girls--a little bit. Now and then.
I'm going fishing, Belle. I'm going to fish where there are fish. And
if I'm not back by the clock, for heck's sake don't get yourself
excited and call _me_ a mystery."

She called after him. "Lance, come back here and tell me the truth!
You don't believe--"

"Belle, I'll tell you the truth. Sure, I'll tell you the truth. I tell
you to cut out this worrying over nothing. Why, don't you know the
world is plumb full of real things to worry about?" He came close,
patting her on the shoulder as one pats a child who feels abused for
slight cause. "This notion of yours--it's all damned nonsense. Cut it
out."

He went off whistling, and Belle gazed after him dubiously, yet
reassured in spite of herself. After all, there was nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

WHEN A LORRIGAN LOVES

Followed a day of sweltering heat, when the horses in the corral
switched flies and sweated doing nothing; when all of the chickens
crawled under the coolest shelter they could find, and panted with
their wings spread away from their bodies; when the wind was like a
blast from an open furnace, and no man of his own choice remained in
the sun.

In the shade of the biggest haystack, Tom and Al squatted on their
boot heels with their faces toward the corral and the houses beyond,
and talked for two hours in low monotones while they broke spears of
fragrant hay into tiny bits and snapped the bits from them with thumb
and finger. From the house porch Lance saw them there and wondered
what they were talking about so long. He even meditated committing the
crime of eavesdropping, but he decided against it. Even if there had
been any point from which he could approach the two unseen, his soul
rebelled against such tactics employed in cold blood.

Devil's Tooth Ranch dragged somehow through its third day of inaction,
and that night prepared itself to sleep if possible, though the hot
wind still blew half a gale and the sky was too murky to show any
stars.

Daylight found Lance awake and brooding as he had done ever since his
return. He heard no sound in the house, and after a while he dressed
and went down to the bunk house. It was empty. No extra horses had
been corralled the night before, of that he was sure. Yet the boys
were gone again, and with them had gone Tom and Al. He looked and saw
Coaley in the box stall.

On this morning Lance asked no questions of Sam Pretty Cow or Shorty,
who presently appea