ts and disguises thar ain't no spottin'
him. He walked right under the constable's nose oncet, and took a drink
with the sheriff that was arter him--and the blamed fool never knew it.
He kin change even the color of his hair quick as winkin'."

"Is he a real Mexican,--a regular Greaser?" asked the paternal Foster.
"Cos I never heard that they wuz smart."

"No! They say he comes o' old Spanish stock, a bad egg they threw outer
the nest, I reckon," put in Hopper eagerly, seeing a strange animated
interest dilating Lanty's eyes, and hoping to share in it; "but he's
reg'lar high-toned, you bet! Why, I knew a man who seed him in his own
camp--prinked out in a velvet jacket and silk sash, with gold chains
and buttons down his wide pants and a dagger stuck in his sash, with a
handle just blazin' with jew'ls. Yes! Miss Atalanty, they say that one
stone at the top--a green stone, what they call an 'em'ral'--was worth
the price o' a 'Frisco house-lot. True ez you live! Eh--what's up now?"

Lanty's book had fallen on the floor as she was rising to her feet
with a white face, still more strange and distorted in an affected yawn
behind her little hand. "Yer makin' me that sick and nervous with yer
fool yarns," she said hysterically, "that I'm goin' to get a little
fresh air. It's just stifling here with lies and terbacker!" With
another high laugh, she brushed past him into the kitchen, opened the
door, and then paused, and, turning, ran rapidly up to her bedroom. Here
she locked herself in, tore open the bosom of her dress, plucked out
the dagger, threw it on the bed, where the green stone gleamed for an
instant in the candlelight, and then dropped on her knees beside the bed
with her whirling head buried in her cold red hands.

It had all come to her in a flash, like a blaze of lightning,--the
black, haunting figure on the ridge, the broken saddle girth, the
abandonment of the dagger in the exigencies of flight and concealment;
the second meeting, the skulking in the dry, alder-hidden "run," the
changed dress, the lighter-colored hair, but always the same voice and
laugh--the leader, the fugitive, the Mexican horse-thief! And she, the
Godforsaken fool, the chuckle-headed nigger baby, with not half the
sense of her own filly or that sop-headed Hopper--had never seen it!
She--SHE who would be the laughing-stock of them all--she had thought
him a "locater," a "towny" from 'Frisco! And she had consented to keep
his knife until he w