s with Lahoma just to suit you? The
kind of people you're talking about are more afraid of getting to know
strangers than they are of being set on by wildcats."

"They'll make friends with Lahoma, all right, and invite her home with
'em. That's the way I 'low to set her out in the big world. Lahoma
don't know my plans and neither do they, but I was never a man to make
my plans knowed when I was going to hold up people. Of course I'M
speaking in a figger, but in a figger I may say I've held up several,
in my day."

"THEY won't invite Lahoma to Chicago, not if they are the right sort."

"They will invite Lahoma to Chicago," retorted Willock firmly, "and
they are the right sort. Wait and see; and when you have saw, render
due honor to your Uncle Brick."

CHAPTER XIII

A SURE-ENOUGH MAN

"Pardner, I sure am glad to see you--put 'er there again! How are you
feeling, anyhow? Look mighty tough and wiry, I do say; Here, Bill!"
Willock raised his voice to a powerful shout, "Bill! come and see
what's blowed in with the tumbleweed and tickle-grass. A sure-enough
man, that's what I call him, and me to fight if any dispute's made to
the title, according."

The tall bronzed man who was leading his horse along the road entering
the mountain horseshoe, smiled with a touch of gravity in the light of
his gray eyes. Willock found his chin more resolute, his glance more
assured and penetrating, while his step, firm and alert, told of
dauntless purpose. He was no longer the wandering cowboy content with
a bed on the ground wherever chance might find him at night, but a
mature man who had taken root in the soil of his own acres. Only
twenty-five or six, his features were still touched with the last
lingering mobility of youth; but the set of his mouth and the gleam of
his eyes hinted at years of battle against storms, droughts and
loneliness. He was already a veteran of the prairie, despite his youth.

"Everything looks very natural!" murmured Wilfred Compton, gazing about
on the seamed walls of granite in whose crevices the bright cedars
mocked at winter's threatening hand.

"Yes, mountains is lots more natural than humans. They just sets there
serene and indifferent not caring whether you likes their looks or not,
and they let 'er blow and let 'er snow, it's all one to them. I reckon
when we've been dead so long that nobody could raise a dispute as to
whether we'd ever lived or not, that there same boulder what