n--backed by the fifty dollars a
month which Lester was paying for "instruction"--he would have been
"booted off the place."

Fan laughed at her father. "You better go slow; George Adelbert is
heeled."

Blondell snorted. "Heeled! He couldn't unlimber his gun inside of
fifteen minutes."

"Well, he can ride."

The old man softened a little. "Yes, he can ride, and he don't complain,
once he gets mounted, but he carries 'pajammys' in his saddle-bags and a
tooth-brush on his slicker; hanged if he don't use it, too!"

"That's what I like about him," she answered, defiantly. "We're all so
blamed careless about the way we live. I wish he'd jack us all up a
bit."

Truly Fan was under conviction, brought to a realization of her
slouchiness by Lester's care of his own room as well as by his lofty
manners. She no longer wore her dress open at the throat, and she kept
her yellow hair brushed, trying hard to make each meal a little less
like a pig's swilling. She knew how things ought to be done, a little,
for at "The Gold Fish Ranch" and at Starr Baker's everything was spick
and span (Mrs. Baker especially was a careful and energetic
housekeeper), but to keep to this higher level every day was too great
an effort even for a girl in love. She dropped back, now and again,
weary and disheartened.

It was her mating-time. She leaned to Lester from the first glance. The
strangeness of his accent, his reference to things afar off, to London
and Paris, appealed to her in the same way in which poetry moved
her--dimly, vaguely--but his hands, his eyes, his tender, low-toned
voice won her heart. She hovered about him when he was at home, careless
of the comments of the other men, ignoring the caustic "slatting" of her
mother. She had determined to win him, no matter what the father might
say--for to her all men were of the same social level and she as good as
the best. Indeed, she knew no other world than the plains of Colorado,
for she was born in the little dugout which still remained a part of
the kitchen. The conventions of cities did not count with her.

She was already aware of her power, too, and walked among the rough men
of her acquaintance with the step of an Amazonian queen, unafraid,
unabashed. She was not in awe of Lester; on the contrary, her love for
him was curiously mingled with a certain sisterly, almost maternal pity;
he was so easily "flustered." He was, in a certain sense, on her hands
like an invalid.

She s