hadn't the excuse that I had. Take a
girl with eyes like Beryl--

A couple of days after that--days when I hadn't the nerve to go near the
little butte--Frosty drew six months' wages and disappeared without a word
to anybody. He didn't come back that night, and the next day Perry
Potter, who knows well the strange freaks cowboys will sometimes take when
they have been working steadily for a long time, suggested that I ride
over to Kenmore and see if Frosty was there, and try my powers of
persuasion on him--unless he was already broke; in which case, according
to Perry Potter, he would come back without any persuading. Perry Potter
added dryly that it wouldn't be out of my way any, and would only be a
little longer ride. I must say I looked at him with suspicion. The way
that little dried-up sinner found out everything was positively uncanny.

Frosty, as I soon discovered, was not in Kenmore. He had been, for
I learned by inquiring around that he had passed the night there at that
one little hotel. Also that he had, not more than two hours before--or
three, at most--hired a rig and driven on to Osage. A man told me that
he had taken a lady with him; but, knowing Frosty as I did, I couldn't
quite swallow that. It was queer, though, about his hiring a rig and
leaving his saddle-horse there in the stable. I couldn't understand it,
but I wasn't going to buy into Frosty's affairs unless I had to. I ate
my dinner dejectedly in the hotel--the dinner was enough to make any man
dejected--and started home again.

CHAPTER XV.

The Broken Motor-car.

Out where the trail from Kenmore intersects the one leading from Laurel to
and through King's Highway, I passed over a little hill and came suddenly
upon a big, dark-gray touring-car stalled in the road. In it Beryl King
sat looking intently down at her toes. I nearly fell off my horse at the
shock of it, and then my blood got to acting funny, so that my head felt
queer. Then I came to, and rode boldly up to her, mentally shaking hands
with myself over my good luck. For it was good luck just to see her,
whether anything came of it or not.

"Something wrong with the wheelbarrow?" I asked her, with a placid
superiority.

She looked up with a little start--she never did seem to feel my presence
until I spoke to her--and frowned prettily; but whether at me or at the
car, I didn't know.

"I guess something must be," she answered quite meekly, for her. "It keeps
making the