ter if she didn't wear such clumsy shoes. Well, I'd see
that she didn't. She seems to be sweet and gentle and sympathetic, and
the sort of woman that would be absorbed in her husband and his
interests. She's overfond of flattery, moral, mental and physical.
Gets that from Frenchy, I suppose, for you can start him strutting
like a rooster any time with a dozen words. But that isn't much of a
fault in a wife, after all, for if a fellow can only remember about it
it's the easiest way in the world to keep a woman happy. Well, I'll
think about it. There are no rivals in the field, and it will be time
enough to decide when I make my next visit to Las Plumas."

The next day he went to tell Marguerite good-bye and sat talking with
her a long time upon her veranda. Las Plumas had noticed the frequency
of his calls at the Delarue house on his last trip to the town, and
when it saw him there again two days in succession it felt sure that
a love story was going on under the roses and honeysuckles. The smoke
of the engine which carried him away had scarcely melted on the
horizon before people were saying to one another that it would be a
splendid match and what a fine thing it was for Marguerite Delarue
that so rich a man as Wellesly had fallen in love with her.

Judge Harlin at once drove out to Emerson Mead's ranch in order that
he might learn, from Mead's own lips, exactly what had happened to
Wellesly and what sort of a compact Mead had made with him concerning
the finding of Will Whittaker's body. They sat under the trees
discussing Wellesly's character, after Mead had told the whole story
down to their parting at Muletown.

"By the way," said Harlin, "they are saying, over in town, that
Wellesly is stuck on Frenchy Delarue's daughter, and that they are to
be married next fall. She is a stunning pretty girl, and as good as
she is pretty, but it seems to me rather odd for Wellesly to come down
here to get a wife. He's the sort of man you would expect to look for
money and position in a wife, rather than real worth."

CHAPTER XVI

When Thomson Tuttle and Nick Ellhorn reached the little canyon in the
Oro Fino mountains they saw that the two would-be kidnappers must have
been there since Wellesly's departure for three of the four horses
were quietly grazing, with hobbled feet, beside the rivulet. They
speculated upon what the absence of the fourth horse might mean while
they staked their own beasts and started on the t