't any gold or
anything else worth stealing--Ket, if dad isn't a miser, he's _poor_!
And Lone Morgan is merely ashamed of the way I talked to him, and
afraid I'll queer myself with the neighbours. No Western lead that _I_
ever saw would act like that. Why, he didn't even want to ride home
with me, that day.

"And Bob Warfield and his Ford are incidents of the past, and not one
soul at the Sawtooth seems to give a darn whether I'm in the country or
out of it. Soon as they found out where I belonged, they brought me
over here and dropped me and forgot all about me. And that, I suppose,
is what they call in fiction the Western spirit!

"Dad looked exactly as if he'd opened the door to a book agent when I
came. He--he _tolerates_ my presence, Ket! And Frank Johnson's pipe
smells to high heaven, and I hate him in the house and 'the
boys'--hmhm! The _boys_--Ket, it would be terribly funny, if I didn't
have to stay here."

She had reached the corral and stood balancing the cat on a warped top
rail, staring disconsolately at Yellowjacket, who stood in a far corner
switching at flies and shamelessly displaying all the angularity of his
bones under a yellowish hide with roughened hair that was shedding
dreadfully, as Lorraine had discovered to her dismay when she removed
her green corduroy skirt after riding him. Yellowjacket's lower lip
sagged with senility or lack of spirit, Lorraine could not tell which.

"You look like the frontispiece in that horse-doctor book," she
remarked, eyeing him with disfavour. "I can't say that comedy hide
you've got improves your appearance. You'd be better peeled, I
believe."

She heard a chuckle behind her and turned quickly, palm up to shield
her eyes from the straight, bright rays of the sun. Now here was a
live man, after all, with his hat tilted down over his forehead, a
cigarette in one hand and his reins in the other, looking at her and
smiling.

"Why don't you peel him, just on a chance?" His smile broadened to a
grin, but when Lorraine continued to look at him with a neutral
expression in her eyes, he threw away his cigarette and abandoned with
it his free-and-easy manner.

"You're Miss Hunter, aren't you? I rode over to see your father.
Thought I'd find him somewhere around the corral, maybe."

"You won't, because he's gone for the day. No, I don't know where."

"I--see. Is Mr Johnson anywhere about?"

"No, I don't believe anyone is anywhere about. They were