athering in her eyes.

"Nope. Jest heard a little about him along the road."

"What's his name?"

Then she coloured, even before Sue could say spitefully: "Didn't he even
have to tell you his name before he kissed you?"

"He did! His name is--Tony!"

"Tony!"--in deep disgust. "Well, he's dark enough to be a dago! Maybe
he's a foreign count, or something, Liz, and he'll take you back to live
in some castle or other."

But the girl queried, in spite of this badinage: "Do you know his name?"

"His name," said Nash, thinking that it could do no harm to betray as
much as this, "is Anthony Bard, I think."

"And you don't know him?"

"All I know is that the feller who used to own that piebald mustang is
pretty mad and cusses every time he thinks of him."

"He didn't steal the hoss?"

This with more bated breath than if the question had been: "He didn't
kill a man?" for indeed horse-stealing was the greater crime.

Even Nash would not make such an accusation directly, and therefore he
fell back on an innuendo almost as deadly.

"I dunno," he said non-committally, and shrugged his shoulders.

With all his soul he was concentrating on the picture of the man who
conquered a fighting horse and flirted successfully with a pretty girl
the same day; each time riding on swiftly from his conquest. The clues
on this trail were surely thick enough, but they were of such a nature
that the pleasant mind of Steve grew more and more thoughtful.

CHAPTER XIV

LEMONADE

In fact, so thoughtful had Nash become, that he slept with extraordinary
lightness that night and was up at the first hint of day. Sue appeared
on the scene just in time to witness the last act of the usual drama of
bucking on the part of the roan, before it settled down to the
mechanical dog-trot with which it would wear out the ceaseless miles of
the mountain-desert all day and far into the night, if need be.

Nash now swung more to the right, cutting across the hills, for he
presumed that by this time the tenderfoot must have gotten his bearings
and would head straight for Eldara. It was a stiff two day journey, now,
the whole first day's riding having been a worse than useless detour; so
the bulldog jaw set harder and harder, and the keen eyes squinted as if
to look into the dim future.

Once each day, about noon, when the heat made even the desert and the
men of the desert drowsy, he allowed his imagination to roam freely,
counting the thousa