over a girl
forgetting who she's promised to dance with."

"You don't want to see a fight start now, do you?" Lance smiled down
at her without in the least degree betraying to Mary Hope that he
would like to pull Jennie Miller by force from that seat and occupy it
himself.

"I never can see why men fight over things. I hate fights," Miss
Miller stammered, agitated by a wild feeling that perhaps she was
going to be made love to.

"Then don't forget that you are going to dance with me." The music
just then started again, and he offered her his arm with a certain
import that made Mary Hope clench her hands.

Mary Hope was punished for her lie. She had not promised that dance,
and so she sat on the plank bench and saw Lance and Jennie Miller
sway past her four times before a gawky youth who worked for her
father caught sight of her and came over from the water-bucket corner
to ask her for the dance. That was not the worst. On the fourth round
of Lance and Jennie, and just as the gawky one was bowing stiffly
before her, Lance looked at her over Jennie Miller's shoulder, and
smiled that tantalizing, Lorrigan smile that always left her uneasily
doubtful of its meaning.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A WAY HE HAD WITH HIM

It was at the chuck-wagon at midnight, while Riley and Sam Pretty Cow
were serving tin cups of black coffee to a shuffling, too-hilarious
crowd, that Lance next approached Mary Hope. She was standing on the
outskirts of a group composed mostly of women, quite alone so far as
cavaliers were concerned, for the gawky youth had gone after coffee.
She was looking toward the sagebrush camp-fire around which a crowd of
men had gathered with much horseplay at which they were laughing
loudly, and she was wondering how best she could make Lance Lorrigan
aware of her absolute indifference to him, when his voice drawled
disconcertingly close to her ear:

"You're not lonely now, you girl--and you did find a secret at
Cottonwood Spring. A pleasant little secret, wasn't it?"

Mary Hope's hands became fists at her side, held close against her
best frock. "I think the fellows over by the fire have discovered your
pleasant secret," she said, and did not turn her face toward him.

With his arms folded and his eyebrows pulled together and his lip
between his teeth, Lance stared down at her face, studying it in the
flicker of the distant firelight and the two lanterns. If her
combativeness roused in him any resentment,