ole in the ground, Lorraine consented to mount and
ride while Lone walked beside her, agreeing with everything she said
that needed agreement. When she had gone a few rods, however, she
began to call him Charlie and to criticise the direction of the
picture. They should not, she declared, mix murders and thunderstorms
in the same scene. While the storm effect was perfectly _wonderful_,
she thought it rather detracted from the killing. She did not believe
in lumping big stuff together like that. Why not have the killing done
by moonlight, and use the storm when the murderer was getting away, or
something like that? And as for taking them out on location and making
all those storm scenes without telling them in advance so that they
could have dry clothes afterwards, she thought it a perfect outrage!
If it were not for spoiling the picture, she would quit, she asserted
indignantly. She thought the director had better go back to driving a
laundry wagon, which was probably where he came from.

Lone agreed with her, even though he did not know what she was talking
about. He walked as fast as he could, but even so he could not travel
the six miles to the ranch very quickly. He could see that the girl
was burning up with fever, and he could hear her voice growing
husky,--could hear, too, the painful labouring of her breath. When she
was not mumbling incoherent nonsense she was laughing hoarsely at the
plight she was in, and after that she would hold both hands to her
chest and moan in a way that made Lone grind his teeth.

When he lifted her off his horse at the foreman's cottage she was
whispering things no one could understand. Three cowpunchers came
running and hindered him a good deal in carrying her into the house,
and the foreman's wife ran excitedly from one room to the other, asking
questions and demanding that some one do something "for pity's sake,
she may be dying for all you know, while you stand there gawping like
fool-hens."

"She was out all night in the rain--got lost, somehow. She said she
was coming here, so I brought her on. She's down with a cold, Mrs
Hawkins. Better take off them wet clothes and put hot blankets around
her. And a poultice or something on her chest, I reckon." Lone turned
to the door, stopped to roll a cigarette, and watched Mrs Hawkins
hurrying to Lorraine with a whisky toddy the cook had mixed for her.

"A sweat's awful good for a cold like she's got," he volunteered
pr