me they were good folks,
you always knew where you would find them, and Wilhelmina was as pretty
as a picture.

No rouge on those cheeks and yet they were as pink as the petals of a
blushing rose, and her lips were as red as Los Angeles cherries and her
eyes were as honest as the day. Nothing fly about her, she had not
learned the tricks that the candy-girls and waitresses knew, and yet she
was as wise as many a grown man and could think circles around him when
it came to an argument. She could see right through his bluffing and put
her finger on the spot which convinced even him that he was wrong, but
if he refrained from opposing her she was as simple as a child and her
only desire was to please. She was not self-seeking, all she wanted was
his company and a chance to give expression to her thoughts; and when he
would listen they got on well enough, it was only when he boasted that
she rebelled. For she could not endure his masculine complacency and his
assumption that success made him right, and when he had gone away she
had told him to his face that he was a blow-hard and his money was
tainted.

Wunpost mulled this over, too, as he rode on up Jail Canyon and when he
sighted the house he took Manuel Apache's scalp-lock and hid it inside
his pack. After risking his life to bring his love this token he thought
better of it and brought only himself. He would come back a friend, one
who had seen trouble as they had but was not boasting of what he had
done--and if anyone asked him what he had done to Lynch he would pass it
off with some joke. So he talked too much, did he? All right, he would
show them; he would close his trap and say nothing; and in a week
Wilhelmina would be following him around everywhere, just begging to
know about his arm. But no, he would tell her it was just a sad
accident, which no one regretted more than he did; and rather than seem
to boast he would say in a general way that it would never happen again.
And that would be the truth, because from what Eells had said he was
satisfied the Apaches had buried Lynch.

But how, now, was he to approach this matter of the money which he was
determined to advance for the road? That would call for diplomacy and he
would have to stick around a while before Billy would listen to reason.
But once she was won over the whole family would be converted; for she
was the boss, after all. She wore the overalls at the Jail Canyon Ranch
and in spite of her pretty wa