"He sure has taken a notion to you," Starr persisted between mouthfuls.
"You can have him, for all of me. I don't want the blame cur tagging me
around. I'm liable to take a shot at him if I get peeved over
something--"

"You dare!" Helen May regarded him sternly from under her lashes, her
chin tilted downward. "Do you always take a shot at something when you
get peeved?"

"Well, I'm liable to," Starr admitted darkly. "A dog especially. You
better keep him if you don't want him hurt or anything." He took a bite
of pie. (It was not very good pie. The crust was soggy because Johnny
Calvert's cook stove was not a good baker, and the frosting had gone
watery, because the eggs were stale, and Helen May had made a mistake and
used too much sugar in the filling; but Starr liked it, anyway, just
because she had made it.) "Maybe you can learn him to herd goats," he
suggested, as though the idea had just occurred to him.

"Oh, I wonder if he would! Would you, doggums?"

"We'll try him a whirl and see," Starr offered cheerfully. He finished
the pie in one more swallow, handed back the plate, and wiped his
fingers, man-fashion, on his trousers.

"Come on, Pat. He likes Pat for a name," he explained carefully to Helen
May. "I called him about every name I could think of, and that's the one
he seems to sabe most."

"I should say he does! Why, he left his bone when you called Pat. Now
that's a shame, doggums!"

"Oh, well, we'll let him polish off his bone first." Starr made the offer
with praiseworthy cheerfulness, and sat down on his heels with his back
against the adobe wall to wait the dog's pleasure.

"Well, that makes up for some of the rocks," Helen May approved
generously, "and for some of the names you say you called him. And that
reminds me, Man of the Desert, I suppose you have a name of some sort. I
never heard what it was. Is it--Smith, perhaps?"

"My name's Starr," he told her, with a little glow under the tan of his
cheeks. "S, t, a, double r, Starr. I forgot I never told you. I've got a
couple of given names, but I'd want to shoot a man that called me by
'em. Folks always call me just Starr, and maybe a few other things
behind my back."

Helen May dropped her chin and looked at him steadily from under her
eyebrows. "If there's anything that drives me perfectly wild," she said
finally, "it's a mystery. I've just simply got to know what those names
are. I'll never mention them, honest. But--"

"Chauncy De