h, yes! You hold the reins between your
firm, white teeth while you roll--"

"Lady, I never travelled with no show," Andy protested mildly and
untruthfully. _Was_ she just joshing? Or didn't she know any better?
She looked sober as anything, but somehow her eyes kind of--

"You see, I know some things about you. Those are chaps" (Heavens! She
called them the way they are spelled, without the soft sound of s!)
"That you're wearing for--trousers" (Andy blushed modestly. He was not
wearing them "for trousers".), "and you've got jingling rowels at your
heels, and those are taps--"

"You're going to be shy a yard or two of calico if that black
lamb-critter has his say-so," Andy cut in remorselessly, and hastily
made and lighted his cigarette while she was rescuing her blue calico
skirt from the jaws of the black lamb and puckering her eyebrows over
the chewed place. When her attention was once more given to him, he
was smoking as unobtrusively as possible, and he was gazing at her
with a good deal of speculative admiration. He looked hastily down at
the lambs. "Mary had _two_ little lambs," he murmured inanely.

"They're not mine," she informed him, taking him seriously--or seeming
to do so. Andy had some trouble deciding just how much of her was
sincere. "They were here when I came, and I can't take them back with
me, so there's no use in claiming them. They'd be such a nuisance on
the train--"

"I reckon they would," Andy agreed, "if yuh had far to go."

"Well, you can't call San Jose _close_," she observed, meditatively.
"It takes four days to come."

"You're a long way from home. Does it--are yuh homesick, ever?" Andy
was playing for information without asking directly how long she
intended to stay--a question which had suddenly seemed quite
important. Also, why was she stopping here with Take-Notice Johnson,
away off from everybody?

"Seeing I've only been here four days, the novelty hasn't worn off
yet," she replied. "But it does seem more like four weeks; and how
I'll ever stand two months of it, not ever seeing a soul but father--"

Andy looked reproachful, and also glad. Didn't she consider him a
soul? And Take-Notice was her dad! To be sure, Take-Notice had never
mentioned having a daughter, but then, in the range-land, men don't go
around yawping their personal affairs.

Before Take-Notice returned, Andy felt that he had accomplished much.
He had learned that the young woman's name really was Mary, and