"Well, what do you care? You don't have to stay with them, and you know it. I'm just waiting—"

"Well, but I'm no quitter, James. I'm going to hold down that claim now if I have to wear a sixshooter!" Her eyes twinkled at that idea. "Besides, I can stir them up now and then and get them to say things that are useful. For instance, Florence Hallman told Kate Price about that last trainload of cattle coming, and that they were going to cut your fence and drive them through in the night—and I stirred dear little Katie up so she couldn't keep still about that. And therefore—" She reached out and gave Andy Green's ear a small tweek—"somebody found out about it, and a lot of somebodys happened around that way and just quietly managed to give folks a hint that there was fine grass somewhere else. That saved a lot of horseflesh and words and work, didn't it?"

"It sure did." Andy smiled up at her worshipfully. "Just the same—"

"But listen here, nice, level-headed Katiegirl has lost her temper since then, and let out a little more that is useful knowledge to somebody. There's one great weak point in the character of Florence Hallman; maybe you have noticed it. She's just simply GOT to have somebody to tell things to, and she doesn't always show the best judgment in her choice of a confessional—"

"I've noticed that before," Andy Green admitted, and smiled reminiscently. "She sure does talk too much—for a lady that has so much up her sleeve."

"Yes—and she's been making a chum of Katie Price since she discovered what an untrustworthy creature I am. I did a little favor for Irish Mallory, James. I overheard Florence Grace talking to Kate about that man who is supposed to be at death's door. So I made a trip to Great Falls, if you please, and I scouted around and located the gentleman—well, anyway, I gave that nice, sleek little lawyer of yours a few facts that will let Irish come back to his claim."

"Irish has been coming back to his claim pretty regular as it is," Andy informed her quietly. "Did you think he was hiding out, all this time? Why"—he laughed at her—"you talked to him yourself, one day, and thought it was Weary. Remember when you came over with the mail? That was Irish helping me string wire. He's been wearing Weary's hat and clothes and cultivating a twinkle to his eyes—that's all."

"Why, I—well, anyway, that man they've been making a fuss over is just as well as you are, James. They only wanted to get Irish in jail and make a little trouble—pretty cheap warfare at that, if you want my opinion."

"Oh, well—what's the odds? While they're wasting time and energy that way, we're going right along doing what we've laid out to do. Say, do you know I'm kinda getting stuck on this ranch proposition. If I just had a housekeeper—"

Miss Rosemary Allen seldom let him get beyond that point, and she interrupted him now by wrinkling her nose at him in a manner that made Andy Green forget altogether that he had begun a sentence upon a subject forbidden. Later she went back to her worries; she was a very persistent young woman.

"I hope you boys are going to attend to that contest business right away," she said, with a pucker between her eyes and not much twinkle in them. "There's something about that which I don't quite understand. I heard Florence Hallman and Kate talking yesterday about it going by default. Are you sure it's wise to put off filing your answers so long? When are you supposed to appear, James?"

"Me? On or before the twenty-oneth day of July, my dear girl. They lumped us up and served us all on the same day—I reckon to save shoe-leather; therefore, inasmuch as said adverse parties have got over a week left—"

"You'd better not take a chance, waiting till the last day in the afternoon," she warned him vaguely. "Maybe they think you've forgotten the date or something—but whatever they think, I believe they're counting on your not answering in time. I think Florence Hallman knows they haven't any real proof against you. I know she knows it. She's perfectly wild over the way you boys have stuck here and worked. And from what I can gather, she hasn't been able to scrape up the weentiest bit of evidence that the Flying U is backing you—and of course that is the only ground they could contest your claims on. So if it comes to trial, you'll all win; you're bound to. I told Kate Price so—and those other old hens, yesterday, and that's what we had the row over."

"My money's on you, girl," Andy told her, grinning. "How are the wounded?"

"The wounded? Oh, they've clubbed together this morning and are washing hankies and collars and things, and talking about me. And they have snouged every speck of water from the barrel—I paid my share for the hauling, too—and the man won't come again till day after tomorrow with more. Fifty cents a barrel, straight, he's charging now, James. And you, boys with a great, big, long creekful of it that you can get right in and swim in! I've come over to borrow two water-bags of it, if you please, James I never dreamed water was so precious. Florence Hallman ought to be made to lie on one of these dry claims she's fooled us into taking. I really don't know, James, what's going to become of some of these poor farmers. You knew, didn't you, that Mr. Murphy spent nearly two hundred dollars boring a well—and now it's so strong of alkali they daren't use a drop of it? Mr. Murphy is living right up to his name and nationality, since then. He's away back there beyond the Sands place, you know. He has to haul water about six miles. Believe me, James, Florence Hallman had better keep away from Murphy! I met him as I was coming out from town, and he called her a Jezebel!"

"That's mild!" Andy commented dryly. "Get down, why don't you? I want you to take a look at the inside of my shack and see how bad I need a housekeeper—since you won't take my word for it. I hope every drop of water leaks outa these bags before you get home. I hope old Mister falls down and spills it. I've a good mind not to let you have any, anyway. Maybe you could be starved and tortured into coming down here where you belong."

"Maybe I couldn't. I'll get me a barrel of my own, and hire Simpson to fill it four times a week, if you please! And I'll put a lid with a padlock on it, so Katie dear can't rob me in the night—and I'll use a whole quart at a time to wash dishes, and two quarts when I take a bath! I shall," she asserted with much emphasis, "lie in luxury, James!"

Andy laughed and waved his hand toward One Man Creek. "That's all right—but how would you like to have that running past your house, so you could wake up in the night and hear it go gurgle-gurgle? Wouldn't that be all right?"

Rosemary Allen clasped her two gloved hands together and drew a long breath. "I should want to run out and stop it," she declared. "To think of water actually running around loose in this world!! And think of us up on that dry prairie, paying fifty cents a barrel for it—and a lot slopped out of the barrel on the road!" She glanced down into Andy's love-lighted eyes, and her own softened. She placed her hand on his shoulder and shook her head at him with a tender remonstrance.

"I know, boy—but it isn't in me to give up anything I set out to do, any more than it is in you. You wouldn't like me half so well if I could just drop that claim and think no more about it. I've got enough money to commute, when the time comes, and I'll feel a lot better if I go through with it now I've started. And—James!" She smiled at him wistfully. "Even if it is only eighty acres, it will make good pasture, and—it will help some, won't it?"

After that you could not expect Andy Green to do any more badgering or to discourage the girl. He did like her better for having grit and a mental backbone—and he found a way of telling her so and of making the assurance convincing enough.

He filled her canvas water-bags and went with her to carry them, and he cheered her much with his air-castles. Afterwards he took the team and rustled a water-barrel and hauled her a barrel of water and gave Kate Price a stony-eyed stare when she was caught watching him superciliously; and in divers ways managed to make Miss Rosemary Allen feel that she was fighting a good fight and that the odds were all in her favor and in the favor of the Happy Family—and of Andy Green in particular. She felt that the spite of her three very near neighbors was really a matter to laugh over, and the spleen of Florence Hallman a joke.

But for all that she gave Andy Green one last warning when he climbed up to the spring seat of the wagon and unwound the lines from the brake-handle, ready to drive back to his own work. She went close to the front wheel, so that eavesdroppers could not hear, and held her front hair from blowing across her earnest, wind-tanned face while she looked up at him.

"Now remember, boy, do go and file your answer to those contests—all of you!" she urged. "I don't know why—but I've a feeling some kind of a scheme is being hatched to make you trouble on that one point. And if you see Buck, tell him I'll ride fence with him tomorrow again. If you realized how much I like that old cowpuncher, you'd be horribly jealous, James."

"I'm jealous right now, without realizing a thing except that I've got to go off and leave you here with a bunch of lemons," he retorted—and he spoke loud enough so that any eavesdroppers might hear.



CHAPTER 24. THE KID IS USED FOR A PAWN IN THE GAME

Did you ever stop to think of the tremendous moral lesson in the Bible tale of David and Goliath? And how great, human issues are often decided one way or the other by little things? Not all crises are passed in the clashing of swords and the boom of cannon. It was a pebble the size of your thumbend, remember, that slew the giant.

In the struggle which the Happy Family was making to preserve the shrunken range of the Flying U, and to hold back the sweeping tide of immigration, one might logically look for some big, overwhelming element to turn the tide one way or the other. With the Homeseekers' Syndicate backing the natural animosity of the settlers, who had filed upon semiarid land because the Happy Family had taken all of the tract that was tillable, a big, open clash might be considered inevitable.

And yet the struggle was resolving itself into the question of whether the contest filings should be approved by the land-office, or the filings of the Happy Family be allowed to stand as having been made in good faith. Florence Hallman therefore, having taken upon herself the leadership in the contest fight, must do one of two things if she would have victory to salve the hurt to her self-esteem and to vindicate the firm's policy in the eyes of the settlers.

She must produce evidence of the collusion of the Flying U outfit with the Happy Family, in the taking of the claims. Or she must connive to prevent the filing of answers to the contest notices within the time-limit fixed by law, so that the cases would go by default. That, of course, was the simplest—since she had not been able to gather any evidence of collusion that would stand in court.

There was another element in the land struggle—that was the soil and climate that would fight inexorably against the settlers; but with them we have little to do, since the Happy Family had nothing to do with them save in a purely negative way.

A four-wire fence and a systematic patrol along the line was having its effect upon the stock question. If the settlers drove their cattle south until they passed the farthest corner of Flying U fence, they came plump against Bert Rogers' barbed boundary line. West of that was his father's place—and that stretched to the railroad right-of-way, fenced on either side with a stock-proof barrier and hugging the Missouri all the way to the Marias—where were other settlers. If they went north until they passed the fence of the Happy Family, there were the Meeker holdings to bar the way to the very foot of Old Centennial, and as far up its sides as cattle would go.

The Happy Family had planned wisely when they took their claims in a long chain that stretched across the benchland north of the Flying U. Florence Grace knew this perfectly well—but what could she prove? The Happy Family had bought cattle of their own, and were grazing them lawfully upon their own claims. A lawyer had assured her that there was no evidence to be gained there. They never went near J. G. Whitmore, nor did they make use of his wagons, his teams or his tools or his money; instead they hired what they needed, openly and from Bert Rogers. They had bought their cattle from the Flying U, and that was the extent of their business relations—on the surface. And since collusion had been the ground given for the contests, it will be easily seen what slight hope Florence Grace and her clients must have of winning any contest suit. Still, there was that alternative—the Happy Family had been so eager to build that fence and gather their cattle and put them back on the claims, and so anxious lest in their absence the settlers should slip cattle across the dead line and into the breaks, that they had postponed their trip to Great Falls as long as possible. The Honorable Blake had tacitly advised them to do so; and the Happy Family never gave a thought to their being hindered when they did get ready to attend to it.

But—a pebble killed Goliath.

H. J. Owens, whose eyes were the wrong shade of blue, sat upon a rocky hilltop which overlooked the trail from Flying U Coulee and a greater portion of the shack-dotted benchland as well, and swept the far horizons with his field glasses. Just down the eastern slope, where the jutting sandstone cast a shadow, his horse stood tied to a dejected wild-currant bush. He laid the glasses across his knees while he refilled his pipe, and tilted his hatbrim to shield his pale blue eyes from the sun that was sliding past midday.

H. J. Owens looked at his watch, nevertheless, as though the position of the sun meant nothing to him. He scowled a little, stretched a leg straight out before him to ease it of cramp, and afterwards moved farther along in the shade. The wind swept past with a faint whistle, and laid the ripening grasses flat where it passed. A cloud shadow moved slowly along the slope beneath him, and he watched the darkening of the earth where it touched, and the sharp contrast of the sun-yellowed sea of grass all around it. H. J. Owens looked bored and sleepy; yet he did not leave the hilltop—nor did he go to sleep.

Instead, he lifted the glasses, turned them toward Flying U Coulee a half mile to the south of him, and stared long at the trail. After a few minutes he made a gesture to lower the glasses, and then abruptly fixed them steadily upon one spot, where the trail wound up over the crest of the bluff. He looked for a minute, and laid the glasses down upon a rock.

H. J. Owens fumbled in the pocket of his coat, which he had folded and laid beside him on the yellow gravel of the hill. He found something he wanted, stood up, and with his back against a boulder he faced to the southwest. He was careful about the direction. He glanced up at the sun, squinting his eyes at the glare; he looked at what he held in his hand.

A glitter of sun on glass showed briefly. H. J. Owens laid his palm over it, waited while he could count ten, and took his palm away. Replaced it, waited, and revealed the glass again with the sun glare upon it full. He held it so for a full minute, and slid the glass back into his pocket.

He glanced down toward Flying U Coulee again—toward where the trail stretched like a brown ribbon through the grass. He seemed to be in something of a hurry now—if impatient movement meant anything—yet he did not leave the place at once. He kept looking off there toward the southwest—off beyond Antelope Coulee and the sparsely dotted shacks of the settlers.

A smudge of smoke rose thinly there, behind a hill. Unless one had been watching the place, one would scarcely have noticed it, but H. J. Owens saw it at once and smiled his twisted smile and went running down the hill to where his horse was tied. He mounted and rode down to the level, skirted the knoll and came out on the trail, down which he rode at an easy lope until he met the Kid.

The Kid was going to see Rosemary Allen and take a ride with her along the new fence; but he pulled up with the air of condescension which was his usual attitude toward "nesters," and in response to the twisted smile of H. J. Owens he grinned amiably.

"Want to go on a bear-hunt with me, Buck?" began H. J. Owens with just the right tone of comradeship, to win the undivided attention of the Kid.

"I was goin' to ride fence with Miss Allen," the Kid declined regretfully. "There ain't any bears got very close, there ain't. I guess you musta swallered something Andy told you." He looked at H. J. Owens tolerantly.

"No sir. I never talked to Andy about this." Had he been perfectly truthful he would have added that he had not talked with Andy about anything whatever, but he let it go. "This is a bear den I found myself; There's two little baby cubs, Buck, and I was wondering if you wouldn't like to go along and get one for a pet. You could learn it to dance and play soldier, and all kinds of stunts."

The Kid's eyes shone, but he was wary. This man was a nester, so it would be just at well to be careful "Where 'bouts is it?" he therefore demanded in a tone of doubt that would have done credit to Happy Jack.

"Oh, down over there in the hills. It's a secret, though, till we get them out. Some fellows are after them for themselves, Buck. They want to—skin 'em."

"The mean devils!" condemned the Kid promptly. "I'd take a fall outa them if I ketched 'em skinning any baby bear cubs while I was around."

H. J. Owens glanced behind him with an uneasiness not altogether assumed.

"Let's go down into this next gully to talk it over, Buck," he suggested with an air of secretiveness that fired the Kid's imagination. "They started out to follow me, and I don't want 'em to see me talking to you, you know."

The Kid went with him unsuspectingly. In all the six years of his life, no man had ever offered him injury. Fear had not yet become associated with those who spoke him fair. Nesters he did not consider friends because they were not friends with his bunch. Personally he did not know anything about enemies. This man was a nester—but he called him Buck, and he talked very nice and friendly, and he said he knew where there were some little baby bear cubs. The Kid had never before realized how much he wanted a bear cub for a pet. So do our wants grow to meet our opportunities.

H. J. Owens led the way into a shallow draw between two low hills, glancing often behind him and around him until they were shielded by the higher ground. He was careful to keep where the grass was thickest and would hold no hoofprints to betray them, but the Kid never noticed. He was thinking how nice it would be to have a bear cub for a pet. But it was funny that the Happy Family had never found him one, if there were any in the country.

He turned to put the question direct to H. J. Owens, I but that gentleman forestalled him.

"You wait here a minute, Buck, while I ride back on this hill a little ways to see if those fellows are on our trail," he said, and rode off before the Kid could ask him the question.

The Kid waited obediently. He saw H. J. Owens get off his horse and go sneaking up to the brow of the hill, and take some field glasses out of his pocket and look all around over the prairie with them. The sight tingled the Kid's blood so that he almost forgot about the bear cub. It was almost exactly like fighting Injuns, like Uncle Gee-gee told about when he wasn't cross.

In a few minutes Owens came back to the Kid, and they went on slowly, keeping always in the low, grassy places where there would be no tracks left to tell of their passing that way. Behind them a yellow-brown cloud drifted sullenly with the wind. Now and then a black flake settled past them to the ground. A peculiar, tangy smell was in the air—the smell of burning grass.

H. J. Owens related a long, full-detailed account of how he had been down in the hills along the river, and had seen the old mother bear digging ants out of a sand-hill for her cubs.

"I know—that's jes' 'zactly the way they do!" the Kid interrupted excitedly. "Daddy Chip seen one doing it on the Musselshell one time. He told me 'bout it."

H. J. Owens glanced sidelong at the Kid's flushed face, smiled his twisted smile and went on with his story. He had not bothered them, he said, because he did not have any way of carrying both cubs, and he hated to kill them. He had thought of Buck, and how he would like a pet cub, so he had followed the bear to her den and had come away to get a sack to carry them in, and to tell Buck about it.

The Kid never once doubted that it was so. Whenever any of the Happy Family found anything in the hills that was nice, they always thought of Buck, and they always brought it to him. You would be amazed at the number of rattlesnake rattles, and eagle's claws, and elk teeth, and things like that, which the Kid possessed and kept carefully stowed away in a closet kept sacred to his uses.

"'Course you'd 'member I wanted a baby bear cub; for a pet," he assented gravely and with a certain satisfaction. "Is it a far ways to that mother bear's home?"

"Why?" H. J. Owens turned from staring at the rolling smoke cloud, and looked at the Kid curiously. "Ain't you big enough to ride far?"

"'Course I'm big enough" The Kid's pride was touched. "I can ride as far as a horse can travel I bet I can ride farther and faster 'n you can, you pilgrims" He eyed the other disdainfully. "Huh! You can't ride. When you trot you go this way!" The Kid kicked Silver into a trot and went bouncing along with his elbows flapping loosely in imitation of H. J. Owens' ungraceful riding.

"I don't want to go a far ways," he explained when the other was again Riding alongside, "'cause Doctor Dell would cry if I didn't come back to supper. She cried when I was out huntin' the bunch. Doctor Dell gets lonesome awful easy." He looked over his shoulder uneasily. "I guess I better go back and tell her I'm goin' to git a baby bear cub for a pet," he said, and reined Silver around to act upon the impulse.

"No—don't do that, Buck." H. J. Owens pulled his horse in front of Silver. "It isn't far—just a little ways. And it would be fun to surprise them at the ranch Gee! When they saw you ride up with a pet bear cub in your arms—" H. J. Owens shook his head as though he could not find words to express the surprise of the Kid's family.

The Kid smiled his Little Doctor smile. "I'd tell a man!" he assented enthusiastically. "I bet the Countess would holler when she seen it. She scares awful easy. She's scared of a mice, even! Huh! My kitty ketched a mice and she carried it right in her mouth and brought it into the kitchen and let it set down on the floor a minute, and it started to run away—the mice did. And it runned right up to the Countess, and she jes' hollered and yelled And she got right up and stood on a chair and hollered for Daddy Chip to come and ketch that mice. He didn't do it though. Adeline ketched it herself. And I took it away from her and put it in a box for a pet. I wasn't scared."

"She'll be scared when she sees the bear cub," H. J. Owens declared absent-mindedly. "I know you won't be, though. If we hurry maybe we can watch how he digs ants for his supper. That's lots of fun, Buck."

"Yes—I 'member it's fun to watch baby bear cubs dig ants," the Kid assented earnestly, and followed willingly where H. J. Owens led the way.

That the way was far did not impress itself upon the Kid, beguiled with wonderful stories of how baby bear cubs might be taught to do tricks. He listened and believed, and invented some very wonderful tricks that he meant to teach his baby bear cub. Not until the shadows began to fill the gullies through which they rode did the Kid awake to the fact that night was coming close and that they were still traveling away from home and in a direction which was strange to him. Never in his life had he been tricked by any one with unfriendly intent. He did not guess that he was being tricked now. He rode away into the wild places in search of a baby bear cub for a pet.



CHAPTER 25. "LITTLE BLACK SHACK'S ALL BURNT UP"

It is a penitentiary offense for anyone to set fire to prairie grass or timber; and if you know the havoc which one blazing match may work upon dry grassland when the wind is blowing free, you will not wonder at the penalty for lighting that match with deliberate intent to set the prairie afire.

Within five minutes after H. J. Owens slipped the bit of mirror back into his pocket after flashing a signal that the Kid was riding alone upon the trail, a line of fire several rods long was creeping up out of a grassy hollow to the hilltop beyond, whence it would go racing away to the east and the north, growing bigger and harder to fight with every grass tuft it fed on.

The Happy Family were working hard that day upon the system of irrigation by which they meant to reclaim and make really valuable their desert claims. They happened to be, at the time when the fire was started, six or seven miles away, wrangling over the best means of getting their main ditch around a certain coulee without building a lot of expensive flume. A surveyor would have been a blessing, at this point in the undertaking; but a surveyor charged good money for his services, and the Happy Family were trying to be very economical with money; with time, and effort, and with words they were not so frugal.

The fire had been burning for an hour and had spread so alarmingly before the gusty breeze that it threatened several claim-shacks before they noticed the telltale, brownish tint to the sunlight and smelled other smoke than the smoke of the word-battle then waging fiercely among them. They dropped stakes, flags and ditch-level and ran to where their horses waited sleepily the pleasure of their masters.

They reached the level of the benchland to see disaster swooping down upon them like a race-horse. They did not stop then to wonder how the fire had started, or why it had gained such headway. They raced their horses after sacks, and after the wagon and team and water barrels with which to fight the flames. For it was not the claim-shacks in its path which alone were threatened. The grass that was burning meant a great deal to the stock, and therefore to the general welfare of every settler upon that bench, be he native or newcomer.

Florence Grace Hallman had, upon one of her periodical visits among her "clients," warned them of the danger of prairie fires and urged them to plow and burn guards around all their buildings. A few of the settlers had done so and were comparatively safe in the face of that leaping, red line. But there were some who had delayed—and these must fight now if they would escape.

The Happy Family, to a man, had delayed; rather they had not considered that there was any immediate danger from fire; it was too early in the season for the grass to be tinder dry, as it would become a month or six weeks later. They were wholly unprepared for the catastrophe, so far as any expectation of it went. But for all that they knew exactly what to do and how to go about doing it, and they did not waste a single minute in meeting the emergency.

While the Kid was riding with H. J. Owens into the hills, his friends, the bunch, were riding furiously in the opposite direction. And that was exactly what had been planned beforehand. There was an absolute certainty in the minds of those who planned that it would be so, Florence Grace Hallman, for instance, knew just what would furnish complete occupation for the minds and the hands of the Happy Family and of every other man in that neighborhood, that afternoon. Perhaps a claim-shack or two would go up in smoke and some grass would burn. But when one has a stubborn disposition and is fighting for prestige and revenge and the success of ones business, a shack or two and a few acres of prairie grass do not count for very much.

For the rest of that afternoon the boys of the Flying U fought side by side with hated nesters and told the inexperienced how best to fight. For the rest of that afternoon no one remembered the Kid, or wondered why H. J. Owens was not there in the grimy line of fire-fighters who slapped doggedly at the leaping flames with sacks kept wet from the barrels of water hauled here and there as they were needed. No one had time to call the roll and see who was missing among the settlers. No one dreamed that this mysterious fire that had crept up out of a coulee and spread a black, smoking blanket over the hills where it passed, was nothing more nor lees than a diversion while a greater crime was being committed behind their backs.

In spite of them the fire, beaten out of existence at one point, gained unexpected fury elsewhere and raced on. In spite of them women and children were in actual danger of being burned to death, and rushed weeping from flimsy shelter to find safety in the nearest barren coulee. The sick lady whom the Little Doctor had been tending was carried out on her bed and laid upon the blackened prairie, hysterical from the fright she had received. The shack she had lately occupied smoked while the tarred paper on the roof crisped and curled; and then the whole structure burst into flames and sent blazing bits of paper and boards to spread the fire faster.

Fire guards which the inexperienced settlers thought safe were jumped without any perceptible check upon the flames. The wind was just right for the fanning of the fire. It shifted now and then erratically and sent the yellow line leaping in new directions. Florence Grace Hallman was in Dry Lake that day, and she did not hear until after dark how completely her little diversion had been a success; how more than half of her colony had been left homeless and hungry upon the charred prairie. Florence Grace Hallman would not have relished her supper, I fear, had the news reached her earlier in the evening.

At Antelope Coulee the Happy Family and such of the settlers as they could muster hastily for the fight, made a desperate stand against the common enemy. Flying U Coulee was safe, thanks to the permanent fire-guards which the Old Man maintained year after year as a matter of course. But there were the claims of the Happy Family and all the grassland east of there which must be saved.

Men drove their work horses at a gallop after plows, and when they had brought them they lashed the horses into a trot while they plowed crooked furrows in the sun-baked prairie sod, just over the eastern rim of Antelope Coulee. The Happy Family knelt here and there along the fresh-turned sod, and started a line of fire that must beat up against the wind until it met the flames, rushing before it. Backfiring is always a more or less, ticklish proceeding, and they would not trust the work to stranger.

Every man of them took a certain stretch of furrow to watch, and ran backward and forward with blackened, frayed sacks to beat out the wayward flames that licked treacherously through the smallest break in the line of fresh soil. They knew too well the danger of those little, licking flame tongues; not one was left to live and grow and race leaping away through the grass.

They worked—heavens, how they worked!—and they stopped the fire there on the rim of Antelope Coulee. Florence Grace Hallman would have been sick with fury, had she seen that dogged line of fighters, and the ragged hem of charred black ashes against the yellow-brown, which showed how well those men whom she hated had fought.

So the fire was stopped well outside the fence which marked the boundary of the Happy Family's claims. All west of there and far to the north the hills and the coulees lay black as far as one could see—which was to the rim of the hills which bordered Dry Lake valley on the east. Here and there a claim-shack stood forlorn amid the blackness. Here and there a heap of embers still smoked and sent forth an occasional spitting of sparks when a gust fanned the heap. Men, women and children stood about blankly or wandered disconsolately here and there, coughing in the acrid clouds of warm grass cinders kicked up by their own lagging feet.

No one missed the Kid. No one dreamed that he was lost again. Chip was with the Happy Family and did not know that the Kid had left the ranch that afternoon. The Little Doctor had taken it for granted that he had gone with his daddy, as he so frequently did; and with his daddy and the whole Happy Family to look after him, she never once doubted that he was perfectly safe, even among the fire-fighters. She supposed he would be up on the seat beside Patsy, probably, proudly riding on the wagon that hauled the water barrels.

The Little Doctor had troubles of her own to occupy her mind She had ridden hurriedly up the hill and straight to the shack of the sick woman, when first she discovered that the prairie was afire. And she had found the sick woman lying on a makeshift bed on the smoking, black area that was pathetically safe now from fire because there was nothing more to burn.

"Little black shack's all burnt up! Everything's black now. Black hills, black hollows, black future, black world, black hearts—everything matches—everything's black. Sky's black, I'm black—you're black—little black shack won't have to stand all alone any more—little black shack's just black ashes—little black shack's all burnt up!" And then the woman laughed shrilly, with that terrible, meaningless laughter of hysteria.

She was a pretty woman, and young. Her hair was that bright shade of red that goes with a skin like thin, rose-tinted ivory. Her eyes were big and so dark a blue that they sometimes looked black, and her mouth was sweet and had a tired droop to match the mute pathos of her eyes. Her husband was a coarse lout of a man who seldom spoke to her when they were together. The Little Doctor had felt that all the tragedy of womanhood and poverty and loneliness was synthesized in this woman with the unusual hair and skin and eyes and expression. She had been coming every day to see her; the woman was rather seriously ill, and needed better care than she could get out there on the bald prairie, even with the Little Doctor to watch over her. If she died her face would haunt the Little Doctor always. Even if she did not die she would remain a vivid memory. Just now even the Little Doctor's mother instinct was submerged under her professional instincts and her woman sympathy. She did not stop to wonder whether she was perfectly sure that the Kid was with Chip. She took it for granted and dismissed the Kid from her mind, and worked to save the woman.

Yes, the little diversion of a prairie fire that would call all hands to the westward so that the Kid might be lured away in another direction without the mishap of being seen, proved a startling success. As a diversion it could scarcely be improved upon—unless Florence Grace Hallman had ordered a wholesale massacre or something like that.



CHAPTER 26. ROSEMARY ALLEN DOES A SMALL SUM IN ADDITION

Miss Rosemary Allen, having wielded a wet gunny sack until her eyes were red and smarting and her lungs choked with cinders and her arms so tired she could scarcely lift them, was permitted by fate to be almost the first person who discovered that her quarter of the four-room shack built upon the four contiguous corners of four claims, was afire in the very middle of its roof. Miss Rosemary Allen stood still and watched it burn, and was a trifle surprised because she felt so little regret.

Other shacks had caught fire and burned hotly, and she had wept with sympathy for the owners. But she did not weep when her own shack began to crackle and show yellow, licking tongues of flame. Those three old cats—I am using her own term, which was spiteful—would probably give up now, and go back where they belonged. She hoped so. And for herself—

"By gracious, I'm glad to see that one go, anyhow!" Andy Green paused long enough in his headlong gallop to shout to her. "I was going to sneak up and touch it off myself, if it wouldn't start any other way. Now you and me'll get down to cases, girl, and have a settlement. And say!" He had started on, but he pulled up again. "The Little Doctor's back here, somewhere. You go home with her when she goes, and stay till I come and get you."

"I like your nerve!" Rosemary retorted ambiguously.

"Sure—folks generally do. I'll tell her to stop for you. You know she'll be glad enough to have you—and so will the Kid."

"Where is Buck?" Rosemary was the first person who asked that question. "I saw him ride up on the bench just before the fire started. I was watching for him, through the glasses—"

"Dunno—haven't seen him. With his mother, I guess." Andy rode on to find Patsy and send him back down the line with the water wagon. He did not think anything more about the Kid, though he thought a good deal about Miss Allen.

Now that her shack was burned, she would be easier to persuade into giving up that practically worthless eighty. That was what filled the mind of Andy Green to the exclusion of everything else except the fire. He was in a hurry to deliver his message to Patsy, so that he could hunt up the Little Doctor and speak her hospitality for the girl he meant to marry just as soon as he could persuade her to stand with him before a preacher.

He found the Little Doctor still fighting a dogged battle with death for the life of the woman who laughed wildly because her home was a heap of smoking embers. The Little Doctor told him to send Rosemary Allen on down to the ranch, or take her himself, and to tell the Countess to send up her biggest medicine case immediately. She could not leave, she said, for some time yet. She might have to stay all night—or she would if there was any place to stay. She was half decided, she said, to have someone take the woman in to Dry Lake right away, and up to the hospital in Great Falls. She supposed she would have to go along. Would Andy tell J. G. to send up some money? Clothes didn't matter—she would go the way she was; there were plenty of clothes in the stores, she declared. And would Andy rustle a team, right away, so they could start? If they went at all they ought to catch the evening train. The Little Doctor was making her decisions and her plans while she talked, as is the way with those strong natures who can act promptly and surely in the face of an emergency.

By the time she had thought of having a team come right away, she had decided that she would not wait for her medicine-case or for money. She could get all the money she needed in Dry Lake; and she had her little emergency case with her. Since she was going to take the woman to a hospital, she said, there was no great need of more than she had with her. She was a thoughtful Little Doctor. At the last minute she detained Andy long enough to urge him to see that Miss Allen helped herself to clothes or anything she needed; and to send a goodbye message to Chip—in case he did not show up before she left—and a kiss to her manchild.

Andy was lucky. He met a man driving a good team and spring wagon, with a barrel of water in the back. He promptly dismounted and helped the man unload the water-barrel where it was, and sent him bumping swiftly over the burned sod to where the Little Doctor waited. So Fate was kinder to the Little Doctor than were those who would wring anew the mother heart of her that their own petty schemes might succeed. She went away with the sick woman laughing crazily because all the little black shacks were burned and now everything was black so everything matched nicely—nicely, thank you. She was terribly worried over the woman's condition, and she gave herself wholly to her professional zeal and never dreamed that her manchild was at that moment riding deeper and deeper into the Badlands with a tricky devil of a man, looking for a baby bear cub for a pet.

Neither did Chip dream it, nor any of the Happy Family, nor even Miss Rosemary Allen, until they rode down into Flying U Coulee at supper-time and were met squarely by the fact that the Kid was not there. The Old Man threw the bomb that exploded tragedy in the midst of the little group. He heard that "Dell" had gone to take a sick woman to the hospital in Great Falls, and would not be back for a day or so, probably.

"What'd she do with the Kid?" he demanded. "Take him with her?"

Chip stared blankly at him, and turned his eyes finally to Andy's face. Andy had not mentioned the Kid to him.

"He wasn't with her," Andy replied to the look. "She sent him a kiss and word that he was to take care of Miss Allen. He must be somewhere around here."

"Well, he ain't. I was looking fer him myself," put in the Countess sharply. "Somebody shut the cat up in the flour chest and I didn't study much on what it was done it! If I'd a got my hands on 'im—"

"I saw him ride up on the hill trail just before the fire started," volunteered Rosemary Allen. "I had my opera glasses and was looking for him, because I like to meet him and hear him talk. He said yesterday that he was coming to see me today. And he rode up on the hill in sight of my claim. I saw him." She stopped and looked from one to the other with her eyebrows pinched together and her lips pursed.

"Listen," she went on hastily. "Maybe it has nothing to do with Buck—but I saw something else that was very puzzling. I was going to investigate, but the fire broke out immediately and put everything else out of my mind. A man was up on that sharp-pointed knoll off east of the trail where it leaves this coulee, and he had field glasses and was looking for something over this way. I thought he was watching the trail. I just caught him with the glasses by accident as I swung them over the edge of the benchland to get the trail focused. He was watching something—because I kept turning the glasses on him to see what he was doing.

"Then Buck came into sight, and I started to ride out and meet him. I hate to leave the little mite riding alone anywhere—I'm always afraid something may happen. But before I got on my horse I took another look at this man on the hill. He had a mirror or something bright in his hands. I saw it flash, just exactly as though he was signaling to someone—over that way." She pointed to the west. "He kept looking that way, and then back this way; and he covered up the piece of mirror with his hand and then took it off and let it shine a minute, and put it in his pocket. I know he was making signals.

"I got my horse and started to meet little Buck. He was coming along the trail and rode into a little hollow out of sight. I kept looking and looking toward Dry Lake—because the man looked that way, I guess. And in a few minutes I saw the smoke of the fire—"

"Who was that man?" Andy took a step toward her, his eyes hard and bright in their inflamed lids.

"The man? That Mr. Owens who jumped your south eighty."

"Good Lord, what fools!" He brushed past her without a look or another word, so intent was he upon this fresh disaster. "I'm going after the boys, Chip. You better come along and see if you can pick up the Kid's trail where he left the road. It's too bad Florence Grace Hallman ain't a man! I'd know better what to do if she was."

"Oh, do you think—?" Miss Rosemary looked at him wide-eyed.

"Doggone it, if she's tried any of her schemes with fire and—why, doggone it, being a woman ain't going to help her none!" The Old Man, also, seemed to grasp the meaning of it almost as quickly as had Andy. "Chip, you have Ole hitch up the team. I'm going to town myself, by thunder, and see if she's going to play any of her tricks on this outfit and git away with it! Burnt out half her doggoned colony tryin' to git a whack at you boys! Where's my shoes? Doggone it, what yuh all standin' round with your jaws hangin' down for? We'll see about this fire-settin' and this—where's them shoes?"

The Countess found his shoes, and his hat, and his second-best coat and his driving gloves which he had not worn for more months than anyone cared to reckon. Miss Rosemary Allen did what she could to help, and wondered at the dominant note struck by this bald old man from the moment when he rose stiffly from his big chair and took the initiative so long left to others.

While the team was being made ready the Old Man limped here and there, collecting things he did not need and trying to remember what he must have, and keeping the Countess moving at a flurried trot. Chip and Andy were not yet up the bluff when the Old Man climbed painfully into the covered buggy, took the lines and the whip and cut a circle with the wheels on the hard-packed earth as clean and as small as Chip himself could have done, and went whirling through the big gate and across the creek and up the long slope beyond. He shouted to the boys and they rode slowly until he overtook them—though their nerves were all on edge and haste seemed to them the most important thing in the world. But habit is strong—it was their Old Man who called to them to wait.

"You boys wait to git out after that Owens," he shouted when he passed them. "If they've got the Kid, killing's too good for 'em!" The brown team went trotting up the grade with back straightened to the pull of the lurching buggy, and nostrils flaring wide with excitement. The Old Man leaned sidewise and called back to the two loping after him in the obscuring dust-cloud he left behind.

"I'll have that woman arrested on suspicion uh setting prairie fires!" he called. "I'll git Blake after her. You git that Owens if you have-to haze him to hell and back! Yuh don't want to worry about the Kid, Chip—they ain't goin' to hurt him. All they want is to keep you boys huntin' high and low and combin' the breaks to find 'im. I see their scheme, all right."



CHAPTER 27. "ITS AWFUL EASY TO GET LOST"

The Kid wriggled uncomfortably in the saddle and glanced at the narrow-browed face of H. J. Owens, who was looking this way and that at the enfolding hills and scowling abstractedly. The Kid was only six, but he was fairly good at reading moods and glances, having lived all his life amongst grown-ups.

"It's a pretty far ways to them baby bear cubs," he remarked. "I bet you're lost, old-timer. It's awful easy to get lost. I bet you don't know where that mother-bear lives."

"You shut up!" snarled H. J. Owens. The Kid had hit uncomfortably close to the truth.

"You shut up your own self, you darned pilgrim." the Kid flung back instantly. That was the way he learned to say rude things; they were said to him and he remembered and gave them back in full measure.

"Say, I'll slap you if you call me that again." H. J. Owens, because he did not relish the task he had undertaken, and because he had lost his bearing here in the confusion of hills and hollows and deep gullies, was in a very bad humor.

"You darn pilgrim, you dassent slap me. If you do the bunch'll fix you, all right. I guess they'd just about kill you. Daddy Chip would just knock the stuffin' outa you." He considered something very briefly, and then tilted his small chin so that he looked more than ever like the Little Doctor. "I bet you was just lying all the time," he accused. "I bet there ain't any baby bear cubs."

H. J. Owens laughed disagreeably, but he did not say whether or not the Kid was right in his conjecture. The Kid pinched his lips together and winked very fast for a minute. Never, never in all the six years of his life had anyone played him so shabby a trick. He knew what the laugh meant; it meant that this man had lied to him and led him away down here in the hills where he had promised his Doctor Dell, cross-his-heart, that he would never go again. He eyed the man resentfully.

"What made you lie about them baby bear cubs?" he demanded. "I didn't want to come such a far ways."

"You keep quiet. I've heard about enough from you, young man. A little more of that and you'll get something you ain't looking for."

"I'm a going home!" The Kid pulled Silver half around in the grassy gulch they were following. "And I'm going to tell the bunch what you said. I bet the bunch'll make you hard to ketch, you—you son-agun!"

"Here! You come back here, young man!" H. J. Owens reached over and caught Silver's bridle. "You don't go home till I let you go; see. You're going right along with me, if anybody should ask you. And you ain't going to talk like that either, now mind!" He turned his pale blue eyes threateningly upon the Kid. "Not another word out of you if you don't want a good thrashing. You come along and behave yourself or I'll cut your ears off."

The Kid's eyes blazed with anger. He did not flinch while he glared back at the man, and he did not seem to care, just at that moment, whether he lost his ears or kept them. "You let go my horse!" he gritted. "You wait. The bunch'll fix YOU, and fix you right. You wait!"

H. J. Owens hesitated, tempted to lay violent hands upon the small rebel. But he did not. He led Silver a rod or two, found it awkward, since the way was rough and he was not much of a horseman, and in a few minutes let the rein drop from his fingers.

"You come on, Buck, and be a good boy—and maybe we'll find them cubs yet," he conciliated. "You'd die a-laughing at the way they set up and scratch their ears when a big, black ant bites 'em, Buck. I'll show you in a little while. And there's a funny camp down here, too, where we can get some supper."

The Kid made no reply, but he rode along docilely beside H. J. Owens and listened to the new story he told of the bears. That is, he appeared to be listening; in reality he was struggling to solve the biggest problem he had ever known—the problem of danger and of treachery. Poor little tad, he did not even know the names of his troubles. He only knew that this man had told him a lie about those baby bear cubs, and had brought him away down here where he had been lost, and that it was getting dark and he wanted to go home and the man was mean and would not let him go. He did not understand why the man should be so mean—but the man was mean to him, and he did not intend to "stand for it." He wanted to go home. And when the Kid really wanted to do a certain thing, he nearly always did it, as you may have observed.

H. J. Owens would not let him go home; therefore the Kid meant to go anyway. Only he would have to sneak off, or run off, or something, and hide where the man could not find him, and then go home to his Doctor Dell and Daddy Chip, and tell them how mean this pilgrim had been to him. And he would tell the bunch The bunch would fix him all right! The thought cheered the Kid so that he smiled and made the man think he was listening to his darned old bear story that was just a big lie. Think he would listen to any story that pilgrim could tell? Huh!

The gulches wore growing dusky now The Kid was tired, and he was hungry and could hardly keep from crying, he was so miserable. But he was the son of his father—he was Chip's kid; it would take a great deal more misery and unkindness to make him cry before this pilgrim who had been so mean to him. He rode along without saying a word. H. J. Owens did not say anything, either. He kept scanning each jagged peak and each gloomy canyon as they passed, and he seemed uneasy about something. The Kid knew what it was, all right; H. J. Owens was lost.

They came to a wide, flat-bottomed coulee with high ragged bluffs shutting it in upon every side. The Kid dimly remembered that coulee, because that was where Andy got down to tighten the cinch on Miss Allen's horse, and looked up at her the way Daddy Chip looked at Doctor Dell sometimes, and made a kiss with his lips—and got called down for it, too. The Kid remembered.

He looked at the man, shut his mouth tight and wheeled Silver suddenly to the left. He leaned forward as he had always seen the Happy Family do when they started a race, and struck Silver smartly down the rump with the braided romal on his bridle-reins. H. J. Owens was taken off his guard and did nothing but stare open-mouthed until the Kid was well under way; then he shouted and galloped after him, up the little flat.

He might as well have saved his horse's wind and his own energy. He was no match for little Buck Bennett, who had the whole Flying U outfit to teach him how to ride, and the spirit of his Daddy Chip and the little Doctor combined to give him grit and initiative. H. J. Owens pounded along to the head of the coulee, where he had seen the Kid galloping dimly in the dusk. He turned up into the canyon that sloped invitingly up from the level, and went on at the top speed of his horse—which was not fast enough to boast about.

When he had left the coulee well behind him, the Kid rode out from behind a clump of bushes that was a mere black shadow against the coulee wall, and turned back whence he had come. The Kid giggled a little over the way he had fooled the pilgrim, and wished that the bunch had been there to see him do it. He kept Silver galloping until he had reached the other end of the level, and then he pulled him down to a walk and let the reins drop loosely upon Silver's neck. That was what Daddy Chip and the boys had told him he must do, next time he got lost and did not know the way home. He must just let Silver go wherever he wanted to go, and not try to guide him at all. Silver would go straight home; he had the word of the whole bunch for that, and he believed it implicitly.

Silver looked back inquiringly at his small rider, hesitated and then swung back up the coulee. The Kid was afraid that H. J. Owens would come back and see him and cut off his ears if he went that way—but he did not pull Silver back and make him go some other way, for all that. If he left him alone, Silver would take him right straight home. Daddy Chip and the boys said so. And he would tell them how mean that man was. They would fix him, all right!

Halfway up the coulee Silver turned into a narrow gulch that seemed to lead nowhere at all except into the side of a big, black-shadowed bluff. Up on the hillside a coyote began to yap with a shrill staccato of sounds that trailed off into a disconsolate whimper. The Kid looked that way interestedly. He was not afraid of coyotes. They would not hurt anyone; they were more scared than you were—the bunch had told him so. He wished he could get a sight of him, though. He liked to see their ears stick up and their noses stick out in a sharp point, and see them drop their tails and go sliding away out of sight. When he was ten and Daddy Chip gave him a gun, he would shoot coyotes and skin them his own self.

The coyote yapped shrilly again, and the Kid wondered what his Doctor Dell would say when he got home. He was terribly hungry, and he was tired and wanted to go to bed. He wished the bunch would happen along and fix that man. His heart swelled in his chest with rage and disappointment when he thought of those baby bear cubs that were not anywhere at all—because the man was just lying all the time. In spite of himself the Kid cried whimperingly to himself while he rode slowly up the gorge which Silver had chosen to follow because the reins were drooping low alongside his neck and he might go where he pleased.

By and by the moon rose and lightened the hills so that they glowed softly; and the Kid, looking sleepily around him, saw a coyote slinking along a barren slope. He was going to shout at it and see it run, but he thought of the man who was looking for him and glanced fearfully over his shoulder. The moon shone full in his face and showed the tear-streaks and the tired droop to his lips.

The Kid thought he must be going wrong, because at the ranch the moon came up in another place altogether. He knew about the moon. Doctor Dell had explained to him how it just kept going round and round the world and you saw it when it came up over the edge. That was how Santa Claus found out if kids were good; he lived in the moon, and it went round and round so he could look down and see if you were bad. The Kid rubbed the tears off his cheeks with his palm, so that Santa Claus could not see that he had been crying. After that he rode bravely, with a consciously straight spine, because Santa Claus was looking at him all the time and he must be a rell ole cowpuncher.

After a long while the way grew less rough, and Silver trotted down the easier slopes. The Kid was pretty tired now. He held on by the horn of his saddle so Silver would not jolt him so much. He was terribly hungry, too, and his eyes kept going shut. But Santa Claus kept looking at him to see if he were a dead game sport, so he did not cry any more. He wished he had some grub in a sack, but he thought he must be nearly home now. He had come a terribly far ways since he ran away from that pilgrim who was going to cut off his ears.

The Kid was so sleepy, and so tired that he almost fell out of the saddle once when Silver, who had been loping easily across a fairly level stretch of ground, slowed abruptly to negotiate a washout crossing. He had been thinking about those baby bear cubs digging ants and eating them. He had almost seen them doing it; but he remembered now that he was going home to tell the bunch how the man had lied to him and tried to make him stay down here. The bunch would sure fix him when they heard about that.

He was still thinking vengefully of the punishment which the Happy Family would surely mete out to H. J. Owens when Silver lifted his head, looked off to the right and gave a shrill whinny. Somebody shouted, and immediately a couple of horsemen emerged from the shadow of a hill and galloped toward him.

The Kid gave a cry and then laughed. It was his Daddy Chip and somebody. He thought the other was Andy Green. He was too tired to kick Silver in the ribs and race toward them. He waited until they came up, their horses pounding over the uneven sod urged by the jubilance of their riders.

Chip rode up and lifted the Kid bodily from the saddle and held him so tight in his arms that the Kid kicked half-heartedly with both feet, to free himself. But he had a message for his Daddy Chip, and as soon as he could get his breath he delivered it.

"Daddy Chip, I just want you to kill that damn' pilgrim!" he commanded. "There wasn't any baby bear cubs at all. He was just a-stringin' me. And he was going to cut off my ears. He said it wasn't a far ways to where the baby bear cubs lived with the old mother bear, and it was. I wish you'd lick the stuffin' outa him. I'm awful hungry, Daddy Chip."

"We'll be home pretty quick," Chip said in a queer, choked voice. "Who was the man, Buck? Where is he now?"

The Kid lifted his head sleepily from his Daddy Chip's shoulder and pointed vaguely toward the moon. "He's the man that jumped Andy's ranch right on the edge of One Man," he explained. "He's back there ridin' the rim-rocks a lookin' for me. I'd a come home before, only he wouldn't let me come. He said he'd cut my ears off. I runned away from him, Daddy Chip. And I cussed him a plenty for lying to me—but you needn't tell Doctor Dell."

"I won't, Buck." Chip lifted him into a more comfortable position and held him so. While the Kid slept he talked with Andy about getting the Happy Family on the trail of H. J. Owens. Then he rode thankfully home with the Kid in his arms and Silver following docilely after.



CHAPTER 28. AS IT TURNED OUT

They found H. J. Owens the next forenoon wandering hopelessly lost in the hills. Since killing him was barred, they tied his arms behind him and turned him toward the Flying U. He was sullen, like an animal that is trapped and will do nothing but lie flattened to the ground and glare red-eyed at its captors. For that matter, the Happy Family themselves were pretty sullen. They had fought fire for hours—and that is killing work; and they had been in the saddle ever since, looking for the Kid and for this man who rode bound in their midst.

Weary and Irish and Pink, who had run across him in a narrow canyon, fired pistol-shot signals to bring the others to the spot. But when the others emerged from various points upon the scene, there was very little said about the capture.

In town, the Old man had been quite as eager to come close to Florence Grace Hallman—but he was not so lucky. Florence Grace had heard the news of the fire a good half hour before the train left for Great Falls.

She would have preferred a train going the other way, but she decided not to wait. She watched the sick woman put aboard the one Pullman coach, and then she herself went into the stuffy day-coach. Florence Grace Hallman was not in the habit of riding in day-coaches in the night-time when there was a Pullman sleeper attached to the train. She did not stop at Great Falls; she went on to Butte—and from there I do not know where she went. Certainly she never came back.

That, of course, simplified matters considerably for Florence Grace—and for the Happy Family as well. For at the preliminary hearing of H. J. Owens for the high crime of kidnapping, that gentleman proceeded to unburden his soul in a way that would have horrified Florence Grace, had she been there to hear. Remember, I told you that his eyes were the wrong shade of blue.

A man of whom you have never heard tried to slip out of the court room during the unburdening process, and was stopped by Andy Green, who had been keeping an eye on him for the simple reason that the fellow had been much in the company of H. J. Owens during the week preceding the fire and the luring away of the Kid. The sheriff led him off somewhere—and so they had the man who had set the prairie afire.

As is the habit of those who confess easily the crimes of others, H. J. Owens professed himself as innocent as he consistently could in the face of the Happy Family and of the Kid's loud-whispered remarks when he saw him there. He knew absolutely nothing about the fire, he said, and had nothing to do with the setting of it. He was two miles away at the time it started.

And then Miss Rosemary Allen took the witness stand and told about the man on the hilltop and the bit of mirror that had flashed sun-signals toward the west.

H.J. Owens crimpled down visibly in his chair. Imagine for yourself the trouble he would have in convincing men of his innocence after that.

Just to satisfy your curiosity, at the trial a month later he failed absolutely to convince the jury that he was anything but what he was—a criminal without the strength to stand by his own friends. He was sentenced to ten years in Deer Lodge, and the judge informed him that he had been dealt with leniently at that, because after all he was only a tool in the hands of the real instigator of the crime. That real instigator, by the way, was never apprehended.

The other man—he who had set fire to the prairie—got six years, and cursed the judge and threatened the whole Happy Family with death when the sentence was passed upon him—as so many guilty men do.

To go back to that preliminary, trial: The Happy Family, when H. J. Owens was committed safely to the county jail, along with the fire-bug, took the next train to Great Falls with witnesses and the Honorable Blake. They filed their answers to the contests two days before the time-limit had expired. You may call that shaving too close the margin of safety. But the Happy family did not worry over that—seeing there was a margin of safety. Nor did they worry over the outcome of the matter. With the Homeseekers' Syndicate in extremely bad repute, and with fully half of the colonists homeless and disgusted, why should they worry over their own ultimate success?

They planned great things with their irrigation scheme.... I am not going to tell any more about them just now. Some of you will complain, and want to know a good many things that have not been told in detail. But if I should try to satisfy you, there would be no more meetings between you and the Happy Family—since there would be no more to tell.

So I am not even going to tell you whether Andy succeeded in persuading Miss Rosemary Allen to go with him to the parson. Nor whether the Happy Family really did settle down to raise families and alfalfa and beards. Not another thing shall you know about them now.

You may take a look at them as they go trailing contentedly away from the land-office, with their hats tilted at various characteristic angles and their well-known voices mingled in more or less joyful converse, and their toes pointed toward Central Avenue and certain liquid refreshments. You need not worry over that bunch, surely. You may safely leave them to meet future problems and emergencies as they have always met them in the past—on their feet, with eyes that do not wave or flinch, shoulder to shoulder, ready alike far grin fate or a frolic.

THE END