athered, and with the acquisitive instincts of a trade rat.

Then we rounded back on our way to the Arrow head ranch house. Five
miles up the narrowing valley we could see its outposts and its smoke.
Far below us the spick-and-span buildings of deserted Broadmoor
glittered newly, demanding that I be told more of them. Yet for the
five-mile ride I added, as I thought, no item to my slender stock.
Instead, when we had descended from the bench and were again in fields
where the gates might be opened only by galling effort, I learned
apparently irrelevant facts concerning Egbert Floud's pet kitten.

"Yes, sir; he's just like any old maid with that cat. 'Kitty!' here and
'Kitty!' there; and 'Poor Kitty, did I forget to warm its milk?' And so
on. It was give to him two years ago by Jeff Tuttle's littlest girl,
Irene; and he didn't want it at first, but him and Irene is great
friends, so he pretended he was crazy about it and took it off in his
overcoat pocket, thinking it would die anyway, because it was only skin
and bones. Whenever it tried to purr you'd think it was going to shake
all its timbers loose. His house is just over on the other side of
Arrowhead Pass there, and I saw the kitten the first day he brought it
up, kind of light brown and yellow in colour, with some gray on the left
shoulder.

"Well, the minute I see these markings I recognized 'em and remembered
something, and I says right off that he's got some cat there; and he
says how do I know? And I tell him that there kitten has got at least a
quarter wildcat in it. Its grandmother, or mebbe its great-grandmother,
was took up to the Tuttle Ranch when there wasn't another cat within
forty miles, and it got to running round nights; and quite a long time
after that they found it with a mess of kittens in a box out in the
harness room. One look at their feet and ears was all you'd want to see
that their pa was a bobcat. They all become famous fighting characters,
and was marked just like this descendant of theirs that Cousin Egbert
has. And, say, I was going on like this, not suspecting anything except
that I was giving him some interesting news about the family history of
this pet of his, when he grabs the beast up and cuddles it, and says I
had ought to be ashamed of myself, talking that way about a poor little
innocent kitten that never done me a stroke of harm. Yes, sir; he was
right fiery.

"I don't know how he come to take it that cross way, for he hadn't