own. "I suspicioned that might be your name when I say
y'u come a-sailin' down from heaven to gather me up like Enoch."

"Why?"

"Well, ma'am, I happened to drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days
ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train
sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that
car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful seldom
in this country. I don't seem to remember having seen one before."

"I see. You're quite a Sherlock Holmes. Do you know anything more about
me?"

"I know y'u have just fallen heir to the Lazy D. They say y'u are a
schoolmarm, but I don't believe it."

"Well, I am." Then, "Why don't you believe it?" she added.

He surveyed her with his smile audacious, let his amused eyes wander
down from the mobile face with the wild-rose bloom to the slim young
figure so long and supple, then serenely met her frown.

"Y'u don't look it."

"No? Are you the owner of a composite photograph of the teachers of the
country?"

He enjoyed again his private mirth. "I should like right well to have
the pictures of some of them."

She glanced at him sharply, but he was gazing so innocently at the
purple Shoshones in the distance that she could not give him the snub
she thought he needed.

"You are right. My name is Helen Messiter," she said, by way of
stimulating a counter fund of information. For, though she was a young
woman not much given to curiosity, she was aware of an interest in this
spare, broad-shouldered youth who was such an incarnation of bronzed
vigor.

"Glad to meet y'u, Miss Messiter," he responded, and offered his firm
brown hand in Western fashion.

But she observed resentfully that he did not mention his own name. It
was impossible to suppose that he knew no better, and she was driven
to conclude that he was silent of set purpose. Very well! If he did not
want to introduce himself she was not going to urge it upon him. In a
businesslike manner she gave her attention to eating up the dusty miles.

"Yes, ma'am. I reckon I never was more glad to death to meet a lady than
I was to meet up with y'u," he continued, cheerily. "Y'u sure looked
good to me as y'u come a-foggin' down the road. I fair had been yearnin'
for company but was some discouraged for fear the invitation had
miscarried." He broke off his sardonic raillery and let his level gaze
possess her for a long moment. "Miss Messiter, I'm certainly un