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Mr. Bisket leaned over and extended one of his wandlike hands in my direction. I could see that Mr. Graves was waiting to be introduced, as well, just as if he were one of the family. I said, "We’ve been taken under the wing of Mr. David Graves, here."

"David B. Graves, David B. Graves." Mr. Graves grinned and took the wand into his own paw. Even though Mr. Bisket had generally adopted the garb of the west—blue jean trousers, a blue shirt, a red neckerchief, and a hat with a large brim, the two men looked as if they belonged to different kingdoms—one animal and one plant, perhaps. Mr. Bisket declared that we had missed it this time.

"What’s that?" said my husband.

"Well, now. The new governor’s come in the last few days, and they love him up in Westport, and he loves them, too. He’s all for the bogus legislature, and he told those fellows up there that it would be well for Kansas and Missouri institutions to harmonize! He’s proslave all the way!" Mr. Bisket glanced suddenly at David B. Graves, who adopted a look of bland impenetrability.

Thomas said, "What about our claims?"

"Aw, that’ll be okay. That’ll work out fine in the end. But I wish I would have gone up to Big Spring for the convention. I bet that was something!" I rather thought that the presence of Mr. Graves, though, modified his enthusiasm.

"Bisket, here’s my wife! Do we have a place to live?"

"Well, I’m staying at the Jenkinses’ house in town tonight, and you can stay there with me, and then we’ll see about tomorrow when the others come back. It an’t far—just a little ways up here on Vermont Street."

He led us off the road we were traveling, and in a few minutes we found ourselves in front of one of those leaning buildings. He said, "It an’t bad here in this weather. Hot and dry makes the hay smell kind of sweet. It’s something in one of them Kansas storms, though. There was one just after we got here that wasn’t like anything I ever saw before in my life for thunder and lightning. Two houses got struck—it come right down the roof beam—and two children got stunned practically to death. They were just sitting there for the longest time, then they got up and started staggering around, and one of them thought she was back in Massachusetts for two days. Lucky they weren’t killed, everybody said. Here’s Mrs. Bush. You remember Mrs. Bush, Newton."

He dismounted as a handsome, full-figured woman with a youthful face but pure-white hair came through a piece of cloth—a tablecloth, maybe— that had been hung for a door. "Mrs. Bush! Look who turned up! Tom Newton an’t dead, after all! And he’s got himself a wife from Illinois, to boot!"

Then some other women and another man came out of the building with lamps and candles, and pretty soon we were unloading everything, including the box of "harness," and not long after that I saw Thomas give Mr. Graves four dollars for carrying all of our things, and then he was gone, and I wondered for just a moment if we would see him again—but that was a lesson I learned about K.T.: for all the thousands of folks who came in and passed through and went back to the States, for all the strangers that you looked on every day, there were plenty you thought you would never see again who turned up time after time.

Mrs. Bush and two of the other women, Mrs. Jenkins and her daughter, Susannah, made much of Thomas, for it appeared that everyone really did think that he had been killed by the Missourians, because no evil deed seemed to be beyond those devils. "Why, there’s a free Negro in town," said Mrs. Bush as she stirred together some corncake batter, "a young man who’s got a claim not far from ours, and they’ve been threatening to go out there and take him back to his master, but they don’t know who his master is! He doesn’t have a master, but you can be sure they’ll find him one! They hate the sight of a free Negro!"

It was a warm night after an, exceedingly warm day, though a hearty breeze blew through the leaning house and set all the