a hit she had scored!
Dave had ricochetted ever since between amusement and chagrin at her
generalship. She had deliberately created for him opportunities--a
whole evening full of them--to confess about Irene Hardy, and when he
had refused to admit that he had anything to confess she had confounded
him with an incident that admitted no explanation. For a moment he had
stood speechless, overcome with the significance of what she had said;
the next, he reached out to detain her, but she was already on the
stairs of her apartment and waving him a laughing good-night. And now
that voice--

Dave had no plan. He simply walked into Conward's office. His eye
took in the little group, and the mind behind caught something of its
portent. Irene's beauty! What a quickening of the pulses was his as
he saw in this splendid woman the girl who had stirred and returned his
youthful passion! But Dave had poise. Upon a natural ability to take
care of himself in a physical sense, environment and training had
imposed a mental resourcefulness not easily taken at a disadvantage.
He walked straight to Irene.

"I heard your voice," he said, in quiet tones that gave no hint of the
emotion beneath. "I am very glad to see you again." He took the hand
which she extended in a firm, warm grasp; there was nothing in it, as
Irene protested to herself, that was more than firm and warm, but it
set her finger-tips a-tingling.

"My mother, Mr. Elden," she managed to say, and she hoped her voice was
as well controlled as his had been. Mrs. Hardy looked on the
clean-built young man with the dark eyes and the brown, smooth face,
but the name suggested nothing. "You remember," Irene went on. "I
told you of Mr. Elden. It was at his ranch we stayed when father was
hurt."

"But I thought he was a cow _puncher_," exclaimed Mrs. Hardy, with no
abatement of the contempt which she always compressed into the one
western term which had smuggled into her vocabulary.

"Times change quickly in the West, madam," said Dave. There was
nothing in his voice to suggest that he had caught the note in hers.
"Most of our business men--at least, those bred in the country--have
thrown a lasso in their day. You should hear them brag of their
steer-roping yet in the Ranchmen's Club." Irene's eyes danced. Dave
had already turned the tables; where her mother had implied contempt he
had set up a note of pride. It was a matter of pride among these
square-built,