“I beg your pardon, stranger,” she said quietly. “Is there a Mister Tom Hamilton here?”

He spun around and he squealed with pleasure and picked her up in a bear hug and danced around her. He held her off the ground with one arm and spanked her bottom with his free hand. He nuzzled her cheek with his harsh mustache. Then he held her back by the shoulders and looked at her. Both of them threw back their heads and howled with laughter.

The station agent leaned out his window and rested his elbows, protected with black false sleeves, on the sill. He said over his shoulder to the telegrapher, “Those Hamiltons! Just look at them!”

Tom and Dessie, fingertips touching, were doing a courtly heel-and-toe while he sang Doodle-doodle-doo and Dessie sang Deedle-deedle-dee, and then they embraced again.

Tom looked down at her. “Aren’t you Dessie Hamilton? I seem to remember you. But you’ve changed. Where are your pigtails?”

It took him quite a fumbling time to get her luggage checks, to lose them in his pockets, to find them and pick up the wrong pieces. At last he had her baskets piled in the back of the buckboard. The two bay horses pawed the hard ground and threw up their heads so that the shined pole jumped and the doubletrees squeaked. The harness was polished and the horse brasses glittered like gold. There was a red bow tied halfway up the buggy whip and red ribbons were braided into the horses’ manes and tails.

Tom helped Dessie into the seat and pretended to peek coyly at her ankle. Then he snapped up the check reins and unfastened the leather tie reins from the bits. He unwrapped the lines from the whip stock, and the horses turned so sharply that the wheel screamed against the guard.

Tom said, “Would you care to make a tour of King City? It’s a lovely town.”

“No,” she said. “I think I remember it.” He turned left and headed south and lifted the horses to a fine swinging trot.

Dessie said, “Where’s Will?”

“I don’t know,” he answered gruffly.

“Did he talk to you?”

“Yes. He said you shouldn’t come.”

“He told me the same thing,” said Dessie. “He got George to write to me too.”

“Why shouldn’t you come if you want to?” Tom raged. “What’s Will got to do with it?”

She touched his arm. “He thinks you’re crazy. Says you’re writing poetry.”

Tom’s face darkened. “He must have gone in the house when I wasn’t there. What’s he want anyway? He had no right to look at my papers.”

“Gently, gently,” said Dessie. “Will’s your brother. Don’t forget that.”

“How would he like me to go through his papers?” Tom demanded.

“He wouldn’t let you,” Dessie said dryly. “They’d be locked in the safe. Now let’s not spoil the day with anger.”

“All right,” he said. “God knows all right! But he makes me mad. If I don’t want to live his kind of life I’m crazy—just crazy.”