the trial had cost. And she wished she knew how to get about
setting some one on the trail of Art Osgood.

Jean was sure that Art Osgood knew something about the murder, and she
frequently tried to make Lite agree with her. Sometimes she was sure
that Art Osgood was the murderer, and would argue and point out her
reasons to Lite. Art had been working for her uncle, and rode often to
the Lazy A. He had not been friendly with Johnny Croft,--but then,
nobody had been very friendly with Johnny Croft. Still, Art Osgood was
less friendly with Johnny than most of the men in the country, and just
after the murder he had left the country. Jean laid a good deal of
stress upon the circumstance of Art Osgood's leaving on that particular
afternoon, and she seemed to resent it because no one had tried to find
Art. No one had seemed to think his going at that time had any
significance, or any bearing upon the murder, because he had been
planning to leave, and had announced that he would go that day.

Jean's mind, as her bank account grew steadily to something approaching
dignity, worked back and forth incessantly over the circumstances
surrounding the murder, in spite of Lite's peculiar attitude toward the
subject, which Jean felt but could not understand, since he invariably
assured her that he believed her dad was innocent, when she asked him
outright.

Sometimes, in the throes of literary composition, she could not think
of the word that she wanted. Her eyes then would wander around
familiar objects in the shabby little room, and frequently they would
come to rest upon her father's saddle or her father's chaps: the chaps
especially seemed potent reminders of her father, and drew her thoughts
to him and held them there. The worn leather, stained with years of
hard usage and wrinkled permanently where they had shaped themselves to
his legs in the saddle, brought his big, bluff presence vividly before
her, when she was in a certain receptive mood. She would forget all
about her story, and the riding and shooting and roping she had done
that day to appease the clamorous, professional appetite of Robert
Grant Burns, and would sit and stare, and think and think. Always her
thoughts traveled in a wide circle and came back finally to the
starting point: to free her father, and to give him back his home, she
must have money. To have money, she must earn it; she must work for
it. So then she would give a great sigh of relaxed n