housand and when she
was off to school she showed that she wasn't no common trash. She wanted
to be an opery singer, but then her mother died and Marian done what
looked to be her duty. A bird in a trap is what I call her."

Bud regretted having opened the subject, and praised the cooking by way
of turning his hostess's thoughts into a different channel. He asked
her if she would accept him as a boarder while he was in town, and was
promptly accepted.

He did not want to appear in public until the bank was opened, and
he was a bit troubled over identification. There could be no harm, he
reflected, in confiding to Mrs. Hanson as much as was necessary of
his adventures. Wherefore he dried the dishes for her and told her his
errand in town, and why it was that he and his horse had slept in her
corral instead of patronizing hotel and livery stable. He showed her the
checks he wanted to cash, and asked her, with flattering eagerness for
her advice, what he should do. He had been warned, he said, that Jeff
and his friends might try to beat him yet by stopping payment, and he
knew that he had been followed by them to town.

"What You'll do will be what I tell ye," Mrs Hanson replied with
decision. "The cashier is a friend to me--I was with his wife last month
with her first baby, and they swear by me now, for I gave her good care.
We'll go over there this minute, and have talk with him. He'll do what
he can for ye, and he'll do it for my sake."

"You don't know me, remember," Bud reminded her honestly.

The widow Hanson gave him a scornful smile and toss of her head. "And
do I not?" she demanded. "Do you think I've buried three husbands and
thinking now of the fourth, without knowing what's wrote a man's face?
Three I buried, and only one died his bed. I can tell if a man's honest
or not, without giving him the second look. If you've got them checks
you should get the money on them--for I know their stripe. Come on with
me to Jimmy Lawton's house. He's likely holding the baby while Minie
does the dishes."

Mrs. Hanson guessed shrewdly. The cashier of the Crater County Bank was
doing exactly what she said he would be doing. He was sitting in the
kitchen, rocking a pink baby wrapped in white outing flannel with blue
border, when Mrs. Hanson, without the formality of more than one warning
tap on the screen door, walked in with Bud. She held out her hands for
the baby while she introduced the cashier to Bud. In the next brea