imed he was goin' home," he said
laconically.

"How could he get across the creek with the bridges out?" persisted
Belle.

Bradley's eyes were on his horses. He was weary of question: "High
water wouldn't bother him much."

"Well, I want to know! I should think it would bother anybody the way
it was sweeping down last night."

"Hell!" ejaculated Bradley, parting with his manners and his patience
together: "Jim could swim the Crazy Woman with his horse's feet tied."

"Who _is_ 'Jim'?" Kate demanded of her companion in an undertone.

"Jim Laramie? He lives in the Falling Wall."

CHAPTER III

DOUBLEDAY'S

When they got back to the ford it was daylight and the Crazy Woman was
hurrying on as peacefully as if a frown had never ruffled its repose.
Gnarled trees springing out of gashes along its tortuous channel
showed, in the debris lodged against their flood-bared roots and
mud-swept branches, the fury of the night, and the creek banks, scoured
by many floods, revealed new and savage gaps in the morning sun; but
Bradley made his crossing with the stage almost as uneventfully as if a
cloud-burst had never ruffled the mountains.

Kate was eager to meet her father, eager to see what might be her new
home. The moment the horses got up out of the bottom, Bradley pointed
with his whip to the ranch-house. Kate saw ahead of her a long,
one-story log house crowning, with its group of out-buildings, a level
bench that stretched toward the foothills. The landscape was bare of
trees and, to Kate, brown and barren-looking, save for a patch of green
near the creek where an alfalfa field lay vividly pretty in the sun.
The ranch-house, built of substantial logs, was ample in its
proportions and not uninviting, even to her Eastern eyes.

Bradley, with a flourish, swept past the stable, around the corral and
drew up before the door with a clatter. In front of the bunk-house on
the right, a cowboy rolling a cigarette, was watching the arrival, and
just as Bradley plumped Kate, on his arms, to the ground, her father,
Barb Doubleday himself, opened the ranch-house door.

Kate had never seen her father. And until Bradley spoke, she had not
the slightest idea that this could be he. She saw only a rough-looking
man of great stature, slightly stooped, and with large features burnt
to a deep brown.

"Hello, Barb," said Bradley, without much enthusiasm.

His salutation met with as little: "What's up?" demanded Doubleday