t of his cool reckless spirit. He was what the
cowboys' range of that period had made him. Perhaps only such a man
could cope with the lawless circumstances in which Lucy had become
enmeshed. By the time she had paced her beat again and was once more
approaching his covert, he knew what the situation would demand and how
he would meet it. But he would listen to Lucy, to his mother, to his
father, in the hope that they might extricate her from her dilemma. He
believed, however, that only extreme measures would ever free her and
her father. Pan knew men of the Hardman and Matthews stripe.

He stepped out to confront Lucy, smiling and cool.

"Howdy, Lucy," he drawled, with the cowboy sang-froid she must know
well.

"Oh!" she cried, startled, and drawing back. Then she recovered. But
there was a single instant when Pan saw her unguarded self expressed in
her face.

"I was hiding behind there," he said, indicating the trees and bushes.

"What for?"

"I wanted to _see_ you really, without you knowing."

"Well?" she queried, gravely.

"As I remember little Lucy Blake she never had any promise of growing
so--so lovely as you are now."

"Pan, don't tease--don't flatter me now," she implored.

"Reckon I was just stating a fact. Let's sit down on the seat there,
and get acquainted."

He put her in the corner of the bench so she would have to face him,
and he began to talk as if there were no black trouble between them.
He wanted her to know the story of his life from the time she had seen
him last; and he had two reasons for this, first to bridge that gap in
their acquaintance, and secondly to let her know what the range had
made him. It took him two hours in the telling, surely the sweetest
hours he had ever spent, for he watched her warm to intense interest,
forget herself, live over with him the lonely days and nights on the
range, and glow radiant at his adventures, and pale and trembling over
those bloody encounters that were as much a part of his experience as
any others.

"That's my story, Lucy," he said, in conclusion. "I'd have come back
to you and home long ago, if I'd known. But I was always broke. Then
there was the talk about me. Panhandle Smith! So the years sped by.
It's over now, and I've found you and my people all well, thank God.
Nothing else mattered to me. And your trouble and Dad's bad luck do
not scare me.... Now tell me your story."

He had reached her. It had been wise fo