t once that you must have found some poison besides strychnine--"

"Eh? Oh, I see!" He managed a rather provoking slur on the last word.
"No, William." His eyes twinkled at her. "It isn't poison. What's
the other thing you want to know?"

Billy Louise frowned, hesitated, and, accepting the rebuff, went on to
the next question:

"What went with Seabeck's cattle, and Marthy and Charlie's, and all the
others that have disappeared? You don't seem to care at all that there
seems to be rustling going on around here."

Ward gave her a quick look. His tone changed a bit:

"I don't know that there is any. I never yet lived in a cow-country
where there wasn't more or less talk of--rustling. You don't want to
take gossip like that too seriously. Anything more?"

Billy Louise glanced at him surreptitiously and looked away again.
Then she tried to go on as casually as she had begun.

"Well, there's something about the Cove. I don't believe Marthy's
happy. I couldn't quite get hold of the thing yesterday that gave me
the blues--but it's Marthy. She's grieving, or something. She's
different. She's changed more since last winter than she's changed
since I can remember. You noticed something--at least you spoke about
her coming up the gorge--"

"I said she thinks a lot of you, Wilhemina." Ward's tone and manner
were natural again. "I noticed her looking at you when you didn't know
it. She thinks a heap of you, I should say, and she's worrying about
something. Maybe she'd rather have you in the Cove than Miss Gertrude
M. Shannon. Don't you reckon an old lady that has had her own way all
her life kind of dreads the advent of a brand-new bride in her domain?"

"Why, of course! Poor old thing! I never thought of that. And here
you hit the nail on the head just with a chance thought. That shows
what it means to be a brave young buckaroo, with heaps and piles of
brains!" She laughed at him, but behind her bantering was a new
respect for Ward's astuteness. "Go on. Tell me why you don't like
Charlie Fox, or why you refuse to admit how nice and kind he is and--"

"But I don't refuse--"

"Well, I put it stupidly, of course, but you know what I mean. Tell me
your candid opinion of him."

"I haven't any." Ward smoked imperturbably for a minute, so that Billy
Louise began to think he would not tell her what she wanted to know.
Ward could be absolutely, maddeningly dumb on some subjects, as she had
reason t