That's what I aim to do. I'm just a plain man, and I've never said howdy to the Queen of England."
The aggression was generally hers, but as time went on,
