--to whom I
could speak out."

"I'm frightfully sorry," I stammered.

"Thanks. I know you are. And your brother is sorry, and everybody
else, too. The women, my neighbours in the brush-hills, look at me
with the same question in their eyes: 'What are you doing here?' they
say.

"How impertinent!"

"Pertinent, I call it."

From that moment I regarded her with different eyes. If she had brains
to measure obstacles, she might surmount them, for brains in a new
country are the one possession which adversity increases.

"Mrs. Misterton," I said slowly, "you are in a tight place, and I
won't insult your intelligence by calling it by a prettier name; but
you can pull yourself and Jim out of it, and I believe you will."

"Thanks," she said soberly.

For some weeks after this we saw little of the Mistertons. Then Jim
rode down to the ranch with an exciting piece of news.

"I've got a pup coming out."

A "pup" in California means a young English gentleman, generally the
fool of the family, who pays a premium to some fellow-countryman in
return for board and lodging and the privilege of learning not so much
how to do things as how not to do them--the latter being the more
common object-lesson afforded him. Ajax and I had gleaned experience
with pups, and we had long ago determined that no premium was adequate
compensation for the task and responsibility of breaking them in. Jim
went into details.

"It's Tomlinson-Thorpe. You fellows have heard of him, of course?"

"Never," said Ajax.

"The International! You ought to see him go through a scrum with half
a dozen fellows on his back."

"A footballer," said my brother thoughtfully.

"One of the best. Naturally he puts on a little side. He has money,
and I told him he could double it in a year or two."

"_You_ told him that? Have you doubled your capital, Jim?"

"Well--er--no. But I'm rather a Juggins. Thorpe is as 'cute as they
make 'em."

"A man of mind and muscle," murmured Ajax.

"And my greatest pal," added the enthusiastic James.

* * * * *

Both Ajax and I took a profound dislike to Tomlinson-Thorpe the moment
we set eyes upon him. He presented what is worst in the Briton abroad
--a complacent aggressiveness tempered by a condescension which nothing
but a bullet can lay low. But undeniably he was specially designed to
go through scrums or Kitchen Lancers, the admired of all beholders.

"A schoolgirl's darling," growled the i