ve another little hack behind his hand. "I went up to
the stable yesterday with a book, and laid down in the hay. And I went
to sleep, and Pete thought I was lost, I guess." He grinned, which was
not pleasant, for he chewed tobacco and had ugly, discolored teeth into
the bargain.

"I like to lay in the hay," he added lifelessly. "I guess I'll take my
bed up there; that lean-to is awful hot."

"Well, you're lucky that you can do exactly as you please, and sleep
whenever you please." Miss Georgie turned to her telegraph instrument,
and began talking in little staccato sparks of electricity to the agent
at Shoshone, merely as a hint to Saunders to take himself away.

"Ain't been anything for me?" he asked, still lingering.

Miss Georgie shook her head. He waited a minute longer, and then
sidled out, and when he was heard crunching over the cinders with his
barrow-load of boxes, she switched off the current abruptly, and went
over to the window to watch him.

"Item," she began aloud, when he was quite gone, her eyes staring
vacantly down the scintillating rails to where they seemed to meet in
one glittering point far away in the desert. "Item--" But whatever the
item was, she jotted it down silently in that mental memorandum book
which was one of her whims. "Once I put a thing in that little blue
book of mine," she used to tell her father, "it's there for keeps. And
there's the advantage that I never leave it lying around to be lost,
or for other people to pick up and read to my everlasting undoing. It's
better than cipher--for I don't talk in my sleep."

The four-thirty-five train came in its own time, and brought the two
missing placer miners. But it did not bring Baumberger, nor Peaceful
Hart, nor any word of either. Miss Georgie spent a good deal of time
staring out of the window toward the store that day, and when she
was not doing that she was moving restlessly about the little office,
picking things up without knowing why she did so, and laying them down
again when she discovered them in her hands and had no use for them. The
ice cream came, and the cake, and the magazines; and she left the whole
pile just inside the door without undoing a wrapping.

At five o'clock she rose abruptly from the rocker, in which she had just
deposited herself with irritated emphasis, and wired her chief for leave
of absence until seven.

"It's important, Mr. Gray. Business which can't wait," she clicked
urgently. "I'll be back