ing a girl in these woods? Whatever are
you doing here? Poaching? No, I believe you don't have game preserves in
this country, so poaching isn't against your law." The stranger laughed,
though he had taken off his hat and bowed courteously to his fellow
traveler. "Please tell me, are you Rosalind in the forest of Arden? You
look like her, although I never heard of her on horseback," he ended
merrily.

Jacqueline bit her lips. The young man was evidently a newcomer in the
neighborhood and at any other time Jacqueline would have liked him. He
must have been about seventeen and was tall and slender, with light
brown hair and clever brown eyes. His dress was that of a cowboy, but
Jacqueline saw with a feeling of instant disdain that his clothes were
too new and his face too white for him to have lived long in her
country. Besides he did not ride or talk like a Westerner.

"I am Frank Kent, at your service," he explained, puzzled by
Jacqueline's haughty silence. "I am an Englishman and I don't quite know
what I ought to do or say out in Wyoming. But may I be of any service to
you?"

Jacqueline's feeling of hurt and anger began to subside and she smiled
in a more friendly fashion. Frank Kent decided that he had never seen
such a pretty girl before in his life. Had she been a city girl, her
skin would have been fair, but from her outdoor life it had become
exquisitely darkened by the wind and sun of the prairies. Her hair was
like bronze and her color a deep rose.

"I ought not to be asking favors of you," Jacqueline replied in her
usual manner. "You are a stranger in a strange land, while I have lived
out West since I was a baby. But can you show me the trail to the
Rainbow Ranch? Anyhow tell me how to get off of this place. I have
never been on it before, and--" To save her life Jacqueline could not
keep her voice from trembling.

"Surely I can show you," Frank answered. He spoke with such a funny
English accent, that Jacqueline would have liked to have made fun of
him, if she had known him better.

"I have heard a lot about the girls who run Rainbow Ranch," he went on
quickly. "They sound like such an awfully good sort that I have made Dan
Norton tell me a lot about them. I am visiting him, surely you must know
him," the young fellow concluded eagerly.

What in the world had he said? Frank Kent was startled. The girl he had
just met seemed quite friendly a moment before. Now she stiffened up on
her pony, her cheeks