oison! He poisons
them!"

"Wake up! For the land's sake, what are you dreaming about?" Her
mother shook her agitatedly by the arm. "Billy Louise! Wake up!"

"All right, mommie." Billy Louise lay down and snuggled the light
blanket over her shoulders. She had been awake and thinking, thinking
till she thought she never could stop, but she did not tell mommie
that. She went to sleep and dreamed about poisoned wolves till it is a
wonder she did not have a real nightmare. The question was answered,
and for the time being the answer satisfied her.

Ward was surely an unusual type of young man. He did not seem to
remember, the next morning, that there had been any outbreak of bottled
emotions on his part the day before, or any ill-temper on the part of
Billy Louise, or anything at all out of the ordinary. Billy Louise had
prepared herself to apologize--in some roundabout manner which would
effect a reconciliation without hurting her pride too much--and she was
rather chagrined to discover that Ward seemed neither to expect or to
want any apology.

"Sorry I gotta go, William," he volunteered whimsically soon after
breakfast. "But I gotta dig. Say, Wilhemina, if I stay away long
enough, will you come after me again?"

"A wise man," said Billy Louise evasively, "may do a foolish thing
once, but only a fool does it twice."

"I don't believe it's the dog." Ward shook his head at her in mock
meditation. "It wouldn't last overnight, if it was just the dog." He
looked at her with the hidden smile. "Are you sure--"

"I'm sure you know how to pester a person!" The lips of Billy Louise
twisted humorously. "Lots of things bother me, and you ought to help
me out instead of making it worse." She walked beside him down to the
corral where Rattler was waiting, saddled and bridled for the homeward
journey.

"Well, tell a fellow what they are. Of course, if it's the dog--"

"Ward Warren, you're awful! It isn't the dog. Well, it is, but there
are heaps of other things I want to know, that I don't know. And you
don't seem to care about any single one of them."

Ward leaned up against the fence and tilted his hat to shade his eyes
from the sun. "Name a few of them, William Louisa. Not even a brave
young buckaroo can be expected to mind-read a girl. If he could--"

"Well, is it poison you use?" Billy Louise thought it best to change
Ward's trend of thought immediately. "Last night it just came to me
all a