a gleam of sunshine in her fresh, sweet youth; and not even in her own
school room had she ever found herself the focus of a cleaner, more
unstinted admiration. For the outdoors West takes off its hat reverently
to women worthy of respect, especially when they are young and friendly.

Helen Messiter had come to Wyoming because the call of adventure, the
desire for experience outside of rutted convention, were stirring her
warm-blooded youth. She had seen enough of life lived in a parlor, and
when there came knocking at her door a chance to know the big, untamed
outdoors at first hand she had at once embraced it like a lover. She
was eager for her new life, and she set out skillfully to make these
men tell her what she wanted to know. To them, of course, it was an old
story, and whatever of romance it held was unconscious. But since she
wanted to talk of the West they were more than ready to please her.

So she listened, and drew them out with adroit questions when it was
necessary. She made them talk of life on the open range, of rustlers and
those who lived outside the law in the upper Shoshone country, of the
deadly war waging between the cattle and sheep industries.

"Are there any sheep near the Lazy D ranch?" she asked, intensely
interested in Soapy's tale of how cattle and sheep could no more be got
to mix than oil and water.

For an instant nobody answered her question; then Soapy replied, with
what seemed elaborate carelessness:

"Ned Bannister runs a bunch of about twelve thousand not more'n fifteen
or twenty miles from your place."

"And you say they are spoiling the range?"

"They're ce'tainly spoiling it for cows."

"But can't something be done? If my cows were there first I don't see
what right he has to bring his sheep there," the girl frowned.

The assembled company attended strictly to supper. The girl, surprised
at the stillness, looked round. "Well?"

"Now you're shouting, ma'am! That's what we say," enthused Texas,
spurring to the rescue.

"It doesn't much matter what you say. What do you do?" asked Helen,
impatiently. "Do you lie down and let Mr. Bannister and his kind drive
their sheep over you?"

"Do we, Soapy?" grinned Texas. Yet it seemed to her his smile was not
quite carefree.

"I'm not a cowman myself," explained Soapy to the girl. "Nor do I run
sheep. I--"

"Tell Miss Messiter what yore business is, Soapy," advised Yorky from
the end of the table, with a mouthful of biscuit