irst row, third from the left in the
'Good-Night' chorus. Some kick to that song, wasn't there?"

"I should say yes. We're old friends, then, aren't we?" exclaimed Yeager
promptly. He buried her little hand in his big brown paw, a friendly
smile beaming through the disfigurements of his bruised face.

"He didn't do a thing to you, did he?" she commented, looking him over
frankly.

"Not a thing--except run me through a sausage-grinder, drop me out of
one of these aeroplanes, hammer my haid with a pile-driver, and jounce
me up and down on a big pile of sharp rocks. Outside of trifles like
that I had it all my own way."

"I don't see any alfalfa in _your_ hair," she laughed. Then, lowering
her voice discreetly, she added: "Harrison's a brute. I'll tell you
about him some time when Ruth isn't round."

"Ruth!" Steve glanced at the young girl who moved about the room with
such rhythmic grace helping the Chinese waiter serve her mother's
guests. "What has she got to do with Harrison?"

"Engaged to him--that's all. See that sparkler on her finger? Wouldn't
it give you a jolt that a nice little girl like her would take up with a
stiff like Harrison?"

"What's her mother thinking about?" asked the cowpuncher under cover of
the conversation that was humming briskly all around the tables.

Daisy lifted her shoulders in a careless little shrug. "Oh, her mother!
What's she got to do with it? Harrison has hypnotized the kid, I guess.
He throws a big chest, and at that he ain't bad-looking. He's one man
too, if he is a rotten bad lot."

The young woman breezed on to another subject in the light, inconsequent
fashion she had, and presently deserted Yeager to meet the badinage of
an extra sitting at an adjoining table.

After dinner Steve went to his new quarters to get a cigar he had left
on the table. It was one Farrar had given him. He was cherishing it
because his financial assets had become reduced to twenty cents and he
did not happen to know when pay-day was.

Yeager climbed the barn stairs humming a range song:--

"Black Jack Davy came a-riding along,
Singing a song so gayly,
He laughed and sang till the merry woods rang
And he charmed the heart of a lady,
And he charmed--"

Abruptly he pulled up in his stride and in his song. Ruth Seymour was in
the room putting new sheets and pillow-cases on the bed.

"I haven't had time before. I didn't think you would be through dinner
so soon," she expl