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e, Miss Mallory, but I reckon I know your father." Her father! What made him say that? She wanted to speak, but she felt she could not. In another moment, if he went on, she must do SOMETHING--she would cry! "I reckon you'll be wanting to go to the hotel first, anyway?" There!--she knew it! He WOULD keep on! And now she had burst into tears. The mare was still walking slowly; the man was lazily bending forward over the shafts as if nothing had occurred. Then suddenly, illogically, and without a moment's warning, the pride that had sustained her crumbled and became as the dust of the road. She burst out and told him--this stranger!--this man she had disliked!--all and EVERYTHING. How she had felt, how she had been deceived, and what she had overheard! "I thought as much," said her companion, quietly, "and that's why I sent for your father." "You sent for my father!--when?--where?" echoed Rose, in astonishment. "Yesterday. He was to come to-day, and if we don't find him at the hotel it will be because he has already started to come here by the upper and longer road. But you leave it to ME, and don't you say anything to him of this now. If he's at the hotel, I'll say I drove you down there to show off the mare. Sabe? If he isn't, I'll leave you there and come back here to find him. I've got something to tell him that will set YOU all right." He smiled grimly, lifted the reins, the mare started forward again, and the vehicle and its occupants disappeared in a vanishing dust cloud. CHAPTER VI It was nearly noon when Mr. Dawson finished rubbing down his sweating mare in the little stable shed among the wheat. He had left Rose at the hotel, for they found Mr. Mallory had previously started by a circuitous route for the wheat ranch. He had resumed not only his working clothes but his working expression. He was now superintending the unloading of a wain of stores and implements when the light carryall of the Randolphs rolled into the field. It contained only Mrs. Randolph and the driver. A slight look of intelligence passed between the latter and the nearest one of Dawson's companions, succeeded, however, by a dull look of stupid vacancy on the faces of all the others, including Dawson. Mrs. Randolph noticed it, and was forewarned. She reflected that no human beings ever looked NATURALLY as stupid as that and were able to work. She smiled sarcastically, and then began with dry distinctness and narrowing
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