had done everything the boys had done, except ride out
with them on certain long trips over the range. He had not gone simply
because they had made it quite plain that they did not want him.

Nor did the hired cowboys want him with them,--ten of them in the bunk
house with a cook of their own, and this only the middle of March! In
two years the personnel of the bunk house had changed almost
completely. They were men whom he did not know, men who struck him as
"hard-boiled," though he could not have explained just wherein they
differed from the others. Sam Pretty Cow and Shorty he could hobnob
with as of yore,--Sam in particular giving him much pleasure with his
unbroken reserve, his unreadable Indian eyes and his wide-lipped grin.
The others were like Duke, Tom and Al,--slightly aloof, a bit guarded
in their manner.

"And I suppose Mary Hope will be absolutely spoiled, with small-town
dignity laid a foot deep over her Scotch primness. Still, a girl that
has the nerve to lift a club and threaten to brain Tom Lorrigan--"

He had forgotten the love song he was singing, and before he reached
farther in his musings he met the Swedes, who stared at him round-eyed
and did not answer his careless hello. A little farther, the Boyle
children rode up out of a dry wash, grinned bashfully at him and
hurried on.

A saddlehorse was tied to a post near the Whipple shack. With long
legs swinging slightly with the stride of his horse, reins held
high and loose in one hand, his big hat tilted over his forehead,
Lance rode up and dismounted as if his errand, though important, was
not especially urgent. The door stood open. He walked up, tapped
twice with his knuckles on the unpainted casing, and entered,
pulling off his hat and turning it round and round in his gloved
fingers while he ducked his head, pressed his lips together with a
humorous quirk, shuffled his spurred feet on the dirty floor and
bowed again as awkwardly as he could. In this manner he hoped to
draw some little spark of individuality from Mary Hope, who sat behind
her yellow-painted table and stared at him over her folded arms.
But Mary Hope, he observed, had been crying, and compunction seized
him suddenly.

"Well, what is it?" she asked him curtly, rubbing a palm down over one
cheek, with the motion obliterating a small rivulet of tears.

"If you please, ma'am, I was sent to mend a lock on a door."

"What lock? On what door?" Mary Hope passed a palm down her oth