ong way from the home range. I was here a day or two ago. How
did you manage to keep out of sight--or have you just got in?"

"Yesterday, only," she returned. "We--you remember old Mammy Thomas,
don't you?--came over from Benton with the Baker freight outfit. I
expect to meet dad here, in a few days."

Her last sentence froze the words that were all ready to slip off the
end of my tongue, and made my grouch against MacRae crystallize into a
feeling akin to anger. Why couldn't the beggar stand his ground and
deliver the ugly tidings himself? That bunch of cottonwoods with the
new-made grave close by the dead horses seemed to rise up between us,
and I became speechless. I hadn't the nerve to stand there and tell her
she'd never see her father again this side of the pearly gates. Not I.
That was a job for somebody who could put his arms around her and kiss
the tears away from her eyes. Unless I read her wrong, there was only
one man who could make it easier for her if he were by, and he was
walking away as if it were none of his concern.

Something of this must have shown in my face, for she was beginning to
regard me curiously. I gathered my scattered wits and started to make
some attempt at conversation, but the man with the shoulder-straps
forestalled me.

"Really, we must go, Miss Rowan, or we shall be late for luncheon," he
drawled. The insolent tone of him was like having one's face slapped,
and it didn't pass over Lyn's head by any means. I thought to myself
that if he had set out to entrench himself in her good graces, he was
taking the poorest of all methods to accomplish that desirable end.

"Just a moment, major," she said. "Are you going to be here any length
of time, Sarge?"

"A day or so," I responded shortly. I didn't feel overly cheerful
with all that bad news simmering in my brain-pan, and in addition
I had conceived a full-grown dislike for the "major" and his
I-am-superior-to-you attitude.

"Then come and see me this afternoon if you can. I'm staying with Mrs.
Stone. Don't forget, now--I have a thousand things I want to talk about.
Good-bye." And she smiled and turned away with the uniformed snob by her
side.

MacRae had loitered purposely, and I overtook him in a few rods.

"Well," I blurted out, as near angry as I ever got at MacRae in all the
years I'd known him, "you're a high-headed cuss, confound you! Is it a
part of your new philosophy of life to turn your back on every one that
you eve