ok out for
him and not let him forget me. I hope you won't do that
yourselves. Some of the other girls are nice enough. It will
be all right soon as we get to understand each other. Don't
think I'm starting out to buck or that I'm unhappy, because
I'm not."

"If she's happy, I'm a Gila lizard," said Mormon. "What's the sense of
havin' her miserable fo' the sake of a li'l' book learnin'. She's
gettin' to spell so I can't make out what she's writin' about."

At last Molly wrote that she had made the basketball team and won honors
and favors. She gained laurels for Corona in swimming and tennis, and
life went more merrily. Mormon looked up tennis outfits in his mail
catalogue and sent for a book on the game, which he soon abandoned.

"You have to learn a foreign langwidge before you start to play," he
said. "Leastwise a code. The langwidge ain't what you'd expect them to
be handin' out in a young lady's college. All erbout deuce an' love. I'd
a notion we'd fix up the game fo' her so she'd c'ud keep it up but I
dunno. It sure ain't a fat man's game. It's a human grasshopper's."

CHAPTER XI

PAY DIRT

In September there was a killing in the Good Luck Pool Room, the murder
of a stranger whose friends made such an investigation, backed by the
real law-and-order element of Hereford, that the exposure brought about
forfeiture of all licenses and a strict shutting down on gambling and
illicit liquor. Plimsoll left Hereford for his horse ranch, deprived of
the sheriff's official countenance, and Jordan began to worry about
election.

One evening in early October a little body of riders came to the Three
Star, all strangers to the county, men whose faces were grim, who
cracked no jokes, whose greetings were barely more than civil. They were
well armed and they acted like men of a single purpose.

"This is the Three Star, ain't it?" asked the leader of a cowboy, who
nodded silently, taking in the appearance of the visitors.

"Bourke, Peters and Manning?"

"One and all," answered the Three Star rider. "Find 'em at chuck, I
reckon. You-all are jest in time. If you aim to stay overnight I'll tend
yore hawsses an' put 'em in the corral."

"You seem hospitable here."

The tone was half sarcastic.

"Rule of the ranch," replied Buck. "Folks arrivin' after sun-down, the
same bein' strangers, is expected to pass the night, if they're in no
hurry."

Sandy personally backed the invitation a m