hem all know that SHE knew about it all
along.

When she reached home, to guard against another such surprise she
determined to keep the weapon with her, and, distrusting her pocket,
confided it to the cheap little country-made corset which only for
the last year had confined her budding figure, and which now, perhaps,
heaved with an additional pride. She was quite abstracted during the
rest of the day, and paid but little attention to the gossip of the farm
lads, who were full of a daring raid, two nights before, by the Mexican
gang on the large stock farm of a neighbor. The Vigilant Committee had
been baffled; it was even alleged that some of the smaller ranchmen
and herders were in league with the gang. It was also believed to be a
widespread conspiracy; to have a political complexion in its combination
of an alien race with Southwestern filibusters. The legal authorities
had been reinforced by special detectives from San Francisco. Lanty
seldom troubled herself with these matters; she knew the exaggeration,
she suspected the ignorance of her rural neighbors. She roughly referred
it, in her own vocabulary, to "jaw," a peculiarly masculine quality. But
later in the evening, when the domestic circle in the sitting-room had
been augmented by a neighbor, and Lanty had taken refuge behind her
novel as an excuse for silence, Zob Hopper, the enamored swain of the
previous evening, burst in with more astounding news. A posse of the
sheriff had just passed along the ridge; they had "corraled" part of the
gang, and rescued some of the stock. The leader of the gang had escaped,
but his capture was inevitable, as the roads were stopped. "All the
same, I'm glad to see ye took my advice, Miss Atalanty, and brought in
your filly," he concluded, with an insinuating glance at the young girl.

But "Miss Atalanty," curling a quarter of an inch of scarlet lip above
the edge of her novel, here "allowed" that if his advice or the filly
had to be "took," she didn't know which was worse.

"I wonder ye kin talk to sech peartness, Mr. Hopper," said Mrs. Foster
severely; "she ain't got eyes nor senses for anythin' but that book."

"Talkin' o' what's to be 'took,'" put in the diplomatic neighbor, "you
bet it ain't that Mexican leader! No, sir! he's been 'stopped' before
this--and then got clean away all the same! One o' them detectives got
him once and disarmed him--but he managed to give them the slip, after
all. Why, he's that full o' shif