almost the
words that the Senator had used to lay Bat's suspicions, if the bodies
had been those of Government men, the Ranger's Badge would have been
found and the news flashed all over America.

"Oh, thank you, so much! You know the sheep lost on the Rim Rocks
belonged to our ranch; and I wouldn't like to think that he had lost
his life defending our interests."

Then something odd occurred with the telephone. She distinctly heard
the voice at the other end telling somebody that, "Brydges was up there
now." Then, the voice was assuring her, "They would let her know if
they heard anything more."

Eleanor rang off with a sense of relief; and yet with a sickening
feeling, of what? It was the same feeling she had had when Brydges
came in with his jaunty air.

She was standing at the Ranch House gate waiting for the stage to
Smelter City. Calamity had carried down the yellow suit case. The
words came from Eleanor's lips before she thought; or she could never
have asked the question:

"Calamity, who was it took your little baby away?"

The suit case fell from the Indian woman's hand.

"D' pries'," she said, "Father Moran."

Eleanor thought a moment, racking her memory in vain for that name in
her convent life of Quebec. She was digging her toe in the dust of the
road.

"Was that before or after you went to the Black Hills, Calamity?"

But Calamity had gone without a word; and the stage came whipping
across the bridge from the Moyese Ranch; a double-tandem stage driven
by a bronzed fellow with one arm, whose management of the reins
absorbed Eleanor so that she forgot to notice the fat form hoisting her
suit case to the roof. Then, she was inside; and the door had swung
shut; and the fat form squeezed in next to the door; and she was lost
in her own thoughts oblivious of her close packed neighbors till the
stage stopped again with a jerk, and the sharp edge of a black
cart-wheel-hat decorated with plumes enough for an undertaker's wagon
cut a swath that threatened to slice off one of Eleanor's ears.

"I beg your pardon," said Eleanor.

"Oh, I guess tha' wuz my fault," and a mouthful of gold teeth above an
ash colored V of neck and below the most wonderful straw stack of wheat
colored hair simpered up at Eleanor from beneath the black
cart-wheel-hat; simpered and ended up in a funny little tittering
laugh. Eleanor took a quick glance at her neighbors, all men but the
cart-wheel-hat to one side and a