" she
cut in quickly. "Have you seen them?"

It's a wonder my face didn't betray the fact that I was holding
something back. I know I must have looked guilty for a second. That was
a question I would gladly have passed up, but her eyes demanded an
answer.

"Well," I protested, "it occurred to me that if you expected to meet
your father here in a day or two, Rutter would naturally be with him,
seeing that they've paddled in the same canoe since a good many years
before you were born, my lady. What jarred you all loose from Texas? And
what the mischief did you do to MacRae that he quit the South next
spring after I did, and straightway went to soldiering in this
country?"

She shied away from that query, just as I expected. "We had oceans of
trouble after you left there, Sarge," she told me, turning her head from
me so that her gaze wandered over the barrack-square. "It really doesn't
make pleasant telling, but you'll understand better than some one that
didn't know the country. You remember Dick Feltz, and that old trouble
about the Conway brand that dad bought a long time back?"

I nodded; I remembered Mr. Feltz very well indeed, for the well-merited
killing of one of his hired assassins was the main cause of my hasty
departure from Texas.

"Well, it came to a head, one day, in Fort Worth. They shot each other
up terribly, and a week or so later Feltz died. His people in the East
got it into their heads that it was a case of murder. They stirred up
the county authorities till every one was taking sides. Of course, dad
was cleared; but that seemed to be the beginning of a steady run of bad
luck. The trial cost an awful lot of money, and made enemies, too. Feltz
had plenty of friends of his own calibre--you know that to your sorrow,
don't you, Sarge?--and they started trouble on the range. It was simply
terrible for a while. Dad can supply the details when he comes." ("when
he comes"--I tell you, that jarred me.) "Finally things got to such a
pass that dad had to quit. And what with a deal in some Mexican cattle
that didn't turn out well, and some other business troubles that I never
quite understood, we were just about finished when we closed out."

She let her eyes meet mine for an instant, and they were smiling, making
light of it all. Most women, I thought, would have had a good cry, or at
least pulled a long face, over a hard-luck story like that. But she was
really more of a woman than I had thought her, and