ood
are they, Swann?'"

"I seen what he wanted. He wanted to know how many scrappy gents was
punchin' cows here; maybe them three up there figures that they might
need help. From what? What was they runnin' away from?"

"Hey!" broke in one of the cowpunchers, pointing with a dramatic fork
through the window.

It was a bright spot of gold that disappeared over the top of the
nearest hill; then it came into view again, the whole body of a
yellow-haired child, clothed in a wisp of white, and running steadily
toward the north.

"The kid!" gasped the foreman. "Boys, grab her. No, you'd bust her; I
know how to handle her!"

He was gone through the door with gigantic leaps and shot over the crest
of the low hill. Then those in the cookhouse heard a small, tingling
scream; after it, came silence, and the tall foreman striding across the
hill with the child high in his arms. He came panting through the door
and stood her up on the end of the table, a small and fearless creature.
She wore on her feet the little moccasins which Dan himself had
fashioned for her, but the tawny hide was not on her--perhaps her mother
had thrown the garment away. The moccasins and the white nightgown
were the sum and substance of her apparel, and the cowpunchers stood up
around the table to admire her spunk.

"Damed near spat pizen," observed Ben Swann, "when I hung into
her--tried to bite me, but the minute I got her in my hands she quit
strugglin', as reasonable as a grown-up, by God!"

"Shut up, Ben. Don't you know no better'n to cuss in front of a kid?"

The great, dark eyes of Joan went somberly from face to face. If she was
afraid, she disguised it well, but now and then, like a wild thing which
sees that escape is impossible, she looked through the window and out
over the open country beyond.

"Where was you headed for, honey?" queried Ben Swann.

The child considered him bravely for a time before she replied.

"Over there."

"Over there? Now what might she mean by that? Headed for Elkhead--in a
nightgown? Any place I could take you, kid?"

If she did not altogether trust Ben Swann, at least she preferred him
to the other unshaven, work-thinned faces which leered at her around the
table.

"Daddy Dan," she said softly. "Joan wants to go to Daddy Dan."

"Daddy Dan--Dan Barry," translated Ben Swann, and he drew a bit away
from her. "Boys, that mankillin' devil must be around here; and that's
what them up to the house was runni