at what she had done; then, holding out
several rattles for inspection, she said:

"Looks like you don't care for snakes."

"You--you little----"

Only Susie guessed the unspeakable epithet he meant to use. Her eyes
warned him, and, too, he remembered Dora in time. He said instead, with a
slight laugh of confusion:

"Snakes scares me, and rat-traps goin' off."

The color had not yet returned to his face when a knock came upon the
door.

In response to Susie's call, a tall stranger stepped inside--a stranger
wide of shoulder, and with a kind of grim strength in his young face.

From the unnatural brightness of the eyes of Susie and of Smith, and their
still tense attitudes, Ralston sensed the fact that something had
happened. He returned Smith's unpleasant look with a gaze as steady as his
own. Then his eyes fell upon Dora and lingered there.

She had sprung to her feet and was still standing. Her cheeks were
flushed, her eyes luminous, and the soft lamplight burnishing her brown
hair made the moment one of her best. Smith saw the frank admiration in
the stranger's look.

"May I stop here to-night?" He addressed Dora.

He had the characteristic Western gravity of manner and expression, the
distinguishing definiteness of purpose. Though the quality of his voice,
its modulation, bespoke the man of poise and education, the accent was
unmistakably of the West.

"There's a bunk-house." It was Smith who answered.

His unuttered epithet still rankled; Susie turned upon him with insulting
emphasis:

"And you'd better get out to it!"

"Are you the boss here?" The stranger put the question to Smith with cool
politeness.

"What I say _goes!_"

Smith looked marvellously ugly.

Susie leaned toward him, and her childish face was distorted with anger as
she shrieked:

"_Not yet, Mister Smith!_"

Involuntarily, Dora and the stranger exchanged glances in the awkward
silence which followed. Then, more to relieve her embarrassment than for
any other reason, Ralston said quietly, "Very well, I will do as
this--gentleman suggests," and withdrew.

"Good-night," said Dora, gathering up her books; but neither Smith nor
Susie answered.

With both hands deep in his trousers' pockets, Smith was smiling at Susie,
with a smile which was little short of devilish; and the girl, throwing a
last look of defiance at him, also left the room, violently slamming
behind her the door of the bed-chamber occupied by her mother and