"Now, wait a minute, Zwey," he said. "Why do you think that baby was yours?"

Zwey was silent a long time. Luke was smiling, as he did when he wanted to make fun of him. It didn't ordinarily much bother him that Luke made fun of him, but he didn't want him to make fun about the baby. He didn't want Luke to talk about it. It was painful enough that she had had it and then gone off and left it. He decided not to answer.

"What's the matter with you, Zwey?" Luke said. "You and Ellie ain't really married. You ain't married to somebody just because she comes on a trip with you."

Zwey began to feel very sad-it might be true, what Luke said. Yet he liked to think that he and Ellie were married.

"Well, we are," he said finally.

Luke began to laugh. He turned to Ellie, who was still sitting with her back against the skins.

"He thinks that baby's his," Luke said. "He really thinks it's his. I guess he thinks all he had to do was look at you to make it happen."

Then Luke laughed a long time. Zwey felt sad, but he didn't say any more. Luke could always find something to laugh at him about.

Elmira began to feel cold. She started to shiver and reached for the pile of blankets in the wagon, but she was too weak even to untangle the blankets.

"Help me, boys," she said. "I'm real cold."

Zwey immediately handed the reins to Luke and went back to help cover her up. It was a warm night, but Ellie was still shivering. He put the blankets on her, but she didn't stop shivering. On the wagon Seat, Luke would laugh from time to time when he thought of Zwey's baby. Before they had gone five miles, Ellie was delirious. She huddled in the blankets, talking to herself, mostly about the man called Dee Boot. Her look was so wild that Zwey became frightened. Once his hand happened to brush her and her skin was as hot as if the sun were burning down on her.

"Luke, she's got a fever," Zwey said.

"I ain't a doctor," Luke said. "We shouldn't have left that house."

Zwey bathed her face with water, but it was like putting water on a stove, she was so hot. Zwey didn't know what to do. A person so hot could die. He had seen much death, and very often it came with fever. He didn't understand why she had had the baby if it was only going to make her so sick. While he was bathing her face, she sat up straight and looked at him, her eyes wide.

"Dee, is that you?" she asked. "Where have you been?" Then she fell back against the skins.

Luke drove as fast as he could, but it was still a long road. The sky was light in the east when they finally found a wagon track and pulled into Ogallala.

The town was not large-just a long street of saloons and stores, and a few shacks on the slope north of the Platte. One of the saloons was still open. Three cowboys were lounging around outside, getting ready to mount up and go back to work. The two who were soberest were laughing at the third because he was so drunk he was trying to mount his horse from the wrong side.

"Hell, Joe's fixing to get on backwards," one said. They were not much interested in the fact that a wagon had pulled up. The drunk cowboy slipped and fell in the street. The other cowboys found that hilarious, one laughing so hard that he had to go over by the saloon and vomit.

"Where's the doctor live?" Luke asked the soberest cowboy. "We got a sick woman here."

At that the cowboys all stopped and stared. All they could see was Ellie's hair. The rest of her was covered with blankets.

"Where'd she come from?" one asked.

"Arkansas," Luke said. "Where's the doctor?"

Ellie had dropped into a fevered doze. She opened her eyes and saw the buildings. It must be the town where Dee was. She began tO. shove off the blankets.

"Do you know Dee Boot?" she asked the cowboys. "I come to find Dee Boot."

The cowboys stared at her as if they hadn't heard. Her hair was long and tangled, and she was wearing a nightdress. A huge buffalo hunter sat beside her.

"Ma'am, Dee Boot is in jail," one of the cowboys said politely. "It's that building over there."

Light was just filtering into the street between the shadowed buildings.

"Where's the doctor?" Luke asked again.

"I don't know if there is one," the cowboy said. "We just got here last night. I know about Boot because they were talking about him in the saloon."

Ellie began to try and climb over the side of the wagon. "Help me, Zwey," she said. "I wanta see Dee." She got one leg over the side board of the wagon and suddenly began to feel weak again. She clung to the board, trembling.

"Help me, Zwey," she said again.

Zwey lifted her out of the wagon as if she were a doll. Elmira took two steps and stopped. She knew she would fall if she tried another step, and yet Dee Boot was just across the street. Once she saw Dee she felt she could start getting well.

Zwey stood beside her, big as one of the horses the cowboys rode.

"Carry me over," she said.

Zwey felt afraid. He had never carried a woman, much less Ellie. He felt he might break her, if he wasn't careful. But she was looking at him and he felt he had to try. He lifted her in his arms and found again that she was light as a doll. She smelled different from anything he had ever carried, too. Mostly he had just carried skins, or carcasses of game.

As he was carrying her, a man came out of the jail and stepped around the corner of the building. It proved to be a deputy sheriff-his name was Leon-going out to relieve himself. He was startled to see a huge man standing there with a tiny woman in a nightgown in his arms. Nothing so surprising had happened in his whole tenure as deputy. It stopped him in his tracks.

"I want to see Dee Boot," the woman said, her voice just a whisper.

"Dee Boot?" Leon said, startled. "Well, we got him, all right, but I doubt he's up."

"I'm his wife," Ellie said.

That was another surprise. "Didn't know he was even married," Leon said.

Leon was watching the buffalo hunter, who was very large. It occurred to him that the couple might have come to try and break Dee Boat out of jail.

"I'm his wife, I want to see Dee," the woman said. "Zwey don't have to come."

"Dee can probably hear you, he's right in this cell," Leon said, Pointing to a small barred window on the side of the jail.

"Carry me over, Zwey," Elmira said, and Zwey obeyed.

The window was tiny and the cell still mostly dark, but Elmira could make out a man lying on a little bare bunk. He had his arm over his eyes and at first she doubted it was Dee-if so, he had put on weight, which wouldn't be like Dee. He prided himself on being slim and quick.

"Dee," she said. "Dee, it's me." Her voice was the merest whisper, and the man didn't awake. Ellie felt angry-here she had come such a distance, and she had found him, yet she couldn't make him hear.

"Say something to him, Zwey," she whispered. "Your voice is louder."

Zwey was at a loss. He had never met Dee Boot and had no idea what to say to him. The task embarrassed him a little.

"Don't know nothing to say," he said.

Fortunately it didn't matter. The deputy had gone back in and he woke Dee Boot himself.

"Wake up, Boot," he said. "You got visitors."

The sleeping man immediately sprang up with a wild look. Ellie saw that it was him, although he hardly looked like the dapper man she remembered. He glanced at the window fearfully, then just stood and stared.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"Why, it's your wife," Leon said.

Dee came to the window-it was just two steps. Ellie saw that he had not shaved in several days-another surprise. Dee was particular about barbering and had always had the best barber in town come and shave him every morning. The eyes that she had remembered almost every day of the long trip-Dee's merry eyes-now just looked scared and sad.