Smith spoke the Piegan tongue almost as fluently as his own, so he and Yellow Bird quickly became compadres, relating to each other stories of their prowess, of horses they had run off, of cattle they had stolen, and hinting, Indian fashion, with significant intonations and pauses, at crimes of greater magnitude.

"How is your heart to-day, friend? Is it strong?"

"Weak," replied Yellow Bird jestingly, touching his breast with a fluttering hand.

"It would be stronger if you had red meat in your stomach," Smith suggested significantly.

"The bacon is not for Indians," agreed Yellow Bird.

"But the woman would have no cattle left if she killed only her own beef."

"Many people stop here—strangers and friends," Yellow Bird admitted.

"There is plenty on the range." Smith looked toward the Bar C ranch.

"He is a dog on the trail, that white man, when his cattle are stolen," Yellow Bird replied doubtfully.

"I've killed dogs—me, Smith—when they got in my way. Yellow Bird, are you a woman, that you are afraid?"

"Wolf Robe, who stole only a calf, sits like this"—Yellow Bird looked at Smith sullenly through his spread fingers.

"You have talked with the forked tongue, Yellow Bird. You are not a Piegan buck of the great Blackfoot nation; you are a woman. Your fathers killed men; you are afraid to kill cattle." Smith turned from him contemptuously.

"My heart is as strong as yours. I am ready."

It was dusk when Smith returned and held out a blood-stained flour sack to the squaw.

"Liver. A two-year ole."

The squaw's eyes sparkled. Ah, this was as it should be! Her man provided for her; he brought her meat to eat. He was clever and brave, for it was other men's meat he brought her to eat. MacDonald had killed only his own cattle, and secretly it had shamed her, for she mistook his honesty for lack of courage. To steal was legitimate; it was brave; something to be told among friends at night, and laughed over. Susie, she had observed with regret, was honest, like her father. She patted the back of Smith's hand, and looked at him with dog-like, adoring eyes as they stood in the log meat-house, where fresh quarters hung.

"I'd do more nor this for you, Prairie Flower;" and, laying his hand upon her shoulder, he pressed it with his finger-tips.

"Say, but that's great liver!" Tubbs reached half the length of the table and helped himself a third time. "That'd make a man fight his grandmother. Who butchered it?"

"Me," Smith answered.

"It tastes like slow elk," said Susie.

"Maybe you oughtn't to eat it till you're showed the hide," Smith suggested.

"Maybe I oughtn't," Susie retorted. "I didn't see any fresh hide a-hangin' on the fence. We always hangs our hides."

"I never hangs my hides. I cuts 'em up in strips and braids 'em into throw-ropes. It's safer."

The grub-liners laughed at the inference which Smith so coolly implied.

The finding of White Antelope's body, and its subsequent burial, had delayed the opening of Dora's night-school, so Smith, for reasons of his own, had spent much of his time in the bunk-house, covertly studying the grub-liners, who passed the hours exchanging harrowing experiences of their varied careers.

A strong friendship had sprung up between Susie and McArthur. While Susie liked and greatly admired the Schoolmarm, she never yet had opened her heart to her. Beyond their actual school-work, they seemed to have little in common; and it was a real disappointment and regret to the Schoolmarm that, for some reason which she could not reach, she had never been able to break through the curious reserve of the little half-breed, who, superficially, seemed so transparently frank. Each time that she made the attempt, she found herself repulsed—gently, even tactfully, but repulsed.

Dora Marshall did not suspect that these rebuffs were due to an error of her own. In the beginning, when Susie had questioned her naively of the outside world, she had permitted amusement to show in her face and manner. She never fully recognized the fact that while Susie to all appearances, intents, and purposes was Anglo-Saxon, an equal quantity of Indian blood flowed in her veins, and that this blood, with its accompanying traits and characteristics, must be reckoned with.

As a matter of fact, Susie was suspicious, unforgiving, with all the Indians' sensitiveness to and fear of ridicule. She meant never again to entertain the Schoolmarm by her ignorant questions, although she yearned with all a young girl's yearning for some one in whom to confide—some one with whom she could discuss the future which she often questioned and secretly dreaded.

With real adroitness Susie had tested McArthur, searching his face for the glimmer of amusement which would have destroyed irredeemably any chance of real comradeship between them. But invariably McArthur had answered her questions gravely; and when her tears had fallen fast and hot at White Antelope's grave, she had known, with an intuition both savage and childish, that his sympathy was sincere. She had felt, too, the genuineness of his interest when, later, she had repeated to him many of the stories White Antelope had told her of the days when he and her father had trapped and hunted together in the big woods to the north.

So to-night, when the living-room was deserted by all save her mother, at work on her rugs in the corner, Susie confided to him her Great Secret, and McArthur, some way, felt strangely flattered by the confidence. He had no desire to laugh; indeed, there were times when the tears were perilously close to the surface. He had been a shy, lonely student, and quite as lonely as a man, yet through the promptings of a heart sympathetic and kind and with the fine instinct of gentle birth, he understood the bizarre little half-breed in a way which surprised himself.

There was a settee on one side of the room, made of elk-horns and interwoven buckskin thongs, and it was there, in the whisper which makes a secret doubly alluring, that Susie told him of her plans; but first she brought from some hiding-place outside a long pasteboard box, carefully wrapped and tied.

McArthur, puffing on the briar-wood pipe which he was seldom without, waited with interest, but without showing curiosity, for he felt that, in a way, this was a critical moment in their friendship.

"If you didn't see me here on the reservation, would you know I was Injun?" Susie demanded, facing him.

McArthur regarded her critically.

"You have certain characteristics—your rather high cheek-bones, for instance—and your skin has a peculiar tint."

"I got an awful complexion on me," Susie agreed, "but I'm goin' to fix that."

"Then, your movements and gestures——"

"That's from talkin' signs, maybe. I can talk signs so fast that the full-bloods themselves have to ask me to slow up. But, now, if you saw me with my hair frizzled—all curled up, like, and pegged down on top of my head—and a red silk dress on me with a long skirt, and shiny shoes coming to a point, and a white hat with birds and flowers staked out on it, and maybe kid gloves on my hands—would you know right off it was me? Would you say, 'Why, there's that Susie MacDonald—that breed young un from the reservation'?"

"No," declared McArthur firmly; "I certainly never should say, 'Why, there's that Susie MacDonald—that breed young un from the reservation.' As a matter of fact," he went on gravely, "I should probably say, 'What a pity that a young lady so intelligent and high-spirited should frizz her hair'!"

"Would you?" insisted Susie delightedly.

"Undoubtedly," McArthur replied, with satisfying emphasis.

"And how long do you think it would take me to stop slingin' the buckskin and learn to talk like you?—to say big words without bitin' my tongue and gettin' red in the face?"

"Do I use large words frequently?" McArthur asked in real surprise.

"Whoppers!" said Susie.

"I do it unconsciously." McArthur's tone was apologetic.

"Sure, I know it."

"I shrink from appearing pedantic," said McArthur, half to himself.

"So do I," Susie declared mischievously. "I don't know what it is, but I shrink from it. Do you think I could learn big words?"

"Of course." McArthur wondered where all these questions led.

"Did you ever notice that I'm kind of polite sometimes?"

"Frequently."

"That I say 'If you please' and 'Thank you,' and did you notice the other morning when I asked Old Man Rulison how his ribs was getting along that Arkansaw Red kicked in, and said I was sorry the accident happened?"

McArthur nodded.

"Well, I didn't mean it." She giggled. "That was just my manners that I was practisin' on him. He was onery, and only got what was comin' to him; but if you're goin' to be polite, seems like you dassn't tell the truth. But Miss Marshall says that 'Thank you,' 'If you please,' and 'Good morning, how's your ribs?' are kind of pass-words out in the world that help you along."

"Yes, Susie; that's true."

"So I'm tryin' to catch onto all I can, because"—her eyes dilated, and she lowered her voice—"I'm goin' out in the world pretty soon."

"To school?"

She shook her head.

"I'm goin' to hunt up Dad's relations; and when I find 'em, I don't want 'em to be ashamed of me, and of him for marryin' into the Injuns."

"They need never be ashamed of you, Susie."

"Honest? Honest, don't you think so?" She looked at him wistfully. "I'd try awful hard not to make breaks," she went on, "and make 'em feel like cachin' me in the cellar when they saw company comin'. It's just plumb awful to be lonesome here, like I am sometimes; to be homesick for something or somebody—for other kind of folks besides Injuns and grub-liners, and Schoolmarms that look at you as if you was a new, queer kind of bug, and laugh at you with their eyes.

"Dad's got kin, I know; for lots of times when I would go with him to hunt horses, he would say, 'I'll take you back to see them some time, Susie, girl.' But he never said where 'back' was, so I've got to find out myself. Wouldn't it be awful, though"—and her chin quivered—"if after I'd been on the trail for days and days, and my ponies were foot-sore, they wasn't glad to see me when I rode up to the house, but hinted around that horse-feed was short and grub was scarce, and they couldn't well winter me?"

"They wouldn't do that," said McArthur reassuringly. "Nobody named MacDonald would do that."

Susie began to untie the pasteboard box which contained her treasures.

"Nearly ever since Dad died, I've been getting ready to go. I don't mean that I would leave Mother for keeps—of course not; but after I've found 'em, maybe I can coax 'em to come and live with us. I used to ask White Antelope every question I could think of, but all he knew was that after they'd sold their furs to the Hudson Bay Company, they sometimes went to a lodge in Canada called Selkirk, where almost everybody there was named MacDonald or MacDougal or Mackenzie or Mac something. Lots of his friends there married Sioux and went to the Walla Walla valley, and maybe I'll have to go there to find somebody who knew him; but first I'll go to Selkirk.

"I'll take a good pack-outfit, and Running Rabbit to find trails and wrangle horses. See—I've got my trail all marked out on the map."

She unfolded a worn leaf from a school geography.

"It looks as if it was only a sleep or two away, but White Antelope said it was the big ride—maybe a hundred sleeps. And lookee"—she unfolded fashion plates of several periods. "I've even picked out the clothes I'll buy to put on when I get nearly to the ranch where they live. I can make camp, you know, and change my clothes, and then go walkin' down the road carryin' this here parasol and wearin' this here white hat and holdin' up this here long skirt like Teacher on Sunday.

"Won't they be surprised when they open the door and see me standin' on the door-step? I'll say, 'How do you do? I'm Susie MacDonald, your relation what's come to visit you.' I think this would be better than showin' up with Running Rabbit and the pack-outfit, until I'd kind of broke the news to 'em. I'd keep Running Rabbit cached in the brush till I sent for him.

"You see, I've thought about it so much that it seems like it was as good as done; but maybe when I start I won't find it so easy. I might have to ride clear to this Minnesota country, or beyond the big waters to the New York or Connecticut country, mightn't I?"

"You might," McArthur replied soberly.

"But I'd take a lot of jerked elk, and everybody says grub's easy to get if you have money, I'd start with about nine ponies in my string, so it looks like I ought to get through?"

She waited anxiously for McArthur to express his opinion.

He wondered how he could disillusionize her, shatter the dream which he could see had become a part of her life. Should he explain to her that when she had crossed the mountains and left behind her the deserts which constituted the only world she knew, and by which, with its people, she judged the country she meant to penetrate, she would find herself a bewildered little savage in a callous, complex civilization where she had no place—wondered at, gibed at, defeated of her purpose?

"Are you sure you have no other clues—no old letters, no photographs?"

She was about to answer when a tapping like the pecking of a snowbird on a window-sill was heard on the door.

Susie opened it.

In ludicrous contrast to the timid rap, a huge figure that all but filled it was framed in the doorway.

It was "Babe" from the Bar C ranch; "Baby" Britt, curly-haired, pink-cheeked, with one innocent blue eye dark from recent impact with a fist, which gave its owner the appearance of a dissipated cherub.

"Evenin'," he said tremulously, his eyes roving as though in search of some one.

"I lost a horse——" he began.

"Brown?" interrupted Susie, with suspicious interest. "With a star in the forehead?"

"Yes."

"One white stockin'?"

"Uh-huh."

"Roached mane?"

"Ye-ah."

"Kind of a rat-tail?"

"Yep."

"Left hip knocked down?"

"Babe" nodded.

"Saddle-sore?"

"That's it. Where did you see him?"

"I didn't see him."

"Aw-w-w," rumbled "Babe" in disgust.

"Teacher!"

Dora Marshall's door opened in response to Susie's lusty call.

"Have you seen a brown horse with a star in its forehead, roached mane——"

"Aw, g'wan, Susie!" In confusion, "Babe" began to remove his spurs, thereby serving notice upon the Schoolmarm that he had "come to set a spell."

So the Schoolmarm brought her needlework, and while she explained to Mr. Britt the exact shadings which she intended to give to each leaf and flower, that person sat with his entranced eyes upon her white hands, with their slender, tapering fingers—the smallest, the most beautiful hands, he firmly believed, in the whole world.

It was not easy to carry on a spirited conversation with Mr. Britt. At best, his range of topics was limited, and in his present frame of mind he was about as vivacious as a deaf mute. He was quite content to sit with the high heels of his cowboy boots—from which a faint odor of the stable emanated—hung over the rung of his chair, and to watch the Schoolmarm's hand plying the needle on that almost sacred sofa-pillow.

"Your work must be very interesting, Mr. Britt," suggested Dora.

"I dunno as 'tis," replied Mr. Britt.

"It's so—so picturesque."

Mr. Britt considered.

"I shouldn't say it was."

"But you like it?"

"Not by a high-kick!"

If there was one thing upon which Mr. Britt prided himself more than another, it was upon knowing how to temper his language to his company.

"Why do you stick to it, then?"

"Don't know how to do anything else."

"You don't get much time to read, do you?"

"Oh, yes; P'lice Gazette comes reg'lar."

"But you have no church or social privileges?"

"What's that?"

"I say, you have no entertainment, no time or opportunity for amusement, have you?"

"Oh, my, yes," Mr. Britt declared heartily. "We has a game of stud poker nearly every Sunday mornin', and races in the afternoon."

"Ain't he sparklin'?" whispered Susie across the room to Dora, who pretended not to hear.

"You are fond of horses?" inquired the Schoolmarm, desperately.

"Oh, I has nothin' agin 'em." He qualified his statement by adding: "Leastways, unless they come from the Buffalo Basin country. Then I shore hates 'em." At last Mr. Britt was upon a subject upon which he could talk fluently and for an indefinite length of time. "You take that there Buffalo Basin stock," he went on earnestly, "and they're nothin' but inbred cayuse outlaws. They're treach'rous. Oneriest horses that ever wore hair. Can't gentle 'em—simply can't be done. They've piled me up more times than any horses that run. Sunfishers—the hull of 'em; rare up and fall over backwards. 'Tain't pleasant ridin' a horse like that. Wheel on you quicker'n a weasel; shy clean acrost the road at nothin'; kick—stand up and strike at you in the corral. It's irritatin'. Hard keepers, too. Maybe you've noticed that blue roan I'm ridin'. Well, sir, the way I've throwed feed into that horse is a scandal, and the more he eats the worse he looks. Besides, it spoils them Buffalo Basin buzzard-heads to eat. Give 'em three square meals, and you can't hardly ride 'em. They ain't stayers, neither; no bottom, seems-like. Forty miles, and that horse of mine is played out. What for a horse is that? Is that a horse? Not by a high-kick! Gimme a buckskin with a black line down his back, and zebra stripes on his legs—high back, square chest—say, then you got a horse!"

It was apparent enough that Mr. Britt had not commenced to exhaust the subject of the Buffalo Basin stock. As a matter of fact, he had barely started; but the sound of horses coming up the path, and a whoop outside, caused a suspension of his conversation.

Something heavy was thrown against the door, and when Susie opened it a roll of roped canvas rolled inside, while the lamplight fell upon the grinning faces of two Bar C cowpunchers.

"What's that?" The Schoolmarm looked wonderingly at the bundle.

"Aw-w-w!" Mr. Britt replied, in angry confusion. "It's my bed. I'll put a crimp in them two for this." He shouldered his blankets sheepishly and went out.



VII

CUPID "WINGS" A DEPUTY SHERIFF

Riding home next morning with his bed on a borrowed pack-horse, morose, his mind occupied with divers plans for punishing the cowpunchers who had spoiled his evening and made him ridiculous before the Schoolmarm, "Babe" came upon something in a gulch which caused him to rein his horse sharply and swing from the saddle.

With an ejaculation of surprise, he pulled a fresh hide from under a pile of rock, it having been partially uncovered by coyotes. The brand had been cut out, and with the sight of this significant find, the two cowpunchers, their obnoxious joke, even the Schoolmarm, were forgotten; for there was a new thief on the range, and a new thief meant excitement and adventure.

Colonel Tolman's deep-set eyes glittered when he heard the news. As Running Rabbit had said, on the trail of a cattle-thief he was as relentless as a bloodhound. He could not eat or sleep in peace until the man who had robbed him was behind the bars. The Colonel was an old-time Texas cattleman, and his herds had ranged from the Mexican border to the Alberta line. He had made and lost fortunes. Disease, droughts, and blizzards had cleaned him out at various times, and always he had taken his medicine without a whimper; but the loss of so much as a yearling calf by theft threw him into a rage that was like hysteria.

His hand shook as he sat down at his desk and wrote a note to the Stockmen's Association, asking for the services of their best detective. It meant four days of hard riding to deliver the note, but the Colonel put it into "Babe's" hand as if he were asking him to drop it in the mail-box around the corner.

"Go, and git back," were his laconic instructions, and he turned to pace the floor.

When "Babe" returned some eight days later, with the deputy sheriff, he found the Colonel striding to and fro, his wrath having in no wise abated. The cowboy wondered if his employer had been walking the floor all that time.

"My name is Ralston," said the tall young deputy, as he stood before the old cattleman.

"Ralston?" The Colonel rose on his toes a trifle to peer into his face.

"Not Dick Ralston's boy?"

The six-foot deputy smiled.

"The same, sir."

The Colonel's hand shot out in greeting.

"Anybody of that name is pretty near like kin to me. Many's the time your dad and I have eaten out of the same frying-pan."

"So I've heard him say."

"Does he know you're down here on this job?"

The young man shook his head soberly.

"No."

The Colonel looked at him keenly.

"Had a falling out?"

"No; scarcely that; but we couldn't agree exactly upon some things, so I struck out for myself when I came home from college."

"No future for you in this sleuthing business," commented the old man tersely. "Why didn't you go into cattle with your dad?"

"That's where we disagreed, sir. I wanted to buy sheep, and he goes straight into the air at the very word."

The Colonel laughed.

"I can believe that."

"Over there the range is going fast, and it's fight and scrap and quarrel all the time to keep the sheep off what little there is left; and then you ship and bottom drops out of the market as soon as your cattle are loaded. There's nothing in it; and while I don't like sheep any better than the Governor, there's no use in hanging on and going broke in cattle because of a prejudice."

"Dick's stubborn,"—the Colonel nodded knowingly—"and I don't believe he'll ever give in."

"No; I don't think he will, and I'm sorry for his sake, because he's getting too old to worry."

"Worry? Cattle's nothing but worry!—which reminds me of what you are here for."

"Have you any suspicions?"

"No. I don't believe I can help you any. The Injuns been good as pie since we sent Wolf Robe over the road. Don't hardly think it's Injuns. Don't know what to think. Might be some of these Mormon outfits going north. Might be some of these nesters off in the hills. Might be anybody!"

"Is he an old hand?"

"Looks like it. Cuts the brand out and buries the hide." The Colonel began pacing the floor. "Cattle-thieves are people that's got to be nipped in the bud muy pronto. There ought to be a lynching on every cattle-range once in seven years. It's the only way to hold 'em level. Down there on the Rio Grande we rode away and left fourteen of 'em swinging over the bluff. It's got to be done in all cattle countries, and since they've started in here—well, a hanging is overdue by two years." The Colonel ejected his words with the decisive click of a riot-gun.

So Dick Ralston, Jr., rode the range for the purpose of getting the lay of the country, and, on one pretext or another, visited the squalid homes of the nesters, but nowhere found anybody or anything in the least suspicious. He learned of the murder of White Antelope, and of the "queer-actin'" bug-hunter and his pal, who had been accused of it. It was rather generally believed that McArthur was a desperado of a new and original kind. While it was conceded that he seemed to have no way of disposing of the meat, and certainly could not kill a cow and eat it himself, it was nevertheless declared that he was "worth watching."

While the hangers-on at the MacDonald ranch were all known to have records, no particular suspicion had attached to them in this instance, because the squaw was known to kill her own beef, and no shadow of doubt had ever fallen upon the good name of the ranch.

The trapping of cattle-thieves is not the work of a day or a week, but sometimes of months; and when evidence of another stolen beef was found upon the range, Ralston realized that his efforts lay in that vicinity for some time to come. He decided to ride over to the MacDonald ranch that evening and have a look at the bad hombre who masqueraded as a bug-hunter—bug-hunter, it should be explained, being a Western term for any stranger engaged in scientific pursuits.

While Ralston was riding over the lonely road in the moonlight, Dora was arranging the dining-room table for her night-school, which had been in session several evenings. Smith was studying grammar, of which branch of learning Dora had decided he stood most in need, while Susie groaned over compound fractions.

Tubbs, with his chair tilted against the wall, looked on with a tolerant smile. In the kitchen, paring a huge pan of potatoes for breakfast, Ling listened with such an intensity of interest to what was being said that his ears seemed fairly to quiver. From her bench in the living-room, the Indian woman braided rags and darted jealous glances at teacher and pupil. Smith, his hair looking like a bunch of tumble-weed in a high wind, hung over a book with a look of genuine misery upon his face.

"I didn't have any notion there was so much in the world I didn't know," he burst out. "I thought when I'd learnt that if you sprinkle your saddle-blanket you can hold the biggest steer that runs, without your saddle slippin', I'd learnt about all they was worth knowin'."

"It's tedious," Dora admitted.

"Tedious?" echoed Smith in loud pathos. "It's hell! Say, I can tie a fancy knot in a bridle-rein that can't be beat by any puncher in the country, but darn me if I can see the difference between a adjective and one of these here adverbs! Once I thought I knowed something—me, Smith—but say, I don't know enough to make a mark in the road!"

Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, he repeated:

"'I have had, you have had, he has had.'"

"If you would have had about six drinks, I think you could git that," observed Tubbs judicially, watching Smith's mental suffering with keen interest.

"Don't be discouraged," said Dora cheerfully, seating herself beside him. "Let's take a little review. Do you remember what I told you about this?"

She pointed to the letter a marked with the long sound.

Smith ran both hands through his hair, while a wild, panic-stricken look came upon his face.

"Dog-gone me! I know it's a a, but I plumb forget how you called it."

Tubbs unhooked his toes from the chair-legs and walked around to look over Smith's shoulder.

"Smith, you got a great forgitter," he said sarcastically. "Why don't you use your head a little? That there is a Bar A. You ought to have knowed that. The Bar A stock run all over the Judith Basin."

"Don't you remember I told you that whenever you saw that mark over a letter you should give it the long sound?" explained Dora patiently.

"Like the a in 'aig,'" elucidated Tubbs.

"Like the a in 'snake,'" corrected the Schoolmarm.

"Or 'wake,' or 'skate,' or 'break,'" said Smith hopefully.

"Fine!" declared the Schoolmarm.

"I knowed that much myself," said Tubbs enviously.

"If you'll pardon me, Mr. Tubbs," said Dora, in some irritation, "there is no such word as 'knowed.'"

"Why don't you talk grammatical, Tubbs?" Smith demanded, with alacrity.

"I talks what I knows," said Tubbs, going back to his chair.

"Have you forgotten all I told you about adjectives?"

"Adjectives is words describin' things. They's two kinds, comparative and superlative," Smith replied promptly. He added. "Adjectives kind of stuck in my craw."

"Can you give me examples?" Dora felt encouraged.

"You got a horrible pretty hand," Smith replied, without hesitation. "'Horrible pretty' is a adjective describin' your hand."

Dora burst out laughing, and Tubbs, without knowing why, joined in heartily.

"Tubbs," continued Smith, glaring at that person, "has got the horriblest mug I ever seen, and if he opens it and laffs like that at me again, I aims to break his head. 'Horriblest' is a superlative adjective describin' Tubbs's mug."

To Smith's chagrin and Tubbs's delight, Dora explained that "horrible" was a word which could not be used in conjunction with "pretty," and that its superlative was not "horriblest."

Smith buried his head in his hands despondently.

"If I was where I could, I'd get drunk!"

"It's nothing to feel so badly about," said Dora comfortingly. "Let's go back to prepositions. Can you define a preposition?"

Smith screwed up his face and groped for words, but before he found them Tubbs broke in:

"A preposition is what a feller has to sell that nobody wants," he explained glibly. "They's copper prepositions, silver-lead prepositions, and onct I had a oil preposition up in the Swift Current country."

Smith reached inside his coat and pulled out the carved, ivory-handled six-shooter which he wore in a holster under his arm. He laid it on the table beside his grammar, and looked at Tubbs.

"Feller," he said, "I hates to make a gun-play before the Schoolmarm, but if you jump into this here game again, I aims to try a chunk of lead on you."

"If book-learnin' ud ever make me as peevish as it does you," declared Tubbs, rising hastily, "I hopes I never knows nothin'."

Tubbs slammed the door behind him as he went to seek more amiable company in the bunk-house.

Save for the Indian woman, Smith and Dora were now practically alone; for Ling had gone to bed, and Susie was oblivious to everything except fractions. Smith continued to struggle with prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs, but he found it difficult to concentrate his thoughts on them with Dora so close beside him. He knew that his slightest glance, every expression which crossed his face, was observed by the Indian woman; and although he did his utmost not to betray his feelings, he saw the sullen, jealous resentment rising within her.

She read aright the light in his eyes; besides, her intuitions were greater than his powers of concealment. When she could no longer endure the sight of Smith and the Schoolmarm sitting side by side, she laid down her work and slipped out into the star-lit night, closing the door softly behind her.

Smith's judgment told him that he should end the lesson and go after her, but the spell of love was upon him, overwhelming him, holding him fast in delicious thraldom. He had not the strength of will just then to break it.

Dora had been reading "Hiawatha" aloud each evening to Susie, Tubbs, and Smith, so when she finally closed the grammar, she asked if he would like to hear more of the Indian story, as he called it, to which he nodded assent.

Dora read well, with intelligence and sympathy; her trained voice was flexible. Then, too, she loved this greatest of American legends. It appealed to her audience as perhaps no other poem would have done. It was real to them, it was "life," their life in a little different environment and told in a musical rhythm which held them breathless, enchanted.

Dora had reached the story of "The Famine." She knew the refrain by heart, and the wail of old Nokomis was in her voice as she repeated from memory:

"Wahonowin! Wahonowin! Would that I had perished for you! Would that I were dead as you are! Wahonowin! Wahonowin!

"Then they buried Minnehaha; In the snow a grave they made her, In the forest deep and darksome, Underneath the moaning hemlocks; Clothed her in her richest garments, Wrapped her in her robes of ermine, Covered her with snow, like ermine; So they buried Minnehaha."

The pathos of the lines never failed to touch Dora anew. Her voice broke, and, pausing to recover herself, she glanced at Smith. There were tears in his eyes. The brutal chin was quivering like that of a tender-hearted child.

"The man that wrote that was a chief," he said huskily. "It hurts me here—in my neck." He rubbed the contracted muscles of his throat. "I'd feel like that, girl, if you should die."

He repeated softly, and choked:

"All my heart is buried with you, All my thoughts go onward with you!"

The impression which the poem made upon Smith was deep. It was a constant surprise to him also. The thoughts it expressed, the sensations it described, he had believed were entirely original with himself. He had not conceived it possible that any one else could feel toward a woman as he felt toward Dora. Therefore, when the poet put many of his heart-throbs into words, they startled him, as though, somehow, his own heart were photographed and held up to view.

Susie had finished her lesson, and, cramped from sitting, was walking about the living-room to rest herself, while this conversation was taking place. Her glance fell upon a gaudy vase on a shelf, and some thought came to her which made her laugh mischievously. She emptied the contents of the vase into the palm of her hand and, closing the other over it, tiptoed into the dining-room and stood behind Smith.

Dora and he, engrossed in conversation, paid no attention to her. She put her cupped palms close to Smith's ear and, shaking them vigorously, shouted:

"Snakes!"

The result was such as Susie had not anticipated.

With a shriek which was womanish in its shrillness, Smith sprang to his feet, all but upsetting the lamp in his violence. Unmixed horror was written upon his face.

The girl herself shrank back at what she had done; then, holding out several rattles for inspection, she said:

"Looks like you don't care for snakes."

"You—you little——"

Only Susie guessed the unspeakable epithet he meant to use. Her eyes warned him, and, too, he remembered Dora in time. He said instead, with a slight laugh of confusion:

"Snakes scares me, and rat-traps goin' off."

The color had not yet returned to his face when a knock came upon the door.

In response to Susie's call, a tall stranger stepped inside—a stranger wide of shoulder, and with a kind of grim strength in his young face.

From the unnatural brightness of the eyes of Susie and of Smith, and their still tense attitudes, Ralston sensed the fact that something had happened. He returned Smith's unpleasant look with a gaze as steady as his own. Then his eyes fell upon Dora and lingered there.

She had sprung to her feet and was still standing. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes luminous, and the soft lamplight burnishing her brown hair made the moment one of her best. Smith saw the frank admiration in the stranger's look.

"May I stop here to-night?" He addressed Dora.

He had the characteristic Western gravity of manner and expression, the distinguishing definiteness of purpose. Though the quality of his voice, its modulation, bespoke the man of poise and education, the accent was unmistakably of the West.

"There's a bunk-house." It was Smith who answered.

His unuttered epithet still rankled; Susie turned upon him with insulting emphasis:

"And you'd better get out to it!"

"Are you the boss here?" The stranger put the question to Smith with cool politeness.

"What I say goes!"

Smith looked marvellously ugly.

Susie leaned toward him, and her childish face was distorted with anger as she shrieked:

"Not yet, Mister Smith!"

Involuntarily, Dora and the stranger exchanged glances in the awkward silence which followed. Then, more to relieve her embarrassment than for any other reason, Ralston said quietly, "Very well, I will do as this—gentleman suggests," and withdrew.

"Good-night," said Dora, gathering up her books; but neither Smith nor Susie answered.

With both hands deep in his trousers' pockets, Smith was smiling at Susie, with a smile which was little short of devilish; and the girl, throwing a last look of defiance at him, also left the room, violently slamming behind her the door of the bed-chamber occupied by her mother and herself.

For a full minute Smith stood as they had left him—motionless, his eyelids drooping. Rousing himself, he went to the window and looked into the moonlight-flooded world outside. Huddled in a blanket, a squat figure sat on a fallen cottonwood tree.

Smith eyed it, then asked himself contemptuously:

"Ain't that pure Injun?"

Taking his hat, he too stepped into the moonlight.

The woman did not look up at his approach, so he stooped until his cheek touched hers.

"What's the matter, Prairie Flower?"

"My heart is under my feet." Her voice was harsh.

In the tone one uses to a sulky child, he said:

"Come into the house."

"You no like me, white man. You like de white woman."

Smith reached under the blanket and took her hand.

"Why don't you marry de white woman?"

He pressed her hand tightly against his heart.

"Come into the house, Prairie Flower."

Her face relaxed like that of a child when it smiles through its tears. And Smith, in the hour when the first real love of his life was at its zenith, when his heart was so full of it that it seemed well nigh bursting, walked back to the house with the squaw clinging tightly to his fingers.



VIII

THE BUG-HUNTER ELUCIDATES

The same instinct which made Ralston recognize Susie as his friend told him that Smith was his enemy; though, verily, that person who would have construed as evidences of esteem and budding friendship Smith's black looks when Ralston presumed to talk with Dora, even upon the most ordinary topics, would have been dull of comprehension indeed.

While no reason for remaining appeared to be necessary at the MacDonald ranch, Ralston hinted at hunting stray horses; and casually expressed a hope that he might be able to pick up a bunch of good ponies at a reasonable figure—which explanation was entirely satisfactory to all save Smith. The latter frequently voiced the opinion that Ralston lingered solely for the purpose of courting the Schoolmarm, an opinion which the grub-liners agreed was logical, since they too, along with the majority of unmarried males for fifty miles around, cherished a similar ambition.

Dora had long since ceased to consider as extraordinary the extended visits which strangers paid to the ranch; therefore, she saw nothing unusual in the fact that Ralston stayed on.

If furtive-eyed and restless passers-by arrived after dark, slept in the hay near their unsaddled horses, and departed at dawn, assuredly no person at the MacDonald ranch was rude enough to ask reasons for their haste. Its hospitality was as boundless, as free, as the range itself; and if upon leaving any guest had happened to express gratitude for food and shelter, it is doubtful if any incident could more have surprised Susie and her mother, unless, mayhap, it might have been an offer of payment for the same.

Ralston told himself that, since he could remain without comment, the ranch was much better situated for his purpose than Colonel Tolman's home; but the really convincing point in its favor, though one which he refused to recognize as influencing him in the least, was that he was nearer Dora by something like eight miles than he would have been at the Bar C. Then, too, though there was nothing tangible to justify his suspicions, Ralston believed that his work lay close at hand.

Like Colonel Tolman, he had come to think that it was not the Indians who were killing; and the nesters, though a spiritless, shiftless lot, had always been honest enough. But the bunk-house on the MacDonald ranch was often filled with the material of which horse and cattle thieves are made, and Ralston hoped that he might get a clue from some word inadvertently dropped there.

He often thought that he never had seen a more heterogeneous gathering than that which assembled at times around the table. And with Longfellow in the dining-room, ethnological dissertations in one end of the bunk-house, and personal reminiscences and experiences in gun-fights and affairs of the heart in the other end, there was afforded a sufficient variety of mental diversion to suit nearly any taste.

McArthur in the role of desperado seemed preposterous to Ralston; yet he remembered that Ben Reed, a graduate of a theological seminary, who could talk tears into the eyes of an Apache, was the slickest stock thief west of the Mississippi. He was well aware that a pair of mild eyes and gentle, ingenuous manners are many a rogue's most valuable asset, and though the bug-hunter talked frankly of his pilgrimages into the hills, there was always a chance that his pursuit was a pose, his zeal counterfeit.

One evening which was typical of others, Ralston sat on the edge of his bunk, rolling an occasional cigarette and listening with huge enjoyment to the conversation of a group around the sheet-iron stove, of which McArthur was the central figure.

McArthur, riding his hobby enthusiastically, quite forgot the character of his listeners, and laid his theories regarding the interchange of mammalian life between America and Asia during the early Pleistocene period, before Meeteetse Ed, Old Man Rulison, Tubbs, and others, in the same language in which he would have argued moot questions with colleagues engaged in similar research. The language of learning was as natural to McArthur as the vernacular of the West was to Tubbs, and in moments of excitement he lapsed into it as a foreigner does into his native tongue under stress of feeling.

"I maintain," asserted McArthur, with a gesture of emphasis, "that the Paleolithic man of Europe followed the mastodon to North America and here remained."

Meeteetse Ed, whose cheeks were flushed, laid his hot hand upon his forehead and declared plaintively as he blinked at McArthur:

"Pardner, I'm gittin' a headache from tryin' to see what you're talkin' about."

"Air you sayin' anything a-tall," demanded Old Man Rulison, suspiciously, "or air you joshin'?"

"Them's words all right," said Tubbs. "Onct I worked under a section boss over on the Great Northern what talked words like them. He believed we sprung up from tuds and lizards—and the likes o' that. Yes, he did—on the square."

"There are many believers in the theory of evolution," observed McArthur.

"That's it—that's the word. That's what he was." Then, in the tone of one who hands out a clincher, Tubbs demanded: "Look here, Doc, if that's so why ain't all these ponds and cricks around here a-hatchin' out children?"

"Guess that'll hold him for a minute," Meeteetse Ed whispered to his neighbor.

But instead of being covered with confusion by this seemingly unanswerable argument, McArthur gazed at Tubbs in genuine pity.

"Let me consider how I can make it quite clear to you. Perhaps," he said thoughtfully, "I cannot do better than to give you Herbert Spencer's definition. Spencer defines evolution, as nearly as I can remember his exact words, as an integration of matter and concomita, dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite heterogeneity to a definite, incoherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation. Materialistic, agnostic, and theistic evolution——"

Meeteetse Ed fell off his chair in a mock faint and crashed to the floor.

Susie, who had entered, saw McArthur's embarrassment, and refused to join in the shout of laughter, though her eyes danced.

"Don't mind him," she said comfortingly, as she eyed Meeteetse, sprawled on his back with his eyes closed. "He's afraid he'll learn something. He used to be a sheep-herder, and I don't reckon he's got more'n two hundred and fifty words in his whole vocabulary. Why, I'll bet he never heard a word of more'n three syllables before. Get up, Meeteetse. Go out in the fresh air and build yourself a couple of them sheep-herder's monuments. It'll make you feel better."

The prostrate humorist revived. Susie's jeers had the effect of a bucket of ice-water, for he had not been aware that this blot upon his escutcheon—the disgraceful epoch in his life when he had earned honest money herding sheep—was known.

"My enthusiasm runs away with me when I get upon this subject," said McArthur, in blushing apology to the group. "I am sorry that I have bored you."

"No bore a-tall," declared Old Man Rulison magnanimously. "You cut loose whenever you feel like it: we kin stand it as long as you kin."

After McArthur had gone to his pneumatic mattress in the patent tent pitched near the bunk-house, Ralston said to Susie:

"You and the bug-hunter are great friends, aren't you?"

"You bet! We're pardners. Anybody that gets funny with him has got me to fight."

"Oh, it's like that, is it?" Ralston laughed.

"We've got secrets—the bug-hunter and me."

"You're rather young for secrets, Susie."

"Nobody's too young for secrets," she declared. "Haven't you any?"

"Sure," Ralston nodded.

"I like you," Susie whispered impulsively. "Let's swap secrets."

He looked at her and wished he dared. He would have liked to tell her of his mission, to ask her help; for he realized that, if she chose, no one could help him more. Like Smith, he recognized that quality in her they each called "gameness," and even more than Smith he appreciated the commingling of Scotch shrewdness and Indian craft. He believed Susie to be honest; but he had believed many things in the past which time had not demonstrated to be facts. No, the chance was too great to take; for should she prove untrustworthy or indiscreet, his mission would be a failure. So he answered jestingly:

"My secrets are not for little girls to know."

Susie gave him a quick glance.

"Oh, you don't look as though you had that kind," and turned away.

Ralston felt somehow that he had lost an opportunity. He could not rid himself of the feeling the entire evening; and he made up his mind to cultivate Susie's friendship. But it was too late; he had made a mistake not unlike Dora's. Susie had felt herself rebuffed, and, like the Schoolmarm, Ralston had laughed at her with his eyes. It was a great thing—a really sacred thing to Susie—this secret that she had offered him. The telling of it to McArthur had been so delightful an experience that she yearned to repeat it, but now she meant never to tell any one else. Any way, McArthur was her "pardner," and it was enough that he should know. So it came about that afterwards, when Ralston sought her company and endeavored to learn something of the workings of her mind, he found the same barrier of childish reserve which had balked Dora, and no amount of tact or patience seemed able to break it down.

The young deputy sheriff's interest in Dora increased in leaps and bounds. He experienced an odd but delightful agitation when he saw the sleepy white pony plodding down the hill, and the sensation became one easily defined each time that he observed Smith's horse ambling in the road beside hers. The feeling which inspired Tubbs's disgruntled comment, "Smith rides herd on the Schoolmarm like a cow outfit in a bad wolf country," found an echo in Ralston's own breast. Truly, Smith guarded the Schoolmarm with the vigilance of a sheep-dog.

He saw a possible rival in every new-comer, but most of all he feared Ralston; for Smith was not too blinded by prejudice to appreciate the fact that Ralston was handsome in a strong, man's way, younger than himself, and possessed of the advantages of education which enabled him to talk with Dora upon subjects that left him, Smith, dumb. Such times were wormwood and gall to Smith; yet in his heart he never doubted but that he would have Dora and her love in the end. Smith's faith in himself and his ability to get what he really desired was sublime. The chasm between himself and Dora—the difference of birth and education—meant nothing to him. It is doubtful if he recognized it. He would have considered himself a king's equal; indeed, it would have gone hard with royalty, had royalty by any chance ordered Smith to saddle his horse. He judged by the standards of the plains: namely, gameness, skill, resourcefulness; to him, there were no other standards. After all, Dora Marshall was only a woman—the superior of other women, to be sure, but a woman; and if he wanted her—why not?

He would have been amazed, enraged through wounded vanity, if it had been possible for him to see himself from Dora's point of view: a subject for reformation; a test for many trite theories; an erring human to be reclaimed by a woman's benign influence. Naturally, these thoughts had not suggested themselves to Smith.

Ralston looked forward eagerly to the evening meal, since it was almost the only time at which he could exchange a word with Dora. Breakfast was a hurried affair, while both she and Susie were absent from the midday dinner. The shy, fluttering glances which he occasionally surprised from her, the look of mutual appreciation which sometimes passed between them at a quaint bit of philosophy or naive remark, started his pulses dancing and set the whole world singing a wordless song of joy.

Somehow, eating seemed a vulgar function in the Schoolmarm's presence, and he wished with all his heart that the abominable grammar lessons which filled her evenings might some time end; in which case he would be able to converse with her when not engaged in rushing bread and meat to and fro.

His most carefully laid plans to obtain a few minutes alone with her were invariably thwarted by Smith. And from the heights to which he had been transported by some more than passing friendly glance at the table, he was dragged each evening to the depths by the sight of Dora and Smith with their heads together over that accursed grammar.

He commenced to feel a distaste for his bunk-house associates, and took to wandering out of doors, pausing most frequently in his meanderings just outside the circle of light thrown through the window by the dining-room lamp. Dora's guilelessness in believing that Smith's interest in his lessons was due to a desire for knowledge did not make the tableau less tantalizing to Ralston, but it would have been against every tenet in his code to suggest to Dora that Smith was not the misguided diamond-in-the-rough which she believed him.

Smith, on the contrary, had no such scruples. He lost no opportunity to sneer at Ralston. When he discovered Dora wearing one of the first flowers of spring, which Ralston had brought her, Smith said darkly:

"That fresh guy is a dead ringer for a feller that quit his wife and five kids in Livingston and run off with a biscuit-shooter."

Dora laughed aloud. The clean-cut and youthful Ralston deserting a wife and five children for a "biscuit-shooter" was not a convincing picture. That she did not receive his insinuation seriously but added fuel to the unreasoning jealousy beginning to flame in Smith's breast.

Yet Smith treated Ralston with a consideration which was surprising in view of the wanton insults he frequently inflicted upon those whom he disliked. Susie guessed the reason for his superficial courtesy, and Ralston, perhaps, suspected it also. In his heart, Smith was afraid. First and always, he was a judge of men—rather, of certain qualities in men. He knew that should he give intentional offense to Ralston, he would be obliged either to retract or to back up his insult with a gun. Ralston would be the last man to accept an affront with meekness.

Smith did not wish affairs to reach this crisis. He did not want to force an issue until he had demonstrated to his own satisfaction that he was the better man of the two with words or fists or weapons. But once he found the flaw in Ralston's armor, he would speedily become the aggressor. Such were Smith's tactics. He was reckless with caution; daring when it was safe.

The role he was playing gave him no concern. Though the Indian woman's spells of sullenness irritated him, he conciliated her with endearing words, caresses, and the promise of a speedy marriage. He appeased her jealousy of Dora by telling her that he studied the foolish book-words only that he might the better work for her interests; that he was fitting himself to cope with the shrewd cattlemen with whom there were constant dealings, and that when they were married, the Schoolmarm should live elsewhere. Like others of her sex, regardless of race or color, the Indian woman believed because she wanted to believe.

Just where his actions were leading him, Smith did not stop to consider. He had no fear of results. With an overweening confidence arising from past successes, he believed that matters would adjust themselves as they always had. Smith wanted a home, and the MacDonald cattle, horses, and hay; but more than any of them he wanted Dora Marshall. How he was going to obtain them all was not then clear to him, but that when the time came he could make a way, he never for a moment doubted.

Smith's confidence in himself was supreme. If he could have expressed his belief in words, he might have said that he could control Destiny, shape events and his own life as he liked. He had been shot at, pursued by posses, all but lynched upon an occasion, and always he had escaped in some unlooked-for manner little short of miraculous. As a result, he had come to cherish a superstitious belief that he bore a charmed life, that no real harm could come to him. So he courted each woman according to her nature as he read it, and waited blindly for success.



IX

SPEAKING OF GRASSHOPPERS——

It was Saturday, and, there being no school, both Susie and Dora were at home. Ralston was considering in which direction he should ride that day when Susie came to him and after saying to Smith with elaborate politeness, "Excuse me, Mr. Smith, for whispering, but I have something very private and confidential to say to Mr. Ralston," she shielded her mouth with her hand and said:

"Teacher and I are going fishing. We are going up on the side-hill now to catch grasshoppers for bait, and I thought maybe you'd like to help, and to fish with us this afternoon." She tittered in his ear.

Susie's action conveyed two things to Ralston's mind: first, that he had not been so clever as he had supposed in dissembling his feelings; and second, that Susie, recognizing them, was disposed to render him friendly aid.

Smith noted Ralston's brightening eye with suspicion, jumping to the very natural conclusion that only some pleasing information concerning the Schoolmarm would account for it. When, a few minutes later, he saw the three starting away together, each with a tin or pasteboard box, he realized that his surmise was correct.

Glowering, Smith walked restlessly about the house, ignoring the Indian woman's inquiring, wistful eyes, cursing to himself as he wandered through the corrals and stables, hating with a personal hatred everything which belonged to Ralston: his gentle-eyed brown mare; his expensive Navajo saddle-blanket; his single-rigged saddle; his bridle with the wide cheek pieces and the hand-forged bit. It would have been a satisfaction to destroy them all. He hated particularly the little brown mare which Ralston brushed with such care each morning. Smith's mood was black indeed.

But Ralston, as he walked between Dora and Susie to the side-hill where the first grasshoppers of spring were always found, felt at peace with all the world—even Smith—and it was in his heart to hug the elfish half-breed child as she skipped beside him. Dora's frequent, bubbling laughter made him thrill; he longed to shout aloud like a schoolboy given an unexpected holiday.

Each time that his eyes sought Dora's, shadowed by the wide brim of her hat, her eyelids drooped, slowly, reluctantly, as though they fell against her will, while the color came and went under her clear skin in a fashion which filled him with delighted wonder.

It may be said that there are few things in life so absorbing as catching grasshoppers. While Ralston previously had recognized this fact, he never had supposed that it contained any element of pleasure akin to the delights of Paradise. To chase grasshoppers by oneself is one thing; to pursue them in the company of a fascinating schoolmarm is another; and when one has in his mind the thought that ultimately he and the schoolmarm may chance to fall upon the same grasshopper, the chase becomes a sport for the gods to envy.

Anent grasshoppers. While the first grasshopper of early spring has not the devilish agility of his August descendant, he is sufficiently alert to make his capture no mean feat. It must be borne in mind that the grasshopper is not a fool, and that he appears to see best from the rear. Though he remains motionless while the enemy is slipping stealthily upon him, it by no means follows that he is not aware of said enemy's approach. The grasshopper has a more highly developed sense of humor than any other known insect. It is an established fact that after a person has fallen upon his face and clawed at the earth where the grasshopper was but is not, the grasshopper will be seen distinctly to laugh from his coign of vantage beyond reach.

Furthermore, it is quite impossible to fathom the mind of the grasshopper, his intentions or habits; particularly those of the small, gray-pink variety. He is as erratic in his flight as a clay pigeon, though it is tolerably safe to assume that he will not jump backward. He may not jump at all, but, with a deceptive movement, merely sidle under a sage-leaf. Where questions concerning his personal safety are concerned, he shows rare judgment, appearing to recognize exactly the psychological moment in which to fly, jump, or sit still.

No sluggard, be it known, can hope to catch grasshoppers with any degree of success. It requires an individual nimble of mind and body, whose nerves are keyed to a tension, who is dominated by a mood which refuses to recognize the perils of snakes, cactus, and prairie-dog holes; forgetful of self and dignity, inured to ridicule. Such a one is justified in making the attempt.

The large, brownish-black, grandfatherly-looking grasshopper is the most easily captured, though not so satisfactory for bait as the pea-green or the gray-pink. It was to the first variety that Dora and Ralston devoted themselves, while Susie followed the smaller and more sprightly around the hill till she was out of sight.

Ralston became aware that no matter in which direction the grasshopper he had marked for his own took him, singularly enough he always ended in pursuit of Dora's. As a matter of fact, her grasshopper looked so much more desirable than his, that he could not well do otherwise than abandon the pursuit of his own for hers.

Her low "Oh, thank you so much!" was so heartfelt and sincere when he pushed the insect through the slit in her pasteboard box that he truly believed he would have run one all the way to the Middle Fork of Powder River only to hear her say it again. And then her womanly aversion to inflicting pain, her appealing femininity when she brought a bulky-bodied, tobacco-chewing grasshopper for him to pinch its head into insensibility! He liked this best of all, for, of necessity, their fingers touched in the exchange, and he wondered a little at his strength of will in refraining from catching her hand in his and refusing to let go.

Finally a grasshopper of abnormal size went up with a whir. Big he was, in comparison with his kind, as the monster steer in the side-show, the Cardiff giant, or Jumbo the mammoth.

"Oh!" cried Dora; "we must have him!" and they ran side by side in wild, determined pursuit.

The insect sailed far and fast, but they could not lose sight of him, for he was like an aeroplane in flight, and when in an ill-advised moment he lit to gather himself, they fell upon him tooth and nail—to use a phrase. Dora's hand closed over the grasshopper, and Ralston's closed over Dora's, holding it tight in one confused moment of delicious, tongue-tied silence.

Her shoulder touched his, her hair brushed his cheek. He wished that they might go on holding down that grasshopper until the end of time. She was panting with the exertion, her nose was moist like a baby's when it sleeps, and he noticed in a swift, sidelong glance that the pupils of her eyes all but covered the iris.

"He—he's wiggling!" she said tremulously.

"Is he?" Ralston asked fatuously, at a loss for words, but making no move to lift his hand.

"And there's a cactus in my finger."

"Let me see it." Immediately his face was full of deep concern.

He held her fingers, turning the small pink palm upward.

"We must get it out," he declared firmly. "They poison some people."

He wondered if it was imagination, or did her hand tremble a little in his? His relief was not unmixed with disappointment when the cactus spine came out easily.

"They hurt—those needles." He continued to regard the tiny puncture with unabated interest.

"Tra! la! la!" sang Susie from the brow of the hill. "Old Smith is comin'."

Ralston dropped Dora's hand, and they both reddened, each wondering how long Susie had been doing picket duty.

"Out for your failin' health, Mister Smith?" inquired Susie, with solicitude.

"I'm huntin' horses, and hopin' to pick up a bunch of ponies cheap," he replied with ugly significance as he rode by.

And while the soft light faded from Ralston's eyes, the color leaped to his face; unconsciously his fists clenched as he looked after Smith's vanishing back. It was the latter's first overt act of hostility; Ralston knew, and perhaps Smith intended it so, that the clash between them must now come soon.



X

MOTHER LOVE AND SAVAGE PASSION CONFLICT

It was Sunday, a day later, when Susie came into the living-room and noticed her mother sewing muskrat around the top of a moccasin. It was a man's moccasin. The woman had made no men's moccasins since her husband's death. The sight chilled the girl.

"Mother," she asked abruptly, "what do you let that hold-up hang around here for?"

"Who you mean?" the woman asked quickly.

"That Smith!" Susie spat out the word like something offensive.

The Indian woman avoided the girl's eyes.

"I like him," she answered.

"Mother!"

"Maybe he stay all time." Her tone was stubborn, as though she expected and was prepared to resist an attack.

"You don't—you can't—mean it!". Susie's thin face flushed scarlet with shame.

"Sa-ah," the woman nodded, "I mean it;" and Susie, staring at her in a kind of terror, saw that she did.

"Oh, Mother! Mother!" she cried passionately, dropping on the floor at the woman's feet and clasping her arms convulsively about the Indian woman's knees. "Don't—don't say that! We've always been a little different from the rest. We've always held our heads up. People like us and respect us—both Injuns and white. We've never been talked about—you and me—and now you are going to spoil it all!"

"I get tied up to him right," defended the woman sullenly.

"Oh, Mother!" wailed the child.

"We need good white man to run de ranch."

"But Smith—do you think he's good? Good! Is a rattlesnake good? Can't you see what he is, Mother?—you who are smarter than me in seeing through people? He's mean—onery to the marrow—and some day sure—sure—he'll turn, and strike his fangs into you."

"He no onery," the woman replied, in something like anger.

"It's his nature," Susie went on, without heeding her. "He can't help it. All his thoughts and talk and schemes are about something crooked. Can't you tell by the things he lets drop that he ought to be in the 'pen'? He's treacherous, ungrateful, a born thief. I saw him take Tubbs's halter, and there was the regular thief look in his eyes when he cut his own name on it. I saw him kick a dog, and he kicked it like a brute. He kicked it in the ribs with his toe. Men—decent men—kick a dog with the side of their foot. I saw his horse fall with him, and he held it down and beat it on the neck with a chain, where it wouldn't show. He'd hold up a bank or rob a woman; he'd kill a man or a prairie-dog, and think no more of the one than the other.

"I tell you, Mother, as sure as I sit here on the floor at your feet, begging you, he's going to bring us trouble; he's going to deal us misery! I feel it! I know it!"

"You no like de white man."

"That's right; I don't like the white man. He wants a good place to stay; he wants your horses and cattle and hay; and—he wants the Schoolmarm. He's making a fool of you, Mother."

"He no make fool of me," she answered complacently. "He make fool of de white woman, maybe."

"Look out of the window and see for yourself."

They arose together, and the girl pointed to Smith and Dora, seated side by side on the cottonwood log.

"Did he ever look at you like that, Mother?"

"He make fool of de white woman," she reiterated stubbornly, but her face clouded.

"He makes a fool of himself, but not of her," declared Susie. "He's crazy about her—locoed. Everybody sees it except her. Believe me, Mother, listen to Susie just this once."

"He like me. I stick to him;" but she went back to her bench. The unfamiliar softness of Smith's face hurt her.

The tears filled Susie's eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her mother's passion for this hateful stranger was stronger than her mother-love, that silent, undemonstrative love in which Susie had believed as she believed that the sun would rise each morning over there in the Bad Lands, to warm her when she was cold. She buried her face in her mother's lap and sobbed aloud.

The woman had not seen Susie cry since she was a tiny child, save when her father and White Antelope died, and the numbed maternal instinct stirred in her breast. She laid her dark, ringed fingers upon Susie's hair and stroked it gently.

"Don't cry," she said slowly. "If he make fool of me, if he lie when he say he tie up to me right, if he like de white woman better den me, I kill him. I kill him, Susie." She pointed to a bunch of roots and short dried stalks which hung from the rafters in one corner of the room. "See—that is the love-charm of the Sioux. It was gifted to me by Little Coyote's woman—a Mandan. It bring de love, and too much—it kill. If he make fool of me, if he not like me better den de white woman, I give him de love-charm of de Sioux. I fix him! I fix him right!"

Out on the cottonwood log Smith and the Schoolmarm had been speaking of many things; for the man could talk fluently in his peculiar vernacular, upon any subject which interested him or with which he was familiar.

The best of his nature, whatever of good there was in him, was uppermost when with Dora. He really believed at such times that he was what she thought him, and he condemned the shortcomings of others like one speaking from the lofty pinnacle of unimpeachable virtue.

In her presence, new ambitions, new desires, awakened, and sentiments which he never had suspected he possessed revealed themselves. He was happy in being near her; content when he felt the touch of her loose cape on his arm.

It never before had occurred to Smith that the world through which he had gone his tumultuous way was a beautiful place, or that there was joy in the simple fact of being strongly alive. When the sage-brush commenced to turn green and the many brilliant flowers of the desert bloomed, when the air was stimulating like wine and fragrant with the scents of spring, it had meant little to Smith beyond the facts that horse-feed would soon be plentiful and that he could lay aside his Mackinaw coat. The mountains suggested nothing but that they held big game and were awkward places to get through on horseback, while the deserts brought no thoughts save of thirst and loneliness and choking alkali dust. Upon a time a stranger had mentioned the scenery, and Smith had replied ironically that there was plenty of it and for him to help himself!

But this spring was different—so different that he asked himself wonderingly if other springs had been like it; and to-day, as he sat in the sunshine and looked about him, he saw for the first time grandeur in the saw-toothed, snow-covered peaks outlined against the dazzling blue of the western sky. For the first time he saw the awing vastness of the desert, and the soft pastel shades which made their desolation beautiful. He breathed deep of the odorous air and stared about him like a blind man who suddenly sees.

During a silence, Smith looked at Dora with his curiously intent gaze; his characteristic stare which held nothing of impertinence—only interest, intense, absorbing interest—and as he looked a thought came to him, a thought so unexpected, so startling, that he blinked as if some one had struck him in the face. It sent a bright red rushing over him, coloring his neck, his ears, his white, broad forehead.

He thought of her as the mother of children—his children—bearing his name, miniatures of himself and of her. He never had thought of this before. He never had met a woman who inspired in him any such desire. He followed the thought further. What if he should have a permanent home—a ranch that belonged to him exclusively—"Smith's Ranch"—where there were white curtains at the windows, and little ones who came tumbling through the door to greet him when he rode into the yard? A place where people came to visit, people who reckoned him a person of consequence because he stood for something. He must have seen a place like it somewhere, the picture was so vivid in his mind.

The thought of living like others never before had entered into the scheme of his calculations. Since the time when he had "quit the flat" back in the country where they slept between sheets, the world had been lined up against him in its own defense. Life had been a constant game of hare and hounds, with the pack frequently close at his heels. He had been ever on the move, both for reasons of safety and as a matter of taste. His point of view was the abnormal one of the professional law-breaker: the world was his legitimate prey; the business of his life was to do as he pleased and keep his liberty; to outwit sheriffs and make a clean get-away. To be known among his kind as "game" and "slick," was the only distinction he craved. His chiefest ambition had been to live up to his title of "Bad Man." In this he had found glory which satisfied him.

"Well," Dora asked at last, smiling up at him, "what is it?"

Smith hesitated; then he burst out:

"Girl, do I stack up different to you nor anybody else? Have you any feelin' for me at all?"

"Why, I think I've shown my interest in trying to teach you," she replied, a little abashed by his vehemence.

"What do you want to teach me for?" he demanded.

"Because," Dora declared, "you have possibilities."

"Why don't you teach Meeteetse Ed and Tubbs?"

Dora laughed aloud.

"Candidly, I think it would be a waste of time. They could never hope to be much more than we see them here. And they are content as they are."

"So was I, girl, until our trails crossed. I could ride without grub all day, and sing. I could sleep on a saddle-blanket like a tired pup, with only a rock for a wind-break and my saddle for a pillow. Now I can't sleep in a bed. It's horrible—this mixed up feelin'—half the time wantin' to holler and laugh and the other half wantin' to cry."

"I don't see why you should feel like that," said Dora gravely. "You are getting along. It's slow, but you're learning."

"Oh, yes, I'm learnin'," Smith answered grimly—"fast."

He saw her wondering look and went on fiercely.

"Girl, don't you see what I mean? Don't you sabe? My feelin' for you is more nor friendship. I can't tell you how I feel. It's nothin' I ever had before, but I've heard of it a-plenty. It's love—that's what it is! I've seen it, too, a-plenty.

"There's two things in the world a feller'll go through hell for—just two: love and gold. I don't mean money, but gold—the pure stuff. They'll waller through snow-drifts, they'll swim rivers with the ice runnin', they'll crawl through canyons and over trails on their hands and knees, they'll starve and they'll freeze, they'll work till the blood runs from their blistered hands, they'll kill their horses and their pardners, for gold! And they'll do it for love. Yes, I've seen it a-plenty, me—Smith.

"Things I've done, I've done, and they don't worry me none," he went on, "but lately I've thought of Dutch Joe. I worked him over for singin' a love-song, and I wisht I hadn't. He'd held up a stage, and was cached in my camp till things simmered down. It was lonesome, and I'd want to talk; but he'd sit back in the dark, away from the camp-fire, and sing to himself about 'ridin' to Annie.' How the miles wasn't long or the trail rough if only he was 'ridin' to Annie.' Sittin' back there in the brush, he sounded like a sick coyote a-hollerin'. It hadn't no tune, and I thought it was the damnedest fool song I ever heard. After he'd sung it more'n five hundred times, I hit him on the head with a six-shooter, and we mixed. He quit singin', but he held that gretch against me as long as he lived.

"I thought it was because he was Dutch, but it wasn't. 'Twas love. Why, girl, I'd ride as long as my horse could stand up under me, and then I'd hoof it, just to hear you say, 'Smith, do you think it will rain?'"

"Oh, I never thought of this!" cried Dora, as Smith paused.

Her face was full of distress, and her hands lay tightly clenched in her lap.

"Do you mean I haven't any show—no show at all?" The color fading from Smith's face left it a peculiar yellow.

"It never occurred to me that you would misunderstand, or think anything but that I wanted to help you. I thought that you wanted to learn so that you would have a better chance in life."

"Did you—honest? Are you as innocent as that, girl?" he asked in savage scepticism. "Did you believe that I'd set and study them damned verbs just so I'd have a better chanct in life?"

"You said so."

"Oh, yes, maybe I said so."

"Surely, surely, you don't think I would intentionally mislead you?"

"When a woman wants a man to dress or act or talk different, she generally cares some."

"And I do 'care some'!" Dora cried impulsively. "I believe that you are not making the best of yourself, of your life; that you are better than your surroundings; and because I do believe in you, I want to help you. Don't you understand?"

Her explanation was not convincing to Smith.

"Is it because I don't talk grammar, and you think you'd have to live in a log-house and hang out your own wash?"

Dora considered.

"Even if I cared for you, those things would have weight," she answered truthfully. "I am content out here now, and like it because it is novel and I know it is temporary; but if I were asked to live here always, as you suggest, in a log-house and hang out my own wash, I should have to care a great deal."

"It's because I haven't a stake, then," he said bitterly.

"No, not because you haven't a stake. I merely say that extreme poverty would be an objection."

"But if I should get the dinero—me, Smith—plenty of it? Tell me," he demanded fiercely—"it's the time to talk now—is there any one else? It's me for the devil straight if you throw me! You'd better take this gun here, plant it on my heart, and pull the trigger. Because if I live—I'm talkin' straight—what I have done will be just a kid's play to what I'll do, if I ever cut loose for fair. Don't throw me, girl! Give me a show—if there ain't any one else! If there is, I'm quittin' the flat to-day."

Dora was silent, panic-stricken with the responsibility which he seemed to have thrust upon her, almost terrified by the thought that he was leaving his future in her hands—a malleable object, to be shaped according to her will for good or evil.

A certain self-contained, spectacled youth, whose weekly letters arrived with regularity, rose before her mental vision, and as quickly vanished, leaving in his stead a man of a different type, a man at once unyielding and gentle, both shy and bold; a man who seemed to typify in himself the faults and virtues of the raw but vigorous West. Though she hesitated, she replied:

"No, there is no one."

And Ralston, fording the stream, lifted his eyes midway and saw Smith raise Dora's hand to his lips.



XI

THE BEST HORSE

There was a subtle change in Ralston, which Dora was quick to feel. He was deferential, as always, and as eager to please; but he no longer sought her company, and she missed the quick exchange of sympathetic glances at the table. It seemed to her, also, that the grimness in his face was accentuated of late. She found herself crying one night, and called it homesickness, yet the small items of news contained in the latest letter from the spectacled youth had irritated her, and she had realized that she no longer regarded church fairs, choir practice, and oyster suppers as "events."

She wondered how she had offended Ralston, if at all; or was it that he thought her bold, a brazen creature, because she had let him keep her hand so long upon the memorable occasion of the grasshopper hunt? She blushed in the darkness at the thought, and the tears slipped down her cheeks again as she decided that this must be so, since there could be no other explanation. Before she finally slept, she had fully made up her mind that she would show him by added reserve and dignity of manner that she was not the forward hoyden he undoubtedly believed her. And as a result of this midnight decision, the Schoolmarm's "Good-morning, Mr. Ralston," chilled that person like a draught from cold storage.

Susie noticed the absence of their former cordiality toward each other; and the obvious lack of warmth filled Smith with keen satisfaction. He had no notion of its cause; it was sufficient that it was so.

As their conversation daily became more forced, the estrangement more marked, Ralston's wretchedness increased in proportion. He brooded miserably over the scene he had witnessed; troubled, aside from his own interest in Dora, that she should be misled by a man of Smith's moral calibre. While he had delighted in her unworldly, childlike belief in people and things, in this instance he deeply regretted it.

Ralston understood perfectly the part which Smith desired to play in her eyes. He had heard through Dora the stories Smith had told her of wild adventures in which he figured to advantage, of reckless deeds which he hinted would be impossible since falling under her influence. He posed as a brand snatched from the burning, and conveyed the impression that his salvation was a duty which had fallen in her path for her to perform. That she applied herself to the task of elevating Smith with such combined patience and ardor, was the grievance of which Ralston had most to complain.

In his darker moments he told himself that she must have a liking for the man far stronger than he had believed, to have permitted the liberty which he had witnessed, one which, coming from Smith, seemed little short of sacrilege. His unhappiness was not lessened by the instances he recalled where women had married beneath them through this mistaken sense of duty, pity, or less commendable emotions.

Upon one thing he was determined, and that was never again to force his attentions upon her, to take advantage of her helplessness as he had when he had held her hand so tightly and, as he now believed, against her wishes. Although she did not show it, she must have thought him a bumpkin, an oaf, an underbred cur. He groaned as he ransacked his vocabulary for fitting words.

If only something would arise to reveal Smith's character to her in its true light! But this was too much to hope. In his depression, it seemed to Ralston that the sun would never shine for him again, that failure was written on him like an I. D. brand, that sorrow everlasting would eat and sleep with him. In this mood, after a brief exchange of breakfast civilities, far worse than none, he walked slowly to the corral to saddle, cursing Smith for the braggart he knew he was and for the scoundrel he believed him to be.

Smith, it seemed, was riding that morning also, for when Ralston led his brown mare saddled and bridled from the stable, Smith was tightening the cinch on his long-legged gray—the horse he had taken from the Englishman. The Schoolmarm, in her riding clothes, ran down the trail, calling impartially:

"Will one of you please get my horse for me? He broke loose last night and is over there in the pasture."

For reply, both Ralston and Smith swung into their saddles.

"I aims to get that horse. There's no call for you to go, feller."

Above all else, it was odious to Ralston to be addressed by Smith "feller."

"If you happen to get to him first," he answered curtly. "And I'd like to suggest that my name is Ralston."

By way of answer, Smith dug the spurs cruelly into the thin-skinned blooded gray. Ralston loosened the reins on his brown mare, and it was a run from the jump.

Each realized that the inevitable clash had come, that no pretense of friendliness would longer be possible between them, that from now on they would be avowed enemies. As for Ralston, he was glad that the crisis had arrived; glad of anything which would divert him for ever so short a time from his own bitter thoughts; glad of the test which he could meet in the open, like a man.

The corral gate was open, and this led into a lane something like three-quarters of a mile in length, at the end of which was another gate, opening into the pasture where the runaway pony had crawled through the loose wire fence.

The brown mare had responded to Ralston's signal like the loyal, honest little brute she was. The gravel flew behind them, and the rat-a-tat-tat of the horses' hoofs on the hard road was like the roll of a drum. They were running neck and neck, but Ralston had little fear of the result, unless the gray had phenomenal speed.

Ralston knew that whoever reached the gate first must open it. If he could get far enough in the lead, he could afford to do so; if not, he meant to "pull" his horse and leave it to Smith. The real race would be from the gate to the pony.

The gray horse could run—his build showed that, and his stride bore out his appearance. Yet Ralston felt no uneasiness, for the mare had still several links of speed to let out—"and then some," as he phrased it. The pace was furious even to the gate; they ran neck and neck, like a team, and the face of each rider was set in lines of determination. Ralston quickly saw that in the short stretch he would be unable to get sufficiently in the lead to open the gate in safety. So he pulled his horse a little, wondering if Smith would do the same. But he did not. Instead, he spurred viciously, and, to Ralston's amazement, he went at the gate hard. Lifting the gray horse's head, he went over and on without a break!

It was a chance, but Smith had taken it! He never had tried the horse, but it was from the English ranch, where he knew they were bred and trained to jump. His mocking laugh floated back to Ralston while he tore at the fastenings of the gate and hurled it from him.

Ralston measured the gap between them and his heart sank. It looked hopeless. The only thing in his favor was that it was a long run, and the gray might not have the wind or the endurance. The little mare stood still, her nose out, her soft eyes shining. As he lifted the reins, he patted her neck and cried, breathing hard:

"Molly, old girl, if you win, it's oats and a rest all your life!"

He could have sworn the mare shared his humiliation.

The saddle-leathers creaked beneath him at the leap she gave. She lay down to her work like a hound, running low, her neck outstretched, her tail lying out on the breeze. Game, graceful, reaching out with her slim legs and tiny hoofs, she ate up the distance between herself and the gray in a way that made even Ralston gasp. And still she gained—and gained! Her muscles seemed like steel springs, and the unfaltering courage in her brave heart made Ralston choke with pride and tenderness and gratitude. Even if she lost, the race she was making was something to remember always. But she was gaining inch by inch. The sage-brush and cactus swam under her feet. When Ralston thought she had done her best, given all that was in her, she did a little more.

Smith knew, too, that she was gaining, though he would not turn his head to look. When her nose was at his horse's rump, he had it in his heart to turn and shoot her as she ran. She crept up and up, and both Smith and Ralston knew that the straining, pounding gray had done its best. The work was too rough for its feet. There was too much thoroughbred in it for lava-rock and sage-brush hummocks. Blind rage consumed Smith as he felt the increasing effort of each stride and knew that it was going "dead" under him. He used his spurs with savage brutality, but the brown mare's breath was coming hot on his leg. The gray horse stumbled; its breath came and went in sobs. Now they were neck and neck again. Then it was over, the little brown mare swept by, and Ralston's rope, cutting the air, dropped about the neck of the insignificant, white "digger" that had caused it all.

"I guess you're ridin' the best horse to-day," said Smith, as he dropped from the saddle to retie his latigo.

He gave the words a peculiar emphasis and inflection which made the other man look at him.

"Molly and I have a prejudice against taking dust," Ralston answered quietly.

"It happens frequent that a feller has to get over his prejudices out in this country."

"That depends a little upon the fellow;" and he turned Molly's head toward the ranch, with the pony in tow.

Smith said nothing more, but rode off across the hills with all the evil in his nature showing in his lowering countenance.

Dora's eyes were brilliant as they always were under excitement; and when Ralston dismounted she stroked Molly's nose, saying in a voice which was more natural than it had been for days when addressing him, "It was splendid! She is splendid!" and he glowed, feeling that perhaps he was included a little in her praise.

"You want to watch out now," said Susie soberly. "Smith'll never rest till he's 'hunks.'"

Ralston thought the Schoolmarm hesitated, as if she were waiting for him to join them, or were going to ask him to do so; but she did not, and, although it was some satisfaction to feel that he had drawn first blood, he felt his despondency returning as soon as Dora and Susie had ridden away.

He walked aimlessly about, waiting for Molly to cool a bit before he let her drink preparatory to starting on his tiresome ride over the range. Both he and the Colonel believed that the thieves would soon grow bolder, and his strongest hope lay in coming upon them at work. He had noted that there were no fresh hides among those which hung on the fence, and he sauntered down to have another look at the old ones. With his foot he turned over something which lay close against a fence-post, half concealed in a sage-brush. Stooping, he unrolled it and shook it out; then he whistled softly. It was a fresh hide with the brand cut out!

Ralston nodded his head in mingled satisfaction and regret. So the thief was working from the MacDonald ranch! Did the Indian woman know, he wondered. Was it possible that Susie was in ignorance? With all his heart, he hoped she was. He walked leisurely to the house and leaned against the jamb of the kitchen door.

"Have the makings, Ling?" He passed his tobacco-sack and paper to the cook.

"Sure!" said Ling jauntily. "I like 'em cigilette."

And as they smoked fraternally together, they talked of food and its preparation—subjects from which Ling's thoughts seldom wandered far. When the advantages of soda and sour milk over baking powder were thoroughly exhausted as a topic, Ralston asked casually:

"Who killed your last beef, Ling? It's hard to beat."

"Yellow Bird," he replied. "Him good butcher."

"Yes," Ralston agreed; "I should say that Yellow Bird was an uncommonly good butcher."

So, after all, it was the Indians who were killing. Ralston sauntered on to the bunk-house to think it over.

"Tubbs," McArthur was saying, as he eyed that person with an interest which he seldom bestowed upon his hireling, "you really have a most remarkable skull."

Tubbs, visibly flattered, smirked.

"It's claimed that it's double by people what have tried to work me over. Onct I crawled in a winder and et up a batch of 'son-of-a-gun-in-a-sack' that the feller who lived there had jest made. He come in upon me suddent, and the way he hammered me over the head with the stove-lifter didn't trouble him, but," declared Tubbs proudly, "he never even knocked me to my knees."

"It is of the type of dolichocephalic," mused McArthur.

"A barber told me that same thing the last time I had a hair-cut," observed Tubbs blandly. "'Tubbs,' says he, 'you ought to have a massaj every week, and lay the b'ar-ile on a-plenty.'"

"It is remarkably suggestive of the skulls found in the ancient paraderos of Patagonia. Very similar in contour—very similar."

"There's no Irish in me," Tubbs declared with a touch of resentment. "I'm pure mungrel—English and Dutch."

"It is an extremely curious skull—most peculiar." He felt of Tubbs's head with growing interest. "This bump behind the ear, if the system of phrenology has any value, would indicate unusual pugnacity."

"That's where a mule kicked me and put his laig out of joint," said Tubbs humorously.

"Ah, that renders the skull pathological; but, even so, it is an interesting skull to an anthropologist—a really valuable skull, it would be to me, illustrating as it does certain features in dispute, for which I have stubbornly contended in controversies with the Preparator of Anthropology at the Ecole des Haute Etudes in Paris."

"Why don't you sell it to him, Tubbs?" suggested Ralston, who had listened in unfeigned amusement.

Tubbs, startled, clasped both hands over the top of his head and backed off.

"Why, I need it myself."

"Certainly—we understand that; but supposing you were to die—supposing something happened to you, as is liable to happen out here—you wouldn't care what became of your skull, once you were good and dead. If it were sold, you'd be just that much in, besides making an invaluable contribution to science," Ralston urged persuasively.

"It not infrequently happens that paupers, and prisoners sentenced to suffer capital punishment, dispose of their bodies for anatomical purposes, for which they are paid in advance. As a matter of fact, Tubbs," declared McArthur earnestly, "my superficial examination of your head has so impressed me that upon the chance of some day adding it to my collection I am willing to offer you a reasonable sum for it."

"It's on bi-products that the money is made," declared Ralston soberly, "and I advise you not to let this chance pass. You can raise money on the rest of your anatomy any time; but selling your head separately like this—don't miss it, Tubbs!"

"Don't I git the money till you git my head?" Tubbs demanded suspiciously.

"I could make a first payment to you, and the remainder could be paid to your heirs."

"My heirs! Say, all that I'll ever git for my head wouldn't be a smell amongst my heirs. A round-up of my heirs would take in the hull of North Dakoty. Not aimin' to brag, I got mavericks runnin' on that range what must be twelve-year-old."

McArthur looked the disgust he felt at Tubbs's ribald humor.

"Your jests are exceedingly distasteful to me, Tubbs."

"That ain't no jest. Onct I——"

"Let's get down to business," interrupted Ralston. "What do you consider your skull worth?"

"It's wuth considerable to me. I don't know as I'm so turrible anxious to sell. I can eat with it, and it gits me around." Tubbs's tone took on the assumed indifference of an astute horse trader. "I've always held my head high, as you might say, and it looks to me like it ought to bring a hunderd dollars in the open market. No, I couldn't think of lettin' it go for less than a hundred—cash."

McArthur considered.

"If you will agree to my conditions, I will give you my check for one hundred dollars," he said at last.

"That sounds reasonable," Tubbs assented.

"I should want you to carry constantly upon your person my name, address, and written instructions as to the care of and disposal of your skull, in the event of your demise. I shall also insist that you do not voluntarily place your head where your skull may be injured; because, as you can readily see, if it were badly crushed, it would be worthless for my purpose, or that of the scientific body to whom I intend to bequeath my interest in it, should I die before yourself."

"I wasn't aimin' to lay it in a vise," remarked Tubbs.

While McArthur was drawing up the agreement between them, Tubbs's face brightened with a unique thought.

"Say," he suggested, "why don't you leave word in them instructions for me to be mounted? I know a taxidermist over there near the Yellowstone Park what can put up a b'ar or a timber wolf so natural you wouldn't know 'twas dead. Wouldn't it be kinda nice to see me settin' around the house with my teeth showin' and an ear of corn in my mouth? I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll sell you my hull hide for a hundred more. It might cost two dollars to have me tanned, and with a nice felt linin' you could have a good rug out of me for a very little money."

McArthur replied ironically:

"I never have regarded you as an ornament, Tubbs."

Tubbs looked at the check McArthur handed him, with satisfaction.

"That's what I call clear velvet!" he declared, and went off chuckling to show it to his friends.

"When you think of it, this is a very singular transaction," observed McArthur, wiping his fountain-pen carefully.

"Yes," and Ralston, no longer able to contain himself, shouted with laughter; "it is."



XII

SMITH GETS "HUNKS"

Smith's ugly mood was still upon him when he picked up his grammar that evening. Jealous, humiliated by the loss of the morning's race, full of revengeful thoughts and evil feelings, he wanted to hurt somebody—something—even Dora. He had a vague, sullen notion that she was to blame because Ralston was in love with her. She could have discouraged him in the beginning, he told himself; she could have stopped it.

Unaccustomed as Smith was to self-restraint, he quickly showed his frame of mind to Dora. He had no savoir faire with which to conceal his mood; besides, he entertained a feeling of proprietorship over her which justified his resentment to himself. Was she not to be his? Would he not eventually control her, her actions, choose her friends?

Dora found him a dense and disagreeable pupil, and one who seemingly had forgotten everything he had learned during previous lessons. His replies at times were so curt as to be uncivil, and a feeling of indignation gradually rose within her. She was at a loss to understand his mood, unless it was due to the result of the morning's race; yet she could scarcely believe that his disappointment, perhaps chagrin, could account for his rudeness to her.

When the useless lesson was finished, she closed the book and asked:

"You are not yourself to-night. What is wrong?"

With an expression upon his face which both startled and shocked her he snarled:

"I'm sick of seein' that lady-killer hangin' around here!"

"You mean——?"

"Ralston!"

Dora had never looked at Smith as she looked at him now.

"I beg to be excused from your criticisms of Mr. Ralston."

Smith had not dreamed that the gentle, girlish voice could take on such a quality. It cut him, stung him, until he felt hot and cold by turns.

"Oh, I didn't know he was such a friend," he sneered.

"Yes"—her eyes did not quail before the look that flamed in his—"he is just such a friend!"

They had risen; and Smith, looking at her as she stood erect, her head high in defiance, could have choked her in his jealous rage.

He stumbled rather than walked toward the door.

"Good-night," he said in a strained, throaty voice.

"Good-night."

She stared at the door as it closed behind him. She had something of the feeling of one who, making a pet of a tiger, feels its claws for the first time, sees the first indication of its ferocious nature. This new phase of Smith's character, while it angered, also filled her with uneasiness.