ill Ford did not appear. Josephine came, however, in riding skirt and
gray hat and gauntlets, treading lightly down the path that lay all in a
yellow glow which was not so much sunlight as that mellow haze which we
call Indian Summer. She looked in at the stable, and then came straight
over to Dick. There was, when Josephine was her natural self, something
very direct and honest about all her movements, as if she disdained all
feminine subterfuges and took always the straight, open trail to her
object.

"Do you know where Mr. Campbell is, Dick?" she asked him, and added no
explanation of her desire to know.

"I do," said Dick, with the rising inflection which was his habit, when
the words were used for a bait to catch another question.

"Well, where is he, then?"

Dick straightened up and smiled down upon her queerly. "Count ten before
you ask me that again," he parried, "because maybe you'd rather not
know."

Josephine lifted her chin and gave him that straight, measuring stare
which had so annoyed Ford the first time he had seen her. "I have
counted," she said calmly after a pause. "Where is Mr. Campbell,
please?"--and the "please" pushed Dick to the very edge of her favor, it
was so coldly formal.

"Well, if you're sure you counted straight, the last time I saw him he
was in the bunk-house."

"Well?" The tone of her demanded more.

"He was in the bunk-house--sitting close up to a gallon jug of whisky."
His eyelids flickered. "He's there yet--but I wouldn't swear to the
gallon--"

"Thank you very much." This time her tone pushed him over the edge and
into the depths of her disapproval. "I was sure I could depend upon
you--to tell!"

"What else could I do, when you asked?"

But she had her back to him, and was walking away up the path, and if
she heard, she did not trouble to answer. But in spite of her manner,
Dick smiled, and brought the hammer down against a post with such force
that he splintered the handle.

"Something's going to drop on this ranch, pretty quick," he prophesied,
looking down at the useless tool in his hand. "And if I wanted to name
it, I'd call it Ford." He glanced up the path to where Josephine was
walking straight to the west door of the bunk-house, and laughed sourly.
"Well, she needn't take my word for it if she don't want to, I guess,"
he muttered. "Nothing like heading off a critter--or a woman--in time!"

Josephine did not hesitate upon the doorstep. She opened the door and