f talk about him an' a
girl down the river that's got a crippled brother--Paul Ekblad's his
name; hers is Thelmy--an' some considerable about one of the Poser girls
where he was up the Sage Brush to this week. The married one now, I
think, an' a bouncin' big baby, but what do you care for all that?"

"Nothing," Jerry replied, innocently.

The steel hooks turned slowly to lacerate deeper.

"Well, I must be goin'. You give me your word you wouldn't cheep about
my forgettin' an' runnin' in here. York's such a torment, I'd never hear
the last of it. I know you are a honorable one with your promises, an' I
like that kind. I'm glad I met you. An' I'll not say a word, neither,
'bout your goin' to see York in his private office. It's a bargain
'tween us two. Laury's an awfully good friend of yours an' she'll keep
you here a good long while, she's that hos_pit_able."

The steel hooks tore their way out, and the woman rose and strode
quickly away. In a minute she had literally dropped from view in the
shaded slope beyond the driveway.

"I might as well punch a stick in water or stick a pin in old Granddad
Poser's tombstone out in the cimetery, an' expect to find a hole left,
as to do anything with that pink-an'-white-an'-gold critter!" she
exclaimed, viciously, as she disappeared in the shadows. "I'm afraider
of her than I would be of a real mad-cat, but she can't scare me!"

Out on the lawn the moon just then seemed to cast a weird gleam of
light, and to veil rather than reveal the long street beyond it. For a
minute after the passing of her uninvited caller Jerry Swaim was filled
with an unaccountable fright. Then her pulse beat calmly again and she
smiled at herself.

"I don't seem to fear these Kansas men--Mr. Ponk, for example, nor that
Teddy-bear creature down by the deep hole in the Sage Brush. But these
Kansas women, except Laura--anybody would except Laura--are so
impossible. That dairy-maid type of a Thelma, and that woman-and-baby
combination, for example; and some of the women really scare me. That
aborigine down in the brush by the river, in her shabby clothes and
sunbonnet eclipse; and now this 'Stellar' comes catfooting out of the
house and lands over yonder in the shadows. She needn't have been bored
because she didn't find the folks at home, and she needn't frighten me
so. I never was afraid of Aunt Jerry. I ought to be proof against
anybody else. And yet maybe I am in the way here, even if they drive the