r
that a girl got on the train and was taken by the porter to a section
back of Clay Lindsay. The man from Arizona noticed that she was
refreshingly pretty in an unsophisticated way.

A little later he had a chance to confirm this judgment, for the
dining-car manager seated her opposite him at a table for two. When
Clay handed her the menu card she murmured "Thank you!" with a rush of
color to her cheeks and looked helplessly at the list in her hand.
Quite plainly she was taking her first long journey.

"Do I have to order everything that is here?" she presently asked shyly
after a tentative and furtive glance at her table companion.

Clay felt no inclination to smile at her naivete. He was not very much
more experienced than she was in such things, but his ignorance of
forms never embarrassed him. They were details that seemed to him to
have no importance.

The cowpuncher helped her fill the order card. She put herself
entirely in his hands and was willing to eat whatever he suggested
unbiased by preferences of her own. He included chicken salad and ice
cream. From the justice she did her lunch he concluded that his choice
had been a wise one.

She was a round, soft, little person with constant intimations of a
childhood not long outgrown. Dimples ran in and out her pink cheeks at
the slightest excuse. The blue eyes were innocently wide and the
Cupid's-bow mouth invitingly sweet. The girl from Brush, Colorado, was
about as worldly-wise as a plump, cooing infant or a fluffy kitten, and
instinctively the eye caressed her with the same tenderness.

During the course of lunch she confided that her name was Kitty Mason,
that she was an orphan, and that she was on her way to New York to
study at a school for moving-picture actresses.

"I sent my photograph and the manager wrote back that my face was one
hundred per cent perfect for the movies," the girl explained.

It was clear that she was expecting to be manufactured into a film star
in a week or two. Clay doubted whether the process was quite so easy,
even with a young woman who bloomed in the diner like a rose of the
desert.

After they had finished eating, the range-rider turned in at the
smoking compartment and enjoyed a cigar. He fell into casual talk with
an army officer who had served in the Southwest, and it was three hours
later when he returned to his own seat in the car.

A hard-faced man in a suit of checks more than a shade too loud was