you think?" her mother asked listlessly.

"It's something about White Antelope, I know."

The woman looked up quickly.

"He go visit Bear Chief, maybe." There was an odd note in her voice.

"He wouldn't go away and stay like this without telling you or me. He
never did before. He knows I would worry; besides, he didn't take a horse,
and he never would walk ten miles when there are horses to ride. His gun
isn't here, so he must have gone hunting, but he wouldn't stay all night
hunting rabbits; and he couldn't be lost, when he knows the country as
well as you or me."

"He go to visit," the Indian woman insisted doggedly.

"If he isn't home to-morrow, I'm goin' to hunt him, but I know something's
wrong."

V

SMITH MAKES MEDICINE WITH THE SCHOOLMARM

Once out of sight of the house, Smith let his horse take its own gait,
while he viewed the surrounding country with the thoughtful consideration
of a prospective purchaser. As he gazed, its possibilities grew upon him.
If water was to be found somewhere in the Bad Lands the location of the
ranch was ideal for--certain purposes.

The Bar C cattle-range bounded the reservation on the west; the MacDonald
ranch, as it was still called, after the astute Scotch squawman who had
built it, was close to the reservation line; and beyond the sheltering Bad
Lands to the northeast was a ranch where lived certain friendly persons
with whom he had had most satisfactory business relations in the past.

A plan began to take definite shape in his active brain, but the head of a
sleepy white pony appearing above the next rise temporarily changed the
course of his thoughts, and with his recognition of its rider life took on
an added zest.

Dora Marshall, engrossed in thought, did not see Smith until he pulled his
hat-brim in salutation and said:

"You're a thinker, I take it."

"I find my work here absorbing," she replied, coloring under his steady
look.

He turned his horse and swung it into the road beside her.

"I was just millin' around and thought I'd ride down the road and meet
you." Further than this brief explanation, he did not seem to feel it
incumbent upon him to make conversation. Apparently entirely at his ease
in the silence which followed, he turned his head often and stared at her
with a frank interest which he made no effort to conceal. Finally he
shifted his weight to one stirrup and, turning in his saddle so that he
faced her, he asked bluntly:

"Th