ething. And wipe the wolf-look off your face.
After all, Jack's a girl, not a gun-fighter."

Then he knocked and opened the door.

She lay face down on her bunk, her head turned from them and toward the
wall. Slender and supple and strong, it was still only the size of her
boots and her hands that would make one look at her twice and then
guess that this was a woman, for she was dressed, from trousers even to
the bright bandanna knotted around her throat, like any prosperous
range rider.

Now, to be sure, the thick coils of black hair told her sex, but when
the broad-brimmed sombrero was pulled well down on her head, when the
cartridge-belt and the six-gun were slung about her waist, and most of
all when she spurred her mount recklessly across the hills, no one
could have suspected that this was not some graceful boy born and bred
in the mountain-desert, wilful as a young mountain-lion, and as
dangerous.

"Sleepy?" called Wilbur.

She waited a moment and then queried with exaggerated impudence: "Well?"

Ennui unspeakable was in that drawling monotone.

"Brace up; I've got news for you."

Her hand moved and all the graceful body, but it was only with a yawn.
What need was there to speak? She wished to be alone.

"And I've brought Pierre along to tell you about it.

"Oh!"

And she sat bolt upright with shining eyes. Instantly she remembered
to yawn again, but her glance smiled on them above her hand.

She apologized. "Awfully sleepy, Dick."

But he was not deceived. He said: "There's a dance down near the
Barnes place, and Pierre wants you to go with him."

Back tilted her head, and her throat stirred as if she were singing.

"Pierre! A dance?"

He explained: "Dick's lost his head over a girl with yellow hair, and
he wants me to go down and see her. He thought you might want to go
along."

Her face changed like the moon when a cloud blows across it. Before
she answered she slipped down on the bunk again, pillowed her head
leisurely on her arm, and answered with another slow, insolent yawn:
"Thanks! I'm staying home to-night."

Wilbur glared his rage covertly at Pierre, but the latter was blandly
unconscious that he had made any _faux pas_.

He said carelessly: "Too bad. It might be interesting, Jack?"

At his voice she looked up--a sharp and graceful toss of the head.

"What?"

"The girl with the yellow hair."

"Then go ahead and see her. I won't keep you. You don't mind if I go