ly-looking grasshopper is the most
easily captured, though not so satisfactory for bait as the pea-green or
the gray-pink. It was to the first variety that Dora and Ralston devoted
themselves, while Susie followed the smaller and more sprightly around the
hill till she was out of sight.

Ralston became aware that no matter in which direction the grasshopper he
had marked for his own took him, singularly enough he always ended in
pursuit of Dora's. As a matter of fact, her grasshopper looked so much
more desirable than his, that he could not well do otherwise than abandon
the pursuit of his own for hers.

Her low "Oh, thank you so much!" was so heartfelt and sincere when he
pushed the insect through the slit in her pasteboard box that he truly
believed he would have run one all the way to the Middle Fork of Powder
River only to hear her say it again. And then her womanly aversion to
inflicting pain, her appealing femininity when she brought a bulky-bodied,
tobacco-chewing grasshopper for him to pinch its head into insensibility!
He liked this best of all, for, of necessity, their fingers touched in the
exchange, and he wondered a little at his strength of will in refraining
from catching her hand in his and refusing to let go.

Finally a grasshopper of abnormal size went up with a whir. Big he was, in
comparison with his kind, as the monster steer in the side-show, the
Cardiff giant, or Jumbo the mammoth.

"Oh!" cried Dora; "we must have him!" and they ran side by side in wild,
determined pursuit.

The insect sailed far and fast, but they could not lose sight of him, for
he was like an aeroplane in flight, and when in an ill-advised moment he
lit to gather himself, they fell upon him tooth and nail--to use a phrase.
Dora's hand closed over the grasshopper, and Ralston's closed over Dora's,
holding it tight in one confused moment of delicious, tongue-tied
silence.

Her shoulder touched his, her hair brushed his cheek. He wished that they
might go on holding down that grasshopper until the end of time. She was
panting with the exertion, her nose was moist like a baby's when it
sleeps, and he noticed in a swift, sidelong glance that the pupils of her
eyes all but covered the iris.

"He--he's wiggling!" she said tremulously.

"Is he?" Ralston asked fatuously, at a loss for words, but making no move
to lift his hand.

"And there's a cactus in my finger."

"Let me see it." Immediately his face was full of deep conc