n the giraffe's hoof and remarked to the bystanders, "Hell! There ain't
no such animile!"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Brophy was distinctly inhospitable when Lida walked into the tavern.

She curtly stated her errand as she passed him on her way to the stairs,
and when she returned with her bag he allowed her to leave without
opening his mouth. She took the money he offered and put it in her
pocket without counting it.

The men who were about the place were silent, too. The fact that Flagg
was sending her away in his own hitch stirred their curiosity and had
considerable to do with keeping their rude tongues off a person who had
evidently come to an understanding with the master of the big house.

"Where are ye headed, Dick?" asked a bystander while the girl was in the
tavern.

"Up and down," stated the old man, cryptically.

"Well, if you want to overtake them chums of hers you'll have to lay on
the braid pretty smart! If they kept on going at the rate they started
off they're halfway to the junction by now."

When the girl was in her seat Dick sent the bays along at a sharp clip
down the highway by which Crowley and his companion had departed.

Lida had conferred with Dick on the way down from the big house and had
decided on a bit of guile to divert the attention of the gossips of
Adonia from her real objective. According to all appearances she was in
full flight toward the city, or else was chasing up Ward Latisan; the
cynics, after that affair in the street when she had pleaded with the
young man, opined that she was brazen enough to do almost anything that
a girl should not.

Brophy watched her out of sight.

"If it ain't one thing it's another with these table girls," was his
sour comment. "I don't know what I'm liable to draw next; the Queen of
Sheby, maybe!"

When a hill shut off the view from Adonia the bays swung into a side
lane which connected with the tote road leading north along the Noda
waters.

A girl who wore for her armor Latisan's jacket and his cap, and carried
as credentials the woods baton of the last of the independent timber
barons of the Noda, was hastening on her mission with the same sort of
fervent zeal that made Joan of Arc a conqueror.

Family fealty, the eager desire to right in some measure the wrong done
by her father, anxious determination to repair her own fault--all these
were animating impulses in this Joan of the Northland. But now
especially was she aware that sh