orn in them. She had seen
him look that way once or twice, and in spite of herself she began to
picture his face with that expression.

Billy Louise was on the point of riding away a good deal more hastily
than she had come, in the hope that Ward would not discover her there.
Then her own stubbornness came uppermost, and she told herself that she
had a perfect right to ride wherever she pleased, and that if Ward
didn't like it, he could do the other thing.

She went to the door and stood looking out for a minute, wondering
where he was. She turned back and stared around the room, which
somehow held the imprint of his personality in spite of its rough
simplicity.

There was a little window behind the bunk, and beside that a shelf
filled with books and smoking material and matches. She knew by the
very arrangement of that shelf and window that Ward liked to lie there
on the bunk and read while the light lasted. Well, he was not there
now, at any rate. She went over and looked at the titles of the books,
though she had examined them with interest only yesterday. There was
Burns; and she knew why it was he could repeat _Tam O'Shanter_ so
readily with never a moment's hesitation. There were two volumes of
Scott--_Lady of the Lake_ and other poems, much thumbed and with a
cigarette burn on the front cover, and _Kenilworth_. There were
several books of Kipling's, mostly verses, and beside it Morgan's
_Ancient Society_, with the corners broken, and a fine-print volume of
Shakespeare's plays. Then there was a pile of magazines and beyond
them a stack of books whose subjects varied from Balzac to strange,
scientific-sounding names. At the other end of the shelf, within easy
reach from one lying upon the bunk, was a cigar-box full of smoking
tobacco, a half-dozen books of cigarette papers, and several blocks of
the small, evil-smelling matches which men of the outdoors carry for
their compact form and slow, steady blaze.

At the head of the bed hung a flour-sack half full of some hard, lumpy
stuff which Billy Louise had not noticed before. She felt the bag
tentatively, could not guess its contents, and finally took it down and
untied it. Within were irregular scraps and strips of stuff hard as
bone--a puzzle still to one unfamiliar with the frontier. Billy Louise
pulled out a little piece, nibbled a corner, and pronounced, "M-mm!
Jerky! I'm going to swipe some of that," which she proceeded to do, to
the extent o