"Hey!" shouted Bill Atkins, as he and Brick came around the angle of the hill. "Hi, there! You may call that strolling, but if so, it's because you don't know its true name, if you ask ME!"

Wilfred came to himself with a sharp indrawing of his breath. "Yes," he stammered, somewhat dizzily, "Yes, I—I must be going, now."

She held his hand beseechingly. "But you'll come again, won't you? When I hold your hand, it's like grabbing at a bit of the big world."

"No, Lahoma, I'm not coming again." His look was long and steady, showing sudden purpose which concealed regret beneath a frank smile of liking.

She still held his hand, her brown eyes large with entreaty. "You WILL come again, Wilfred! You must come again! Don't mind Bill. I'll have a talk with him after you're gone. I'll send him over to the ranch after you. Just say you'll come again if I send for you."

"Of course he'll come, honey," said Brick, melted by the tears that sounded in her voice. "He won't get huffy over a foolish old codger like Bill Atkins. Of course he'll come again and tell you about street-cars and lamp-posts. Let him go to his work now, he's been up all night, just to get a word with you. Let him go—he'll come back tomorrow, I know."

Wilfred turned to Brick and looked into his eyes as he slowly released Lahoma's hand.

"Oh!" said Brick, considerably disconcerted. "No, I reckon he won't come back, honey—yes, I guess he'll be busy the rest of the summer. Well, son, put 'er there—shake! I like you fine, just fine, and as you can't come here to see us no more, being so busy and—and otherwise elsewhere bound—I'm kinder sorry to see you go."

"Partings," said Bill, somewhat mollified, "are painful but necessary, else there wouldn't be any occasion for dentists' chairs."

"That's so," Brick agreed. "You called Lahoma an oasis. And what is an oasis? Something you come up to, and go away from, and that's the end of the story. You don't settle down and live at a spring just because it give you a drink when you was thirsty. A man goes on his way rejoicing, and Wilfred according."

Lahoma walked up to Wilfred with steady eyes. "Are you coming back to see me?" she asked gravely.

"No, Lahoma. At least not for a long, long time. I don't believe it's good for me to forget the life I've chosen, even for a happy hour. When I left the city, it was to drop out of the world—nobody knows what became of me, not even my brother. You've brought everything back, and that isn't good for my peace of mind and so—good-bye!"

Tall and straight he stood, like a soldier whose duty it is to face defeat; and standing thus, he fastened his eyes upon her face as if to stamp those features in a last long look upon his heart.

"Good-by," said Lahoma; this time she did not hold out her hand. Her face was composed, her voice quiet. If in her eyes there was the look of one who has been rebuffed; her pride was too great to permit a show of pain.

Wilfred hesitated. But what was to be done? Solitude and homesickness had perhaps distorted his vision; at any rate he had succumbed to the folly against which he had been warned. He could not accept Lahoma as a mere child; and though, during the scene, he had repeatedly reminded himself that she was only fifteen, her face, her voice, her form, her manner of thought, refused the limits of childhood. Therefore he went away, outwardly well-content with his morning, but inwardly full of wrath that his heart had refused the guidance of his mind.

And she had been so simple, so eager to meet him on an equal plane, even clinging to him as to the only hope in her narrow world that might draw her out into deeper currents of knowledge.

"I've always been a fool," he muttered savagely, as he sought his horse. "I was a fool about Annabel—and now I'm too big a fool to enjoy what fortune has fairly flung in my path." Presently he began to laugh—it was all so ridiculous, beating a retreat because he could not regard a fifteen-year-old girl as a little child! He drew several time-worn letters from his pocket and tore them into small bits that fluttered away like snowflakes on the wind. He had no longer a sentimental interest in them, at all events.



CHAPTER XII

THE BIG WORLD

He did not come again. Lahoma used to go to the hill-island, which she called Turtle Hill because the big flattened rocks looked like turtles that had crawled up out of the cove to sun themselves; among these turtles she would lie, watching the open mouth of the mountain horseshoe in the vain hope that Wilfred would appear from around the granite wall. Occasionally she descended to the plain and scanned the level world, but it was pleasanter to watch from the cove because one never knew, while in that retreat, who might be coming along the range. On the plain, there were no illusions.

Lahoma courted illusions. And when she knew that Wilfred Compton had severed connections with Old Man Walker she merely exchanged one hope, one dream, for another. The opportunity to learn about the big world was withdrawn; but the anticipation of one day meeting Wilfred again was as strong as ever. She made no secret of this expectation.

Bill Atkins sought to dismiss it effectually. "You don't know about the big world, Lahoma," he declared, "if you think people meet up with each other after they've once lost touch. If all this part of America was blotted out of existence, people in the East wouldn't miss any ink out of the ink-bottle."

Lahoma tossed her head. "Maybe the world IS big," she conceded. "But if Wilfred isn't big enough to make himself seen in it when I go a-looking, I don't care whether I meet him again or not. When I'm in the big world, I expect to deal only with big people."

"I saw no bigness about HIM," Bill cried slightingly.

"If he isn't big enough to make himself seen," Lahoma serenely returned, "I won't never—"

"You won't ever—" Bill corrected.

"I won't ever have to wear specs for strained eyes," Lahoma concluded, smiling at Bill as if she knew why he was as he was, and willingly took him so because he couldn't help himself.

It was Brick who heard about Wilfred's adventures on leaving the Red River ranch, and as all three sat outside the cabin in the dusk of evening, he retailed them as gathered from a recent trip to the corral. That was a strange story unfolded to Lahoma's ears, a story rich with the romance of the great West, wild in its primitive strivings and thrilling in its realizations of countless hopes. The narrative lost nothing in the telling, for Brick Willock understood the people and the instincts that moved them, and though Wilfred Compton might differ from all in his motives and plans, he shared with all the same hardships, the same spur to ambition.

It was now ten years since the discovery had been made that in the western part of Indian Territory were fourteen million acres that had never been assigned to the red man and which, therefore, were public land, subject to homestead settlement. As long as the western immigrants could choose among the rich prairie-lands of Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Dakota and Kansas—and the choice was open to all, following the agreement of the plains tribes to retire to reservations,—it was not strange that the unassigned lands of Indian Territory should have escaped notice, surrounded as they were by the Cherokee Strip, the Osage and Creek countries, the Chickasaw Nation, the Wichita, Cado, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.

But other public lands were now scarce, or less inviting, and as far back as 1879, when Lahoma was five years old, colonies had formed in Kansas City, in Topeka and in Texas, to move upon the Oklahoma country. The United States troops had dispersed the "boomers," but in the following year the indefatigable Payne succeeded in leading a colony into the very heart of the coveted land. It was in order to escape arrest—for again the United States cavalry had descended on settlers—that several wagons, among them that of Gledware's, had driven hastily toward the Panhandle, to come to grief at the hands of ruffians from No-Man's Land.

As Brick Willock told of Payne's other attempts to colonize the Oklahoma country, of his arrests, of his attempts to bring his various cases to the trial, she felt that Willock was, in a way, dealing with her personal history, for had she not been named Lahoma in honor of that country which her step-father had seen only to loose? Time and again the colonists swarmed over the border, finding their way through Indian villages and along desolate trails to the land that belonged to the public, but was enjoyed only by the great cattlemen; as many times, they were driven from their newly-claimed homes by federal troops, not without severity, and their leaders were imprisoned.

But, at last, April the twenty-second, 1889, had been appointed as the day on which the Oklahoma country was to be opened up to settlement, and it was to meet this event that Wilfred Compton had left Greer County. He was a unit in that immense throng that waited impatiently for the hour of noon—a countless host, stretching along the north on the boundary of the Cherokee Strip, on the south, at the edge of the Cherokee Nation; on the east, along the Kickapoo and Pottawatomie reservations; and on the west, blackening the extremity of the Cheyenne and Arapaho countries. He was one of those who, at the discharge of the carbines of the patrolling cavalrymen, joined in the deafening shout raised by men of all conditions and from almost every state in the Union—a shout as of triumph over the fulfillment of a ten-years' dream. And, leaning forward on his pony, he was one of the army of conquest that burst upon the desert, on foot, on horseback, and in vehicles of every description, in the mad rush for homes in a land that had never known the incense of the hearth or the civilizing touch of the plow.

At noon, a wilderness, at night, a land of tents, and on the morrow, a settled country of furrowed fields. "Pioneer work is awful quick, nowadays!" grumbled Bill Atkins, as Brick concluded. "It wasn't so in my time. Up there in the Oklahoma country, fifty years have been squeezed into a week's time—it's like a magician making a seed grow and sprout and blossom right before the audience. Lucky I came to Greer County, Texas—I don't guess IT'LL ever be anything but sand and a blow."

"It's a great story," Brick declared with enthusiasm. "I reckon it's the greatest story that America can put out, in the pioneering line. There they had everything in twenty-four hours that used to wear out our ancestors: Injuns, unbroken land, no sign of life for hundreds of miles—and just a turn of the hand and cities is a-coming up out of the ground, and saloons and churches is rubbing shoulders, and there's talk of getting out newspapers. What do you think of it, honey?"

Lahoma was sitting in grave silence, her hands clasped in her lap. She turned slowly and looked at Willock. "Brick, I'm disappointed."

"Which?" asked Willock, somewhat taken aback. "Where?"

"In him—in Wilfred."

"As how so?"

"Going into that wilderness-life, instead of taking his place in the world!"

"Well, honey if he hadn't come to THIS wilderness, you'd never of saw him."

"Yes—but he wasn't settled, and now he's settled in it. Is that the way to be a man? There's all those other people to do the thing he's doing. Then what's the use of him?"

"Ain't we in the same box?"

"Yes, and that's why I mean to get out of it, some day. But it's different with him. He's chosen his box, and gone in, and shut the lid on himself! I'm disappointed in him. I've been thinking him a real man. I guess I'm still to see what I'm looking for," added Lahoma, shaking her head.

"We'll let it go at that," muttered Bill who was anxious to turn Lahoma's mind from thoughts of Wilfred. "We'll just go ahead and look for new prospects."

"Not till I make a remark," said Willock, laying aside his pipe. "Honey, do yon know what I mean by a vision? It calls for a big vision to take in a big person, and you ain't got it. Maybe it wasn't meant for women, or at least a girl of fifteen to see further than her own foot-tracks, so no blame laid and nobody judged, according. If you don't see nothing in that army of settlers going into a raw land and falling to work to make it bloom like the rose, a-setting out to live in solitude for years that in due time the world may be richer by a great territory, why, you ain't got a big vision. I've got it, for I was born in the West, and I've lived all my life, peaceable and calm, right out here or hereabouts. You've got to breathe western air to get the big vision. You've got to see towns rise out of the turf over night and bust into cities before the harvest-fields is ripe, to know what can be did when men is free, not hampered by set-and-bound rules as holds 'em down to the ways of their fathers. Back East, folks is straining themselves to make over, and improve, and polish up what they found ready-to-hand—but here out West, we creates. It takes a big vision to see the bigness of the West, and you can't get no true idee by squinting at the subject."

Lahoma did not reply, and Bill feared that under the conviction of her friend's eloquence, she had begun to idealize the efforts of Wilfred Compton. He need not have been afraid. To her imagination, "big people" were not living in dugouts, or tents, far from civilization; "big people" were going to the opera every night, and riding in splendid carriages along imposing boulevards every day. Brick and Bill had contrived to live as well as they desired from profits on skins obtained in the mountains and the small tract of ground they had cultivated in a desultory manner had done little beyond supplying themselves with vegetables and the horses with some extra feed. She had no great opinion of agriculture; and though she had taken part in planting and hoeing with a pleasurable zest, she had never entertained herself with the thought that she was engaged in a great work. As to dugouts, they had no place in her dreams of the future. Since Wilfred had chosen to handicap himself with the same limitations that bound her, even the thought of him was to be banished from her world, banished absolutely.

Her day-dreams did not cease, but became more dreamy, more unreal, since the hero of her fancies, for whom she now had no flesh-and-blood prototype, was suggested only by her moods and her books. As the sun-clear days of maidenhood melted imperceptibly into summer glow and winter spaces, the memory of Wilfred's face and voice sometimes surprised her at unexpected turns of solitary musings. But the face grew less defined, the voice lost its distinctive tone, as the years passed uninterruptedly by.

"I reckon it ain't right," said Brick Willock to Bill Atkins as they went one morning to examine their traps before Lahoma was astir, "to keep our little gal to ourselves as we're doing. You're getting old, Bill, awful old—"

"Well, damn it," growled Bill, "I guess I don't have to be told!"

"You ain't very long for this world, Bill, not in the ordinary course of nature. And when I've laid you to rest under the rock-pile, Lahoma ain't going to find the variety in me that she now has in the two of us. Besides which, I'm in the fifties myself, and them is halves of hundreds."

"Yes," Bill growled, "and give Lahoma time, she'll die, too. Nothing but the mountain'll be left to look out on the plains. Lord, Brick, who do you reckon'll be living in that cove, when we three are dead and gone?"

"Guess I'll be worrying about something else, then."

"Do you reckon," pursued Bill, in an unwonted tone of mellowness, "that those who come to live in our dugout will ever imagine what happy hours we've passed there, just sitting around quiet and enjoying ourselves and one another?"

"They wouldn't imagine YOU was enjoying of yourself, not if they was feeding their eyes on you every day. But I'm awful bothered about Lahoma. I tell you, it ain't right to keep her shut up as in a cage. Can't you see she's pining for high society such as I ain't got it in me to supply, and you are too cussed obstinate to display?"

"I guess that's so." Bill drew himself stiffly up by the tree above—they were ascending the wooded gully that extended from base to mountain-top.

"Well, what's the hurry? She's only seventeen years old."

"Yes, she was only seventeen years old, two years ago; but she's nineteen, now."

Bill Atkins sank upon a rock at the foot of a bristling cedar. "Nineteen! Who, LAHOMA? Then where've I been all the time?"

"You've been a-traveling along at a pretty fast clip toward your last days, that's where you've been. Just look at yourself! Ain't you always careful in making your steps as if scared of breaking something? And now, you're out of breath!"

"It was knocked out by the thought of her being so old—but I guess you're right. Well, I wouldn't call her life caged-up. The settlers have been moving in pretty steadily, and she has friends amongst all the families where there's women-folks. She has her own pony, and is gone more than suits me; and although there's no young man disposable, we ain't fretting about that, nor her neither."

"I used to think she might be foolish about Wilfred Compton—but Lahoma, she ain't foolish about nothing. Nevertheless, Bill, it ain't right. Settlers is settlers, and what she yearns for is the big world. I would long since of took her out to see it, but dassn't from a liability to be catched up for divers deeds that was unlawfully charged to me in times past. You could have guided her along the city trails, but was too cussed obstinate."

"She's your cousin," retorted Bill, "and it wasn't for me to act her guardian. Besides, did you want to lose her? You couldn't take Lahoma where she'd be seen and known, and expect to get her back again. Maybe it isn't exactly fair to keep her boarded up—but the times are changing all that, and sorry am I to see it. Do you know, Brick, I once thought you and me and Lahoma could just live here in the cove till time was no more, reading our books, and smoking our pipes, and taking peaceful morning trips like this—to see whether we'd caught a coyote in our traps, or a bobcat, or a skunk."

"Yes, that's all right for us; but Lahoma ain't smoking no pipe, nor is her interest in skunks such as ours."

"Just so—but see how Greer County is getting settled up—that's what's going to save us, Brick—civilization is coming to Lahoma, she won't have to go out gunning after it."

"Of course I've thought of that. I ain't got your grammar, but my mind don't have to wait to let in an idea after it's put its clothes on. Maybe they comes in nothing but a nightshirt, but I ain't ever knowed YOU to think of nothing yet, that I hadn't entertained in some fashion. Of course, civilization is a-creeping up to the mountain, and I reckon by the time Lahoma is my age it'll be playing an organ in church. But she's at the age that calls for quick work—she's got the rest of her life to settle down in. Most all of a person's life is spent in settling and it's befitting to lay in the foundation aforetime. Look at that dear girl in The Children of the Abbey, all them love-passages and the tears she sheds—she was being a young woman! What would that noble book of been had that lovely creature been shut up in a cove till nineteen year of age? Is Lahoma going to have a chance like that amongst these settlers? Will she ever hear that high talk, that makes your flesh sort of creep with pride in your race when you read it aloud?"

"Do you want Lahoma to have a lover, Brick Willock?"

"Bill, if he is fit, I say she ought to have a chance."

"And where are you going to find the man?"

"I'm going to help Lahoma find him. I'm like you, Bill, I hates that lover like a snake this minute, though I ain't no idea who, where, or what he is, or may be. I hates him—but I ain't going to stand in Lahoma's way. No, sir, I 'low to meet civilization half-way. There it is—look!"

Willock stood erect and pointed toward the plain, where perhaps twenty tents had been pitched within the last two weeks. Bill gave an unwilling glance, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and resumed progress up the difficult defile.

Willock continued: "Two weeks ago, there wasn't nothing there but naked sand. Now there's three saloons, a hardware store, a grocery, a bank—all of 'em under canvas—and the makings of a regular town. Right out there in the broiling sun! Carloads of lumber and machinery is on its way, and the stage-coach will be putting off mail there before long. That's how civilization is a-seeking out our little gal. But I means to meet it halfway."

"Oh, come on, don't say anything more about it—when I look at those tents I can't breathe freely. What do you gamble on—a skunk, or a coyote, in the traps?"

"'Tain't them tents that's seeping your breath, it's pure unalloyed age. Yes, sir, I means to meet civilization half-way. I've already been prospecting. There's a party over there in Tent City that's come on from Chicago just from the lust of seeing pioneer-life at first hand, people that haven't no idee of buying or settling—it's a picnic to them. They're camping out, watching life develop—and what's life-and-death earnestness to others is just amusement to them. That there's a test of people high-up. Real folks in the big world don't do nothing, it takes all their time just being folks. You and me could bag a dozen polecats whilst a fine lady was making her finger-nails ready for the day. And these Chicago people is that kind."

"Do you think they'll make friends with Lahoma just to suit you? The kind of people you're talking about are more afraid of getting to know strangers than they are of being set on by wildcats."

"They'll make friends with Lahoma, all right, and invite her home with 'em. That's the way I 'low to set her out in the big world. Lahoma don't know my plans and neither do they, but I was never a man to make my plans knowed when I was going to hold up people. Of course I'M speaking in a figger, but in a figger I may say I've held up several, in my day."

"THEY won't invite Lahoma to Chicago, not if they are the right sort."

"They will invite Lahoma to Chicago," retorted Willock firmly, "and they are the right sort. Wait and see; and when you have saw, render due honor to your Uncle Brick."



CHAPTER XIII

A SURE-ENOUGH MAN

"Pardner, I sure am glad to see you—put 'er there again! How are you feeling, anyhow? Look mighty tough and wiry, I do say; Here, Bill!" Willock raised his voice to a powerful shout, "Bill! come and see what's blowed in with the tumbleweed and tickle-grass. A sure-enough man, that's what I call him, and me to fight if any dispute's made to the title, according."

The tall bronzed man who was leading his horse along the road entering the mountain horseshoe, smiled with a touch of gravity in the light of his gray eyes. Willock found his chin more resolute, his glance more assured and penetrating, while his step, firm and alert, told of dauntless purpose. He was no longer the wandering cowboy content with a bed on the ground wherever chance might find him at night, but a mature man who had taken root in the soil of his own acres. Only twenty-five or six, his features were still touched with the last lingering mobility of youth; but the set of his mouth and the gleam of his eyes hinted at years of battle against storms, droughts and loneliness. He was already a veteran of the prairie, despite his youth.

"Everything looks very natural!" murmured Wilfred Compton, gazing about on the seamed walls of granite in whose crevices the bright cedars mocked at winter's threatening hand.

"Yes, mountains is lots more natural than humans. They just sets there serene and indifferent not caring whether you likes their looks or not, and they let 'er blow and let 'er snow, it's all one to them. I reckon when we've been dead so long that nobody could raise a dispute as to whether we'd ever lived or not, that there same boulder what they calls Rocking Stone will still be a-making up its mind whether to roll down into the valley or stay where it was born. Wilfred, if you knowed how glad I am to see you again, you'd be sort of scared, I reckon, thinking you'd fell amongst cannibals. Wonder where that aged trapper is?" He shouted more lustily, and a bristling white head suddenly appeared on the summit of Turtle Hill.

"Great Scott!" yelled Bill Atkins, glaring down upon the approaching figure, "if it ain't Wilfred Compton again! Come on, come on, I was never as glad to see anybody in all my life!"

The young man looked at Willock somewhat dubiously. "He's very much altered, then, since I met him last. I'm afraid he has a gun hidden up there among the rocks."

"Oh, nux, nux," retorted Willock. "He's a-speaking fair. Come along!"

As they ascended the winding road, Wilfred vividly recalled the day when, from the same elevation, he had watched Lahoma buried in her day-dreams. A sudden turn brought the cove into view. Lahoma was not to be seen, but there was the cabin, the dugout and the three cedar trees in whose shade he had made the discovery that he could not regard Lahoma as a little girl. It seemed that the cabin door trembled—was Lahoma's hand upon the latch? And when she opened the door, what expression would flash upon that face he remembered so well? Would she be as glad as Willock and Bill Atkins, when she recognized him? Even one half as glad?

He sighed deeply—it was not to be expected. She had known him only an hour; since then, many settlers had invaded the country about the Granite Mountains, a city had sprung up, not far away—other towns were peeping through the sand, and blooming from canvas to wood and brick. The air tingled with the electric currents of new life and intense competition.

"Did Lahoma marry?" he asked abruptly as all three descended to the lower level of the cove.

"She never did, yet," replied Bill dryly. "Young man, I'm powerful glad to see you. It's rather chilly out here. I'll take your horse and we'll gather in the dugout and talk over what's happened since we last met. Brick, don't you begin on anything interesting till I come."

"You give me that horse," retorted Brick. "You're too aged a man to be messing with horses. You'll get a fall one of these days that'll lay you flat. You'll never knit them bones together, if you do; you ain't vital enough."

Bill clung grimly to the bridle, muttering something that showed no lack of vitality in his vocabulary.

"He won't let me take no care of him," complained Brick, as he conducted Wilfred to the dugout.

Wilfred cast a longing glance toward the cabin, and again he thought Lahoma's parlor door quivered. He even stopped in the path; but Willock went on, unconscious, and he was obliged to follow.

"It's a strange thing," remarked Brick, as he descended the hard dirt steps, "how Lahoma has acted on me. I mean, living with her these past twelve years, and all the rest of the world shut out, except Bill. Could I of been told before I saved little Lahoma from the highwaymen that I'd ever worry over an old coon like Bill Atkins, as to whether he broke his neck or not, I'd 'a' laughed, for I'd 'a' had to. But it sure does gall me to have him exposing himself as he does. I never wanted Bill to come here, but he just come, like a stray cat. First thing I knowed, he was a-purring at the fireside—well, not exactly a-purring, nuther, but sort of mewing, and looking ready to scratch. He just took up with us and now it's like always being scared to close a door for fear of catching his tail in the jamb—I'm talking in a figger. Come in, pard—this used to be Lahoma's boudoir before we built that cabin for her. See the carpet? Don't tell ME you're a-walking on it, and not noticing! See that little stove? I brung it clear across the mountains from a deserted wagon, when I was young. Two legs is gone and it's squat-bellied, and smokes if the wind gives it a chance; but I wouldn't trade it for a new one. Set on this bench. I recollect as well as if it 'us yesterday, Lahoma a-setting there with her legs untouching of the floor, learning 'A' and 'B' and asking thousands of questions and getting herself civilized. I couldn't do a finished job, but Bill took her by the hand later, then a Mrs. Featherby, what moved over in the west mountain, added stores from New England and travels in Europe. When the settlers come, she gleaned all they knowed, always a-rising and a-looking out for new country. That's a wonderful girl!" he added with conviction.

When Bill came, they sat about the stove, the light from the famous window bringing out with clear distinctness Brick's huge form and bristling beard, Bill's thin figure surmounted by its shock of white hair, and Wilfred's handsome grave face and splendidly developed physique. It was so warm below the ground that the fire in the stove was maintained at the lowest state possible; but when the western light quickly vanished from the window, the glowing coals gave homely cheer to the crude room.

In answer to their questioner, Wilfred told of his experiences on his quarter-section: how he had broken the prairie land, put in his crops, watched them wither away in the terrible dry months, roughed it through the winters, tried again, fought through another drought, staked all on the next spring's planting, raised a half-crop, paid off his chattel mortgage, tried again,—succeeded.

"I've stayed right with it," he said gravely, looking from one to the other as they smoked in silence, their eyes on his animated face. "Of course, they required me to stay on the land only during certain months, every year. But I stayed with it all the time; and I studied it; and when I failed, as I did year after year, I failed each time in a different way, because I learned my lesson. And when I'd walled off the cause of each failure, one by one, seemed like there opened before me a broad clear way that led right into the goal I'd been seeking from the first day. Then I closed out all my deals, and looked and saw that everything was trim and ready for winter—and got my horse and started for Greer County."

"And glad we are!" cried Bill Atkins. "I hope you can stay a long time."

"That depends ... Lahoma is well, I suppose?"

"The picture of health—when she left," Brick declared admiringly, "and the prettiest little gal this side of the angels. When the early sunlight peeps over the mountain and laughs at the cove that's sulking from thinking it's about to be left out in the day's doings—that's like Lahoma's smile. And when you get down sick as I done once from causes incidental to being made of flesh and blood, and she come and laid her hand on my burning forehead, her touch always made me think of an angel's wing, somehow, although I ain't never set up to be religious, and I think of such things as little as may be—except when Bill draws me to the subject from seeing him so puny, at times."

"Lahoma's not here?" Wilfred asked anxiously.

"Not now, nor for some time," answered Brick.

"I wish," interposed Bill glumly, "that when you're going to talk about me, Brick, you'd begin with Bill and not be dragging me in at the tail-end of what concerns other people. I reckon, Wilfred, you just traveled here to take a look at the country where you used to herd cattle?"

"That wasn't my reason. Principally, I wanted to see Lahoma; and incidentally, my brother."

"Your brother? HE ain't in these parts, is he?"

"No," ruefully, "but I expected him to be. When I left home to turn cow-puncher, I didn't tell anybody where I'd gone; but just before I left for Oklahoma to turn farmer, I wrote to my brother. And about a month ago, seeing things clearing up before me, I asked him to meet me here at Tent City—he's interested in new towns; he's employed by a rich man to plant hardware-stores, and I thought he might find an opening here. He came on, and was here several weeks with a party of sightseers from Chicago; but he left with them about a week ago."

Willock sat suddenly erect. "Couldn't have been that Sellimer crowd, I reckon, from Chicago?"

"Yes—Mrs. Sellimer and her daughter, and some of their friends."

Willock whistled loudly. "And that up-and-down looking chap in the gold nose-glasses was your brother?"

"Never thought of that," Bill exclaimed, "although he had your name—he looked so different! But now that you've laid aside your cowboy rigging, I guess you could sit in his class, down at the bottom of it."

Willock was uneasy. "I was told," he observed, "and I took the trouble to get datty on the subject, that them Sellimers—the mother and daughter, and the herd they drift with—is of the highest pedigree Chicago can produce. It sort of jolts me to find out that anybody we know is kin to the bunch!"

Wilfred laughed without bitterness. "Don't let my kinship to brother Edgerton disturb your ideal. We're so different that we parted without saying good-by, and although I had the weakness to imagine we might patch up old differences if we could meet here in the desert, I suppose we'd have fallen out in a day or two—we're so unlike. And as to Miss Sellimer—Annabel Sellimer—she is the girl whose letters I was carrying about with me when I first saw you. She refused me because I was as poor as herself; so you see, the whole bunch is out of my class."

"That's good," Willock's face cleared up. "Mind you, I ain't saying that as for me and Bill, we'd wouldn't rather sit with you in a dugout than with them in a palace on Lake Michigan. But it's all a matter of getting Lahoma out into the big world, and you gave me a terrible jolt, scaring me that after all we'd made a mistake, and they was just of your plain every-day cloth."

Wilfred moved uneasily. "Has Lahoma made their acquaintance, then?"

"It looks like it, don't it?"

"What looks like it?" Wilfred asked with sudden sharpness.

"Why, her going off, with 'em to spend the winter in high life."

"That's why I was so glad to see you," Bill explained, "her being gone, and us so lonesome. That's why I'd like to have you stay with us a long time—until she comes back, if it suits you."

"But I thought.... But I came here to see Lahoma," cried Wilfred, unable to conceal his disappointment. "I thought as I came up the road that I saw her half-opening the cabin-door."

"That was Red Feather taking a peep at you. He's the Indian that brought Lahoma to Willock, as a child. He comes, about once a year, to see us, but this time he was a little too late for Lahoma. Yes, she's gone East—they're all putting up in Kansas City just now; on their way to Chicago."

"Son," said Willock, puffing steadily at his pipe, "why did you want to see Lahoma?"

"Well—you know she was just a child when I was here before, but she's hovered before my mind a good deal—I've been too busy to seek the acquaintance of strangers—just want to keep the few I know." He blew a rueful breath. "You can't think how all my air-castles have fallen about my ears! I wanted to see Lahoma! Yes, I wanted to see how she'd turned out. I have a good farm, now, not very far from Oklahoma City and— Well, being alone there, year after year, a fellow gets to imagining a great many things—" He stopped abruptly.

"That's so," Willock agreed sympathetically. "I ain't a-saying that if Lahoma'd been like me and Bill, she mightn't of liked farming with you first-class. But she was born as an associate of high men and women, not cows and chickens. It's the big world for her, and that's where she's gone. She's with real folks. Be Mr. Edgerton Compton your brother, or be he not, you can't imagine him setting down with us sociable in this dugout. You're right about his being different. And the fact that Miss Sellimer turned you down is encouraging, too. It shows you couldn't run in her course; you didn't have the speed. I guess we ain't made no mistake after ail."

There was silence, broken presently, by Bill—"I'm glad you've come, sure!"

Presently the door opened, and the Indian chief glided into the apartment with a grunt of salutation. He spread his blanket in a corner, and sat down, turning a stolid face to the fire.

"Don't pay no attention to him," remarked Willock, as if speaking of some wild animal. "He comes and goes, and isn't troublesome if you feeds and sleeps him, and don't try to lay your hand on him."

Bill Atkins rose. "But I always light up when he comes," he remarked, reaching stiffly for a lantern which in due time glimmered from the partition wall. "Are you hungry, Wilfred? We never feed till late; it gives us something to sleep on. I lie awake pretty constantly all night, anyhow, and when I eat late, my stomach sorter keeps me company."

Wilfred declared that he was not in the least hungry.

"I'm afraid you're disappointed, son," observed Willock, filling his pipe anew.

Wilfred turned to him with a frank smile. "Brick—it's just awful! It's what comes from depending on something you've no right to consider a sure thing. I never thought of this cove without Lahoma in it; didn't seem like it could be so empty.... How did she get acquainted with Annabel?—and with my brother?"

"It come about, son. I see at once that the bunch of 'em was from the big world. I come home and told Bill, 'Them's the people to tow Lahoma out into life,' says I. So they invited her to spend the winter with them, the Sellimers did, and show her city doings."

"Yes—but how did it come about?"

"Nothing more natural. I goes over to their tent and I tells them of the curiosities and good points of these mountains, and gets 'em to come on a sort of picnic to explore. So here they comes, and they gets scattered, what with Bill and Lahoma and me taking different ways—they liked Lahoma first time they see her, as a matter of course. And so, that Miss Sellimer, she gets separated from all the rest, and I shows her a dandy hiding-place where nobody couldn't find her, and I shows her what a good joke it would be to pretend to be lost. So I leaves her there to go to tell her crowd she dares 'em to find her. Are you listening?"

"Of course."

"Well, while she was setting there waiting to be searched for, of a sudden a great big Injun in a blanket and feathers and red paint jumps down beside her and grabs her and picks her up, and about as quick as she knew anything, she was gagged and bound and being bore along through the air. I reckon it was a terrible moment for her. Now there is a crevice in the top of the mountain that nobody don't never explore, because it's just a crack in the rock that ain't to be climbed out of without a ladder. So the Injun carries her there, and lets her down with a rope that it seems he must of had handy somewheres, and he puts out; and there she is, in a holler in the mountain, not able to move or cry out no more than if she'd been captured by a regular highwayman."

Wilfred stared at Willock in complete bewilderment. Willock chuckled.

"There was a terrible time!" remarked Bill.

"Dark was a-coming on before the party got plumb scared," Willock continued, "but they brushed and combed that mountain looking for the poor lost lady, and as I tells 'em she's a-hiding a-purpose, they think it a pore sort of joke till midnight catches 'em mighty serious. Torches is carried here and there and everywhere, but no use. You would think that the next day the crowd would naturally look down in that crevice, but that's because I've posted you up on where she is. There's lots of other crevices, and no reason as they can see why Miss Sellimer should take the trouble to worm herself down into any of 'em—and as nobody saw that Injun, how could they suspicion foul play? It must of been AWFUL for pore Miss Sellimer, all bound and gagged in that horrible way, but it takes heroic treatment to get some cures—and so Lahoma went with 'em to spend the winter."

"But the Indian—?"

"Needn't think about HIM no more, son, we got no more use for THAT Injun. Well, on the next day, Lahoma is looking everywhere, being urged on by me, and lo, and behold! when she comes to that crevice—looked like she couldn't be induced to go there of her own will, but it was brung about finally—what does she see but a tomahawk lying right at the edge what must have been dropped there recent, or the crowd would have saw it the day before. It come to her that Miss Sellimer is a prisoner down below. She looks, but it's too dark to see nothing. Not telling nobody for fear of starting up false hopes, she gets a light and lowers it—and there is that miserable young woman, bound and gagged and her pretty dress all tore. Lahoma jumps to her feet to raise the cry, when she discovers a ladder under a boulder which the Injun must have put there meaning to descend to his victim when the coast was clear. Down she skins, and frees Miss Sellimer, who's half dead, poor young lady! Lahoma comes up the ladder and meets me and I carries her out just like a feather—Well, can't you imagine the rest? I reckon if Miss Sellimer lives a thousand years she'll never forget the awfulness of that big Injun and the angel sweetness of the little gal that saved her. Why, if Lahoma had asked for the rings off her fingers, she could have had 'em, diamonds and all."

Wilfred rose and went to stare at the darkness from the small square window. Not a word was spoken for some time. At last the silence was broken by the Indian— "UGH!" grunted Red Feather.

"Just so!" remarked Wilfred, with exceeding dryness.

"What are you thinking, Wilfred?" demanded Brick Willock.

"I'd have thought Lahoma would recognize the ladder."

"So she done; but couldn't the Injun have stole my ladder and carried it to that boulder? Just as soon as Miss Sellimer was well enough to travel, NOTHING couldn't hold her in these parts, and that's why your brother had to leave before seeing you—he's setting to Miss Sellimer, and if Lahoma don't git him away from her, I reckon he's a goner!"

Bill Atkins spoke vaguely. "It wasn't none of my doings."

Wilfred looked steadily at Willock. "What about your whiskers?"

"Oh, as to them, it was like old times; you takes a cloth and cuts it out—painted red—Psha! What are we talking of? Bill, let's show him her letter—what do you say?"

"I reckon it wouldn't hurt," Bill conceded.

"How'd you like it, Wilfred? We can't produce our little gal to keep you company, but her letter would sort of be like hearing her talk, wouldn't it? And if you stay with us a spell, we'll let you read 'em as they come."

Wilfred perceived that Willock was anxious to get his mind off the harrowing adventure of the crevice, and as he was eager to hear the letter, and as Brick and Bill were anxious to hear it again, nothing more was said about the "big Injun."

"Who'll read it?" asked Bill, as he drew the precious letter from the strong box behind the stove.

"Let Wilfred do the deed," Willock suggested. "It travels slow in my company, and though Bill reads 'er correct, he does considerable droning. I expect if Wilfred reads it with unction, it'll sound like a new document."

Wilfred drew the only stool in the room up beside the lantern, and Bill and Brick disposed themselves on the bench, each holding his pipe on his knee as if fearful of losing a word. Red Feather, his beady eyes fastened on the young man's face, sat gracefully erect, apparently alert to all that was going on. The lantern reddened the strong clean-cut face of the young man, and touched the upturned pages to the whiteness of snow. A sudden wind had sprung up, and the flaring blaze from the open stove-door touched to vivid distinctness the giant, the old man and the Indian. Brick closed the stove-door, and the sudden gloom brought out in mellow effect Wilfred's animated face, the dull yellow wall against which his sturdy shoulder rested, and the letter in his hand.



CHAPTER XIV

WRITING HOME

"Dear Brick and Bill:

"I don't know what to tell first. It's all so strange and grand—the people are just people, but the things are wonderful. The people want it to be so; they act, and think according to the things around them. They pride themselves on these things and on being amongst them, and I am trying to learn to do that, too. When I lived in the cove—it seems a long, long time ago—my thoughts were always away from dirt-floors and cook-stoves and cedar logs and wash-pans. But the people in the big world keep their minds tied right up to such things—only the things are finer—they are marble floors and magnificent restaurants and houses on what they call the 'best streets.' At meals, there are all kinds of little spoons and forks, and they think to use a wrong one is something dreadful; that is why I say the forks and spoons seem more important than THEY are, but they want it to be so.

"They have certain ways of doing everything, and just certain times for doing them, and if you do a wrong thing at a right time, or a right thing at a wrong time, it shows you are from the West. At first, I couldn't say a word, or turn around, without showing that I was from the West. But although I've been from home only a few days, I'm getting so that nobody can tell that I'm more important than the furniture around me. I'm trying to be just like the one I'm with, and I don't believe an outsider can tell that I have any more sense than the rest of them.

"Miss Sellimer is so nice to me. I told her right at the start that I didn't know anything about the big world, and she teaches me everything. I'd be more comfortable if she could forget about my saving her life, but she never can, and is so grateful it makes me feel that I'm enjoying all this on false pretenses for you know my finding her was only an accident. Her mother is very pleasant to me—much more so than to her. Bill, you know how you speak to your horse, sometimes, when it acts contrary? That's the way Miss Sellimer speaks to her mother, at times. However, they don't seem very well acquainted with each other. Of course if they'd lived together in a cove for years, they'd have learned to tell each other their thoughts and plans, but out in the big world there isn't time for anything except to dress and go.

"I'm learning to dress. I used to think a girl could do that to please herself, but no, the dresses are a thousand times more important than the people inside them. It wouldn't matter how wise you are if your dress is wrong, nor would it matter how foolish, if your dress is like everybody else's. A person could be independent and do as she pleased, but she wouldn't be in society. And nobody would believe she was independent, they would just think she didn't know any better, or was poor. Because, they don't know anything about being independent; they want to be governed by their things. A poor person isn't cut off from society because he hasn't money, but because he doesn't know how to deal with high things, not having practised amongst them. It isn't because society people have lots of money that they stick together, but because all of them know what to do with the little forks and spoons.

"It is like the dearest, jolliest kind of game to me, to be with these people, and say just what they say, and like what they like, and act as they act—and that's the difference between me and them; it's not a game to them, it's deadly earnest. They think they're LIVING!

"Do you think I could play at this so long that one day I'd imagine I was doing what God had expected of me when he sent me to you, Brick? Could I stay out in the big world until I'd think of the cove as a cramped little pocket in the wilderness with two pennies jingling at the bottom of it named Brick and Bill? If I thought there was any danger of that, I'd start home in the morning!

"We are in a Kansas City hotel where all the feathers are in ladies' hats and bonnets instead of in the gentlemen's hair. To get to our rooms you go to a dark little door and push something that makes a bell ring, and then you step into a dugout on pulleys, that shoots up in the air so quick it makes you feel a part of you has fallen out and got lost. The dugout doesn't slow up for the third story, it just stops THAT QUICK—they call it an 'elevator' and it certainly does elevate! You step out in a dim trail where there are dusky kinds of lights, although it may be the middle of the day, and you follow the trail over a narrow yellow desert, turn to your right and keep going till you reach a door with your number on it. When you are in your room, you see the things that are considered more important than the people.

"There's an entire room set apart for the sole purpose of bathing!—and the room with the bed in it is separate from the sitting-room. You can go in one and stay a while, and go in another and stay a while, and then go in the third—and you have a different feeling for each room that you're in. I'd rather see everything at once, as I can in my cabin. And that bed! If my little bed at home could be brought here and set up beside this hotel wonder, the very walls would cry out.... I wish I could sleep in my little bed tonight, and hear the wind howling over the mountain.

"The dining-room is the finest thing I ever saw; I doubt if the kings and queens of old times ever ate in richer surroundings. There are rows of immense mirrors along the wall and gold borders—and then the tables! I wonder what would happen if anybody should spread newspapers on one of these wonderful tables and use them for a tablecloth? At home, we can just reach out and take what we want off the stove, and help our plates without rising. It's so different here! After you've worried over crooked lists of things to eat that you've never heard of, and have hurried to select so the waiter won't have to lose any time, the waiter goes away. And when he puts something before you, you don't know what to call it, because it's been so long, you've forgotten its name on that awful pasteboard. But there's something pleasant when you've finished, in just getting up and walking away, not caring who cleans up the dishes!

"I've been to the opera-house, but it wasn't an opera, it was a play. That house—I wish you could see it!—the inside, I mean, for outside it looks like it needs washing. The chairs—well, if you sent that stool of ours to a university you couldn't train it up to look anything like those opera-chairs. And the dresses—the diamonds.... Everything was perfectly lovely except what we had come to see, and my party thought it was too funny for anything; but it wasn't funny to me. The story they acted was all about a young couple fooling their parents and getting married without father and mother knowing, and a baby brought in at the last that nobody would claim though it was said to be somebody's that shouldn't have had one—the audience just screamed with laughter over that; I thought they never would quiet down. Out in The big world, babies and old fathers and mothers seem to be jokes. The star of the evening was a married actress with 'Miss' before her name. You could hear every word she spoke, but the others didn't seem to try to make themselves plain—I guess that's why they aren't stars, too.

"I've lived more during the last week than I had the previous fifty-one. We must have been to everything there is, except a church. Yesterday was Sunday, and I asked Mrs. Sellimer about it, but she said people didn't go to church any more.

"Maybe you wonder why I don't tell you about our crowd, but I guess it's because I feel as if they didn't matter. I wouldn't say that to anybody in the world but to you, Brick and Bill, and if I hadn't promised to write you every single thing, I wouldn't even tell you, because they are so good to me. It sounds untrue to them, doesn't it? But you won't tell anybody, because you've nobody to tell! And besides, they could be different in a minute if they wanted to be; it isn't as if they were helpless.

"Miss Sellimer is witty and talented, and from the way she treats me, I know she has a tender heart. And her mother is a perfect wonder of a manager, and never makes mistakes except such as happen to be the fad of the hour. And Mr. Edgerton Compton could be splendid, for he seems to know everything, and when we travel with him, or go to the parks and all that, people do just as he says, as if he were a prince; he has a magnificent way of showering money on porters and waiters and cabmen that is dazzling; and he holds himself perfectly WITHOUT TRYING, and dresses so that you are glad you're with him in a crowd; he knows what to do ALL the time about EVERYTHING. But there he stops. I mean, he isn't trying to do anything that matters. Neither are any of the rest.

"What they are working at now, is all they expect to work at as long as they live—and it takes awfully hard work to keep up with their set. They call it 'keeping in the swim,' and let me tell you what it reminds me of—a strong young steer out in a 'tank,' using all the strength he has just to keep on top of the water, instead of swimming to shore and going somewhere. Society people don't go anywhere; they use all their energy staying right where they are; and if one of them loses grip and goes under—GOODNESS!

"I know what Mrs. Sellimer has set her heart on, because she has already begun instructing me in her ideals. She wants her daughter to marry a rich man, and Mr. Edgerton Compton isn't rich, he only looks like he is. Mrs. Sellimer feels that she's terribly poor, herself; it's the kind of poverty that has all it wants to eat and wear, but hasn't as many horses and servants as it wants. It's just as hard on her as it would be on you if the bacon gave out and you couldn't go for more. Annabel—that's Miss Sellimer—likes Mr. Compton very, very much, but she feels like her mother about marrying a rich man, and I don't think he has much chance. One trouble is that he thinks he must marry a rich girl, so they just go on, loving each other, and looking about for 'chances.'

"I feel like I oughtn't to be wasting my time telling about my friends when there are all these wonderful lights and carpets and decorations and conveniences, so much more interesting. Whenever you want hot water, instead of bringing a bucketful from the spring and building a fire and sitting down to watch it simmer, you just turn a handle and out it comes, smoking; and whenever you want ice-water, you touch a button and give a boy ten cents.

"The funny thing to me is that Annabel and Mr. Compton both think they HAVE to marry somebody rich, or not marry at all. They really don't know they COULD marry each other, because imagining they would be unable to keep the wolf from the door. That's because they can't imagine themselves living behind anything but a door on one of the 'best streets.' We know, don't we, Brick and Bill, that it takes mighty little to keep the coyote from the dugout! And there's something else we know that these people haven't dreampt of—that there's happiness and love in many and many a dugout. I don't know what's behind the doors on the 'best streets.'

"We are not going straight on to Chicago. A gentleman has invited the Sellimers, which of course includes me, to a house-party in the country not far from Kansas City. He is a very rich man of middle age, so they tell me, a widower, who is interested in our sex and particularly in Annabel Sellimer. Mr. Edgerton Compton isn't invited. You see, he's a sort of rival—a poor rival. This middle-aged man has known the Sellimers a long time, and he has been trying to win Annabel for a year or two. If it hadn't been for Mr. Compton she'd have married HIS HOUSE before now, I gather. The house is said to be immense, in a splendid estate near the river. I am all excitement when I think of going there for ten days. There are to be fifty guests and the other forty-nine are invited as a means of getting Annabel under his roof. Won't I feel like a little girl in an old English novel! The best of it is that nobody will bother ME—I'm too poor to be looked at a second time, I mean, what THEY call poor. Sometimes I laugh when I'm alone, for I feel like I'm a gold mine filled with rich ore that nobody has discovered. Remember the 'fool's gold' we used to see among the granite mountains? I think the gold that lies on the surface must always be fool's gold. The name of the country-house we are to visit is the same as that of the man who owns it—"

Wilfred Compton held the letter closer to the light.

Brick Willock spoke impatiently: "No use to stare at that there word—we couldn't make it out. I guess she got it wrong, first, then wrote it over. Just go ahead."

Bill suggested, "I think the first letter is an 'S.'"

Wilfred scrutinized the name closely.

"Besides," said Willock, "we knows none of them high people, the name wouldn't be nothing to us—and her next letter will likely have it more'n once."

Wilfred resumed the letter: "I must tell you good-by, now, for Annabel's maid has come to help me dress for dinner, and it takes longer than it did to do up the washing, at the cove; and is more tiresome. But I like it. I like these fine, soft, beautiful things. I like the big world, and I would like to live in it forever and ever, if you could bring the dugout and be near enough for me to run in, any time of the day. I wish I could run in this minute and tell you the thousands and thousands of things I'll never have time to write.

"Your loving, adoring, half-homesick, half-bewildered, somewhat dizzy little girl,

"Lahoma.

"P. S. Nobody has been able to tell from word or look of mine that I have ever been surprised at a single thing I have heard or seen. You may be quite sure of that."

"I bet you!" cried Willock admiringly. "NOW, what do you think of it?"

"She won't be there long," remarked Bill, waving his arm, "till she finds out what I learned long ago—that there's nothing to it. If you want to cultivate a liking for a dugout, just live a while in the open."

"I don't know as to that," Willock said. "I sorter doubts if Lahoma will ever care for dugouts again, except as she stays on the outside of 'em, and gets to romancing. A mouthful of real ice-cream spoils your taste everlasting for frozen starch and raw eggs."

"Lahoma is a real person," declared Bill, "and a dugout is grounded and bedded in a real thing—this very solid and very real old earth, if you ask to know what I mean."

"Lord, I knows what you mean," retorted Willock. "You've lived in a hole in the ground most of your life, and are pretty near ripe to be laid away in another one, smaller I grant you, but dark and deep, according. We'll never get Lahoma back the same as when we let her flutter forth hunting a green twig over the face of the waters. She may bring back the first few leaves she finds, but a time's going to come...." He broke off abruptly, his eyes wide and troubled, as if already viewing the dismal prospect.

"Maybe I AM old," Bill grudgingly conceded, "but I don't set up to be no Noah's ark."

"Oh," cried Willock, his sudden sense of future loss causing him to speak with unwonted irony, "maybe you're just a Shem, or Ham or that other kind of Fat— What's the matter, Wilfred? Can't you let go of that letter?"

"I've made out the name of that widower who's paying court to my old sweetheart," he said, "but it's one I never heard of before; that's why it looked so strange—it's Gledware."

Willock uttered a sharp exclamation. "Let me see it." He started up abruptly, and bent over the page.

"What of it?" asked Bill in surprise. Willock had uttered words to which the dugout was unaccustomed.

"That's what it is," Willock growled; "it's Gledware!" His face had grown strangely dark and forbidding, and Wilfred, who had never imagined it could be altered by such an expression, handed him the letter with a sense of uneasiness.

"What of it?" reiterated Bill. "Suppose it IS Gledware; who is HE?"

"Do you know such a man?" Wilfred demanded.

"Out with it!" cried Bill, growing wrathful as the other glowered at the fire. "What's come over you? Look here, Brick Willock, Lahoma is your cousin, but I claim my share in that little girl and I ask you sharp and flat—"

"Oh you go to—!" cried Willock fiercely. "All of you."

Wilfred said lightly, "Red Feather has already gone there, perhaps."

"Eh?" Willock wheeled about as if roused to fresh uneasiness. The Indian chief had glided from the room, as silent and as unobtrusive as a shadow.

Willock sank on the bench beside Bill Atkins and said harshly, "Where's my pipe?"

"Don't you ask ME where your pipe is," snapped Bill. "Yonder it is in the comer where you dropped it."

Willock picked it up, and slowly recovered himself. "You see," he observed apologetically, "I need Lahoma about, to keep me tame. I was wondering the other day if I could swear if I wanted to. I guess I could. And if put to it, I guess I could take up my old life and not be very awkward about it, either—I used to be a tax-collector, and of course got rubbed up against many people that didn't want to pay. That there Gledware—well! maybe it isn't this one Lahoma writes about, but the one I knew is just about middle age, and he's a widower, all right, or the next thing to it—I didn't like Gledware. That was all. I hate for Lahoma to be throwed with anybody of the name—but I guess it's all right. Lahoma ain't going to let nobody get on her off-side, when the wind's blowing."

Bill inquired anxiously, "Did that Gledware you knew, live near Kansas City?"

"He lived over in Indian Territory, last time I heard of him. But he was a roving devil—he might be anywhere. Only—he wasn't rich; why, he didn't have nothing on earth except a little—yes, except a little."

"Then he can't be the owner of a big estate," remarked Wilfred, with relief.

"I don't know that. Folks goes into the Territory, and somehow they contrives to come out loaded down. But I hope to the Almighty it's a different Gledware!"

"Lahoma can hold her own," Bill remarked confidently. "You just wait till her next letter comes, and see if she ain't flying her colors as gallant as when she sailed out of the cove."

Wilfred reflected that his invitation to remain had been sincere; there was nothing to hurry him back to the Oklahoma country—he would, at least, stay until the next letter came. His interest in Lahoma was of course vague and dreamy, founded rather on the fancies of a thousand-and-one-nights than upon the actual interview of a brief hour. But the remarkable change that had taken possession of Willock at the mention of Gledware's name, had impressed the young man profoundly. In that moment, all the geniality and kindliness of the huge fellow had vanished, and the great whiskered face had looked so wild and dangerous, the giant fists had doubled so threateningly, that long after the brow smoothed and the muscles relaxed, it was impossible to forget the ferocious picture.

"That's what I'll do," Wilfred declared, settling back in his seat, "I'll wait until that next letter comes."



CHAPTER XV

THE DAY OF FENCES

While waiting for Lahoma's letter, Wilfred Compton spent his days in ceaseless activity, his evenings in dreamy musings. Over on the North Fork of Red River—which was still regarded as Red River proper, and therefore the dividing line between Texas and Indian Territory—he renewed his acquaintance with the boys of Old Man Walker's ranch. Henry Woodson, the cow-puncher, still known as Mizzoo was one of the old gang who greeted Wilfred with extravagant joy which shaded away to easy and picturesque melancholy in lamenting the passing of the good old days.

"These is the days of fences," complained Mizzoo, as Wilfred, in answer to his invitation, rode forth with him to view the changes. "Time was, our cattle was bounded on the south by nothing but the south wind, and on the north by nothing but the north wind; but these unmitigated settlers has spiled the cattle business. I'm looking for the old man to sell out and quit. Why, look at all the little towns that has sprung up so confusing and handy that you don't know which to choose to liquor up. They comes like a thief in the night, and in the morning they're equipped to rob you. I can't keep no change by me—I've asked the old man to hold back my wages till the end of the year. But I'm calculating to make something out of these very misfortunes. You know I always was sort of thrifty—yes, as they GOT to be a settled county round us, it'll needs call for a sheriff, and if all signs don't fail, I'll get the job this week. Then there'll be no more riding of the line for old Mizzoo."

Wilfred rode with him to Mangum, and other villages, with names and without, and he tingled to the spirit of the bounding West. There might be only a few dugouts, some dingy tents and a building or so of undressed pine, but each hamlet felt in itself the possibilities of a city, and had its spaces in the glaring sands or the dead sagebrush which it called "the Square" and "Main Street" and possibly "the park." The air quivered with expectations of a railroad, maybe two or three, and each cluster of hovels expected to find itself in a short time constituted the county-seat, with a gleaming steel road at its back door.

This spirit of optimism was but a reflection of the miraculous growth of the new country of which Greer County, though owned by Texas, felt itself, in a sense, an integral part. Eight years before, Indian Territory was the hunting-ground of the Indian, and whosoever attempted to settle within its limits was driven forth by the soldiers. It was then a land of dim twilight, full of mystery and wildness, with vast stretches of thirsty plains and bleak mountains around which the storms, unbroken by forests, shrieked in the "straight winds" of many days, or whined the threat of the deadly tornado. And suddenly it became a land of high noon, garish and crude, but wide-awake and striving with all the tireless energy of young blood.

Scarcely had the Oklahoma country been taken possession of before the settlers began agitating the question of an organized territory, and too impatient to wait for Congress to act, held their own convention at Guthrie and divided the land into counties. Congress made them wait five months—an age in the new country—before approving the Organic Act. The district, which a short time before had been the Unassigned Lands, became the counties of Logan, Oklahoma, Cleveland, Canadian, Kingfisher and Payne. To these was added Beaver County which in Brick Willock's day had been called "No-Man's Land," and which the law-abiding citizens, uniting against bandits and highwaymen, had sought to organize as Cimmaron Territory.

Then came the rivalry between Guthrie and Oklahoma City for the capital, adding picturesqueness to territorial history, and offering incitement to many a small village to make itself the county-seat of its county. The growth of the new country advanced by leaps and bounds. In 1891, the 868,414 acres of the surplus lands of the Iowa, Sac, Fox and the Pottawatomie-Shawnee reservations formed the new counties of Lincoln and Pottawatomie and increased the extent of some of the old ones. The next year, 3,500,562 acres belonging to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians were taken to increase several of the older counties, and to from the new ones of honest old American names—Blame, Custer, Washita, Dewey, Roger Mills, Beckham and Ellis. In the year following, the Cherokee strip was opened for a settlement together with the surplus lands of the Pawnee and Tonhawa—5,698,140 acres; besides increasing other counties, this land furnished forth the new counties of Alfalfa, Garfield, Grant, Harper, Major, Woods, Woodward, Pawnee, Kay and Noble. At the time of Wilfred's visit to Brick Willock, the winter of 1894-5, the opening of the Kickapoo reservation was already a near certainty; while the vast extent of Greer County itself, so long in dispute between Texas and the United States, would in all likelihood be added to the swelling territory of Oklahoma.

The territory, so young but so dauntless, was already agitating the question of statehood—not only so, but of single statehood, meaning thereby the prospective engulfment and assimilation of Indian Territory, that all the land from Texas to Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas might be called by the one name—Oklahoma; a name to stand forever as a symbol of the marvelously swift and permanent growth of a white people, in spite of its Choctaw significance—"Red People."

Although Wilfred had stayed close to his farm, near Oklahoma City, he had kept alive to the rush and swing of the western life; and now that he had leisure to ride with Mizzoo among the bustling camps, and view the giant strides made from day to day by the smallest towns, he was more than ever filled with the exultation of one who takes part in world-movements. He began to view the hurrying crowds that overran the sidewalks, with a sense of close kinship—these people came from all points of the Union, but they were his people. A year ago, six months ago, they might have been New Yorkers, Californians, Oregonians, but now all were westerners like himself, and though they believed themselves Texans the name made as little difference as that between "Red River" and "Prairie Dog Fork"—in spirit, they were Oklahomans.

If Wilfred had not been a simple visitor, he would have had no time for thought; but now he could look on the life of which he had for a few years been a part, and study it as related to the future. It was as if his boyhood and youth had not been passed in Chicago—the West had blotted out the past as it ever does with relentless hand,—and every thought-channel led toward the light of the future. Lahoma's letter had revived the picture of other days, of another existence, without rousing one wish to return.

The only desire it had stirred in his breast was that of seeing Lahoma again, of taking her by the hand to lead her, not back to the old civilization, but to the new. As he lay awake at night in the log cabin that had been Lahoma's, his brain for a long time every night was busy with thoughts of that new civilization, and he was stirred with ambition to take part, so that when single statehood or double statehood was achieved, he would be a recognized factor in its transformation from a loosely-bound territory.

He began to think, too, of moving his residence to Oklahoma City, where he would be closer to men of affairs—great men of great enterprises. His farm, of course, would be managed under his superintendence—unless Oklahoma City should be generous enough to spread out and surround it, and lap it up, town-lot after town-lot, till not a red clod was left.... And if a girl like Lahoma—for surely she had not changed!—if she, little Lahoma.... And the longing grew on him to see Annabel Sellimer and Lahoma together, that he might study the girl he had once loved with the girl he might love tomorrow. He almost made up his mind to take a brief trip to Chicago, on quitting the cove; perhaps there would be something in Lahoma's next letter to force a decision.

Two weeks passed, but Wilfred did not consider the time lost; there were letters almost daily, by coach, from Lahoma, telling of her adventures in the great world—the house-party had been delayed on account of Mrs. Sellimer's illness, but was to take place immediately—so said the last letter before the arrival of the news that changed the course of events at the cove. As yet, Lahoma had not met Mr. Gledware, but the fame of his riches and his luxurious home had both increased her curiosity to see him, and her conviction that Mr. Edgerton Compton stood no chance with Annabel. She had discovered, too, that Edgerton Compton was a brother of the Wilfred Compton who had visited them one day in the cove—Wilfred read the letter with great attention, but there was no further reference to himself.

Brick Willock rode over to Mangum nearly every afternoon to hear from Lahoma, but it happened that on the day of the great news, neither he nor Bill had returned from a certain hunting expedition in time for the stage, so Wilfred went for the mail. There was only one letter, addressed to "Mr. B. Willock," and it seemed strangely thin. The young man wondered during all his ten-mile return-trip if Lahoma had fallen ill; and after reaching the log cabin, he kept looking at the slim missive, and turning it over, with vague uneasiness.

Brick and Bill had ridden far, and it was dusk before they reached home with a deer slung over one of the horses.

"They're getting scarcer every year," complained Bill, as he climbed stiffly to the ground; "I guess they'll finally go the way of the buffalo."

"Get a letter?" asked Brick, hurrying forward. "Huh! THAT it? She is sure getting fashionable! I reckon when she's plumb civilized, she won't write nothing!"

He took the long white envelope and squinted at it inquisitively.

"Well, why don't you open 'er?" snapped Bill. "Afraid you'll spring a trap and get caught?"

"Ain't much here," replied Brick slowly, "and I'm making it last."

"Huh! Nothing is a-lasting when it hasn't been begun," retorted Bill crossly. "See what the little girl says."

"I'm afraid she's sick," observed Wilfred, eying the envelope with something like Bill's irritable impatience.

Brick tore it open, and found within another envelope, the inner one of yellow. "It's a telegraph," he said uneasily. "Lahoma had telegraphed to the end of the wire, and at Chickasha they puts it in the white wrapper and sends it on. Do you see?"

"I don't see anything yet," snapped Bill. "Rip 'er open!"

Brick looked at Bill Atkins. "Better set down, Bill," he remarked. "If they's any kind of shock in this, YOU ain't got no nerve to stand it." He broke open the yellow envelope and stared at the message. As he did so, the hand clutching the telegram hardened to a giant fist, while his brow wrinkled, and his eyes grew dark and menacing. Wilfred was reminded of the sinister expression displayed at the first mention by Lahoma of Gledware's name, and he experienced once more that surprised feeling of not being nearly so well acquainted with him as he had supposed.

After a dead silence, Willock handed the telegram to Bill, who wrinkled his brow over it a minute or two before handing it to Wilfred. The young man read it hastily, then turned to Bill. His face wore a decidedly puzzled look.

"I don't understand," he said.

"Neither do I," returned Bill rather blankly. "I guess if there is to be any setting down, it's Brick that needs a chair."

The telegram was as follows:

"The second you get this, hide for your life. Red Kimball says he can prove everything. Will explain in letter.

"Lahoma."

"Don't say nothing to me for a spell," growled Brick, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets. "I've got to think mighty quick." He strode toward the dugout, leaving Wilfred and Bill staring at each other, speechless.

In a short time, Willock reappeared, bringing from the dugout his favorite gun. "Come along," he bade them briefly. When he had ascended the rounded swell of Turtle Hill, he stretched himself between two wide flat rocks and lay with his face and gun directed toward the opening of the cove.

"Now, Bill," he said sharply, "if you will just set facing me with your eye on the north wall, so you can tell if anybody tries to sneak over the mountain-top, I'll make matters clear. Wilfred, you can go or stay, free as air, only IF you stay, I can't promise but you may see a man killed—me, or Red Kimball, I don't know which, though naturally I has my preference," he added, his harsh voice suddenly changing to the accent of comradeship. "As to Bill, he ain't got no choice. He come and put up with me and Lahoma when nobody didn't want him, and now, in time of danger, I 'low to get all the help out of him that's there in spite of a begrudging disposition and the ravages of time."

"What I want to know is this," Bill interrupted: "Who and what is this Red Kimball? And if you have to hide from him, why ain't you doing it?"

"I puts it this way, Bill: that the telegram traveled faster than old Red could, so no need to hide till tonight, though when you deals with Red, it behooves you to have your gun ready against chances. You want to know about Red Kimball? But I think I'd best wait till Lahoma's letter comes, so my story can tally with hers. I got my reasons for not wanting to tell all about Red Kimball which I reckon he wouldn't be grateful for, but that's for him to say. So I 'lows to tell only as much as I has to tell, that depending on what Lahoma has picked up, according."

"I suppose you've met him face to face?" growled Bill.

"They don't seem to be no harm in that question, Bill, but you never knows where a first question is leading you. If I refuses to answer what seems fair and square, no suspicions is roused when I refuses to answer what might sound dark and shady. So I banks myself against my general resolution to say nothing beyond Lahoma's word."

"Her word says he can prove everything. What is 'everything'?"

"That's what we'll learn from her letter. We'll just watch him do his proving!"

"And her word says to hide this minute."

"I don't do my hiding in daylight, but when it's good and dark, I'm going to put out. I would tell you the hiding-place, for I trusts you both—but if you knowed where it was, and if officers of the law come to you for information, you'd be in a box; I know you wouldn't give me up, but neither would you swear to a lie. Not knowing where I hides, your consciences are as free as mine that hasn't never been bridled."

Wilfred asked, "But when Lahoma writes, how will you get her letter?"

"You or Bill will go for the mail. If a letter comes, you'll take it to that crevice into which Miss Sellimer was drug by that big Injun, and you'll wait in there till I comes, not opening that letter till I am with you. We'll read it together, down in the hollow where poor Miss Sellimer's life was saved by Lahoma; then you two will go back to the cove, and leave me to sneak away to my hiding-place which may be near and may be far. When you get a letter, bring your ladder and the lantern, and be sure nobody is watching you—because if you let Red Kimball or any of his gang follow you to that hiding-place, you'd have to see a man killed—and such as that ain't no sight for eyes as civilized as Wilfred's, or as old as Bill's."



CHAPTER XVI

THE ONYX PIN

When the next letter came from Lahoma, Wilfred Compton and Bill Atkins hurried to the crevice in the mountain-top according to agreement. It was a cloudless afternoon, but at the farther end of the retreat the light of the lantern was necessary for its perusal. Brick Willock, who was there before them, read the letter in silence before handing it to the young man to read aloud.

"It's just addressed to me, this time," he remarked grimly, in explanation of his proprietary act; "they ain't no foolishness of 'Dear Brick and Bill.' But I treats you as friends should be treated, and lays before you everything Lahoma has found out. For Brick Willock, he says 'Friends is better friends when they don't know all about each other,' says he; and I tells you only what Lahoma has been told, according."

Wilfred took the letter, tingling with excitement. The strained watching and waiting for the sudden appearance of an unknown Red Kimball had made his bed in the cabin as sleepless as had been Bill's pallet in the dugout. They squatted about the lantern that rested on the stone floor, Willock always with eyes directed toward the narrow slit in the ceiling that they might not be taken by surprise.

The long natural corridor was bare, except for the old Spanish sword hanging upon the wall. A stout cedar post, firmly fixed in the extremity of the walls, formed a rude barricade against the abyss of unknown depth that yawned a few yards away from where they sat. This railing and the sword were the only evidences of man's possession, save for the ladder that would presently be carried back to the cove. No inquiries were made as to how Brick came and went, where he found food and a bed, or how he happened to be present at the precise moment of the arrival of the bearers of news.

"Dear Brick," Lahoma began: "By this time you have hidden where nobody can find you, for you've got my telegram and you know I wouldn't have sent it if it hadn't been necessary. You believe in me, and, as you would say,—how I'd love to hear you—you act 'according.' Well, and I believe in you, Brick, and you needn't imagine as long as you live that anybody could make me think you anything but what I know you to be, the kindest, most tender-hearted, most thoughtful man that ever lived. Get that fixed in your mind so when I tell what they say about you, you won't care, knowing I'm with you and will believe in you till death.

"I'm going to skip everything except the part about you, for this letter goes by next mail. There's ever and ever so many other things I'd love to tell you, and I don't see how I can wait, but I'm going to find out, for wait I must. Maybe I ought to begin with Mr. Gledware so you'll know more about him when I begin on the main news.

"We are at his house now and the house-party is in full swing. Mr. Gledware is pressing his suit to Annabel with all his might, and her mother is helping him. Nothing stands in the way—for she wants to marry him—except her love for Mr. Edgerton Compton. She told me all about her old romance with Wilfred—you remember him, I guess? She got to liking Edgerton after Wilfred went away because he looked so much like Wilfred. Maybe he does, but he isn't the same kind of man. Mr. Edgerton has spent all his money on fixing up the outside of the house, but Wilfred has spent his on the furnishings. Well! If Annabel could change her heart from one brother to the other just because Edgerton reminded her of Wilfred, I guess she won't have a very hard time making another transfer, especially as Mr. Gledware is traveling her way. When I love anybody, my love is the part of me that comes alive whenever that person is present, or is mentioned. So how could I slide it from one man to another, any more than the man himself could change to another man? And that's the way I love you, Brick, and not all the wealth or fame or good looks in the world (and you have neither) could get my heart away from YOU!

"Or from Bill.

"The first time I met Mr. Gledware, he acted in a curious way. Of course I was introduced as 'Miss Willock' and he started at the name, and at sight of me—two separate little movements just as plain as anything. Then he said he had heard the name 'Willock' in unusual surroundings, and that my face reminded him of somebody who was dead. That was all there was to it, then. But afterward he heard Annabel call me 'Lahoma,' and his face turned perfectly white.

"The first chance he had, after that, he sat down to talk to me in a corner where we wouldn't be overhead, and he asked me questions. So, of course, I told about father and mother taking me across the prairie to the Oklahoma country, and how mother died and father was killed, and I was with the Indians a while and then was taken to live with my cousin, Brick. He listened with his head down, never meeting my eye, and when I had finished all he said was, 'Did you ever bear my name before?'

"And I said I never had. Then he asked if I thought I had ever seen him, for he thought he could remember having seem ME somewhere. And I said I wasn't sure, I had met so many people, and there was something familiar about him. Then he said he guessed we hadn't ever met unless accidentally on the trail somewhere, as he had once been down in Texas,—and that was all.

"I don't like Mr. Gledware's eye because it always looks away from you. He would be considered a handsome man by anybody not particular about eyes. Afterward, I heard about his trip to Texas. Annabel and her mother were talking about Mr. Gledware's past. It seems that once Mr. Gledware and his first wife (I say his FIRST because I look upon Annabel as certain to be the second) joined the Oklahoma boomers and they were attacked by Indians, just as MY father and mother were, and they had with them his wife's little girl, for he had married a widow, just as MY father had (my stepfather) and there was a terrible battle. And Mr. Gledware, oh, he was SO brave! He killed ten Indians after the rest of his party, including his wife and daughter, had been slain, and he broke through the attacking party and escaped on a horse—the only one that got away.

"He doesn't look THAT brave. Later, I asked him if it could be possible that he was with the wagon-train we were in, but he said there wasn't any Mr. or Mrs. Willock in his party, and no little girl named Lahoma Willock. But he's been through what my father went through, and it made me feel kinder to him, somehow.

"But his eye is bad. Maybe it got in the habit of shifting about looking for Indians in the sagebrush. Sometimes he seems still to be looking for Indians. Well, I see where's he's right there, and I'm going to tell you why, which brings me to the biggest news yet.

"Now I've come to the day when I sent you the telegram, and why I sent it, so be prepared! There was to be a big picnic, today, near a town called Independence, and, as it happened, I didn't feel like going, so begged off—let me tell you why: I began a novel, last night, full of bright conversation, the pages all broken up in little scraps of print that hurry you along as if building steps for you to run down—it was ever and ever more interesting than real people can be. It was a story about a house-party and the writer just made them talk to suit himself and not to suit their dulness as a real house-party must, you know. So I stayed to finish that book. Oh, of course if I had had a lover to be with! But that's something I'll never have, I suppose; but I don't complain, Brick, for you've given me everything else I ever wanted.

"The reason I would like to have a lover is as follows: So I would understand the experience of being regarded that way. It would be like plowing up the sage-brush to plant kafir-corn and millo-maize, because until such time, there is bound to be a part of my nature unworked.

"Now, there is a nook in Mr. Gledware's library, a sort of alcove where you have a window all to yourself but are shut off from the rest of the room, and that is where I was when two men came in softly and closed and locked the door behind them. I couldn't see them but just as I was starting up to find out what it meant, one of them—it was Mr. Gledware, which surprised me greatly as he had gone with the rest to the picnic—spoke your name, Brick. As soon as I beard that name, and particularly on account of the way he spoke it, I determined to 'lay low' and scout out the trouble. So I just drew up as small as possible in my chair, as you would slip along through the high grass if Indians were near, and I listened. Maybe if I had finished my civilization I would have been obliged to let them know I was there; but fortunately, I haven't reached the limit, yet.

"The other man, I soon found, was Red Kimball; they had about finished their conversation before coming into the room, so the first part was lost. Mr. Gledware had come for his check-book, and the check was for Red Kimball. Red Kimball used to be the leader of a band of highwaymen up in Cimarron, when it was No-Man's Land; it was his hand that attacked the wagon-train when Mr. Gledware acted the hero—only, as they were disguised as Indians, Mr. Gledware didn't know they were such till later. He came on them, afterward, without their disguises, and they would have killed him if YOU, Brick, hadn't knocked down Red, and shot his brother! So, as I listened, I found out that Mr. Gledware wasn't the hero he claimed to be, but was THE MAN YOU SAVED; and he is MY STEPFATHER; and I was carried away BY HIM, and taken FROM HIM by the Indians; but he wasn't killed at all. And my name, I suppose is Lahoma GLEDWARE, at least not as Red Feather had taught me, "Lahoma WILLOCK." And I am NO kin to you, at all, Brick, you just took me in and cared for me because you ARE Brick Willock, the dearest tenderest friend a little girl ever had—and these lines are crooked because there are tears—because you are not my cousin.

"I'd rather be kin to you than married to a prince.

"Red Kimball says you were one of his gang of highwaymen but I know it ISN'T TRUE, so you don't have to say A WORD. But he is determined to be revenged on you for killing his brother. And the reason he's waited this long is because he didn't know where you were—good reason, isn't it? Tell you how he found out—it all comes from my getting civilized! He's a porter at our Kansas City hotel. So when he heard the men talking about how I had once been kidnaped by the Indians, and wrote nearly every day to my cousin Brick Willock, which they thought an odd name—he guessed the rest.

"It makes my blood turn cold to think that all the time we were living quietly and happily in the cove, that awful Red Kimball was hunting for you, meaning to have your life—and in a way that I'm ashamed to write, but must, so you'll know everything. He means to have you arrested and tried for his brother's murder—and he says HE CAN HANG YOU!

"And Mr. Gledware is his witness. That's why Red has come after him. You'll think it strange that after his gang were about to kill Mr. Gledware in the prairie, that he should come to ask him to act as witness against another man. That's what Mr. Gledware told him. But Red Kimball answered that it was all a bluff—they had never dreamed of shooting him or his little girl.

"When No-Man's Land was added to Oklahoma, a pardon was offered to Red Kimball and all his gang if they would come in and lay down their arms and swear to keep the peace—you see, most of their crimes had been committed where no courts could touch them. Well, all the gang came in— But what do you think? That terrible Red Kimball swears that YOU WERE ONE OF HIS GANG, and that as you didn't come in and surrender yourself, THE PARDON DOESN'T APPLY TO YOU! It was all I could do to keep from stepping right out and telling him you were one of the most peaceable and harmless of men and that you just HAPPENED to be riding about when you saw Mr. Gledware's danger, and just HAD to shoot Kansas Kimball to save me and my stepfather. You, a highwayman, indeed! I could laugh at that, if it didn't make me too mad when I think about it.

"Then Mr. Gledware talked. He said maybe it was a bluff against him, that standing him up against the moon to be shot at, but it wasn't one he was apt to forget, and he could never be on any kind of terms with Red; besides, he said, if Brick Willock hadn't saved his life, he'd always thought so, so wouldn't witness against him though he had no doubt he belonged to Red's gang. But that was nothing to HIM. And he couldn't understand how Red could have the face to come to him about ANYTHING, but was willing to pay a sum to keep all the past hushed up, as he didn't want any 'complications' from being claimed as a stepfather by Lahoma! The past was over, he said, and Lahoma had a home of her own, and he was satisfied to be free of her—and he would pay Red something to keep the past buried.

"Then Red spoke pretty ugly, saying it wasn't the past he was anxious to have buried, but Brick Willock. And he said that Mr. Gledware was a witness to the murder, whether he wanted to be or not, and Red was willing to confess to everything, in order to have Brick hanged.

"Then Mr. Gledware, in a cold unmoved voice, said he must go back to the picnic and 'Mr. Kimball' could do as he pleased.

"But that wasn't the end. 'Do you know,' says 'Mr. Kimball,' 'that Red Feather is in town, laying for you?' he says. Mr. Gledware gave a dreadful kind of low scream, such as turned me sick to hear. It reminded me of the cry of a coyote I heard once, caught in the trap, that saw Bill coming with his knife. The room was as still as death for a little while. I guess they were looking at each other.

"At last Red says, pretty slow and calm, 'Would you like to have that Indian out of the way?' Mr. Gledware didn't answer, at least not anything I could hear, but his eyes must have spoken for him, for Red went on after a while— 'It's a go, then, is it? Well, that'll take time—but in a few days—maybe in a few hours—I'll deal with the chief. And I want your word that after that's accomplished, you'll go with me to Greer County and stay on the job till Brick Willock swings.'"

"There was a longer silence than before. It lasted so long, and the room was so still, that after a while I almost imagined that they were gone, or that I had just waked up from a dreadful dream. My nerves all clashed in the strangest way—like the shivering of morning ice on a pool—when Mr. Gledware's voice jarred on my ears. He said, 'How will I know?'

"'Well,' says Red Kimball roughly, 'how WOULD you know?'

"There was another of those awful silences. Then Mr. Gledware said, 'When you bring me a pin that he always carries about him, I'll know that Red Feather will never trouble me again.'

"Kimball spoke rougher than before: 'You mean it'll show you that he's a dead 'un, huh?"

"'I mean what I said,' Mr. Gledware snapped, as if just rousing himself from a kind of stupor.

"'Well, what kind of pin?' That was Kimball's question.

"Then Mr. Gledware described the pin. He said it was a smooth-faced gold-rimmed pin of onyx set with pearls. And Kimball said boastingly that he would produce that pin, as he was a living man. And Mr. Gledware told him if he did, he'd go to witness against Brick Willock. So both left the room, and pretty soon, from the window, I saw them going away on horseback, in opposite directions.

"I mustn't hold back this letter to add any more, it must get off by the mail that's nearly due. The moment I learn anything new I'll write again. Of course I know you're no more a highwayman than myself, but since it's true that you did shoot Red's brother, and since he evidently died of the wound, I suppose Red could cause you a great deal of trouble. You could swear that if you hadn't killed Kansas Kimball, he would have killed my stepfather; and that they had ordered you to kill me, in my sleep. The trouble is that Mr. Gledware seems to be in terror about Red Feather, and if Kimball gets him rid of the Indian, I'm not sure that Mr. Gledware would tell the whole truth. It might be the word of those two against yours. It's certain that if they tried you and failed to convict, Kimball would try a knife or a gun as the next best way of getting even.

"My poor dear Brick, it seems that there's long trouble before you, hut the consciousness of innocence will uphold you, and just as soon as I do all I can at this end of the trail, by acting as your faithful scout, I'll come out in the open in my war clothes with my belt well-lined with weapons, and we'll defy the world. In the meantime—better keep hid! Good-by. Think of me when the wild winds blow.

"Your little girl,

"Lahoma.

"P.S. Tell Bill he can still claim his share.

"P.P.S. Got Bill's note of a few lines, read it with the greatest joy in the world, and guessed at the news. He says Wilfred Compton is there. What for?

"L."



CHAPTER XVII

BRICK MAKES A STAND

As soon as Wilfred had finished the letter, not without a wry smile over the query concerning himself, Bill Atkins exclaimed:

"THEN! Ho! And so she's no more kin to you, Brick, than to me; and her name's no more Willock than Atkins—and being but a stepdaughter to old Sneak, neither is it Gledware. Yet you have everlastingly had your own say about Lahoma, from claiming to be a cousin! I want you to know from this on that I claim as big a share in Lahoma as anybody else on this green and living earth."

Wilfred looked up, expecting Brick to consent to this on the ground that in all likelihood Bill's claim would last but a few years, anyway. It seemed too good an opening for Brick to lose; but instead of refreshing himself with his customary gibe, the huge fellow sat dark and glowering, his eyes staring upward at the crevice in the rock roof, the lantern-light showing his forehead deeply rutted in a threatening scowl.