er
father before his sentence expired. Her faith in her dad seemed to
Lite a wonderful thing, but he himself could not altogether share it,
although he had lately come to feel a very definite doubt about Aleck's
guilt. Money could not help them, except that it could buy back the
Lazy A and restock it, and make of it the home it had been three years
ago.

Lite, in the secret heart of him, did not want Jean to set her heart on
doing that. Lite was almost in a position to do it himself, just as he
had planned and schemed and saved to do, ever since the day when he
took Jean to the Bar Nothing, and announced to her that he intended to
take care of her in place of her father. He had wanted to surprise
Jean; and Jean, with her usual headlong energy bent upon the same
object, seemed in a fair way to forestall him, unless he moved very
quickly.

"Lite, you won't spoil everything now, just when I'm given this great
opportunity, will you?" Jean's voice was steady again. She could even
meet his eyes without flinching. "Gil says it's a great opportunity,
in every way. It's a series of pictures, really, and they are to be
called 'Jean, of the Lazy A.' Gil says they will be advertised a lot,
and make me famous. I don't care about that; but the company will pay
me more, and that means--that means that I can get out and find Art
Osgood sooner, and--get dad home. And you will have to help. The
whole thing, as I have planned it, depends upon you, Lite. The riding
and the roping, and stuff like that, you'll have to do. You'll have to
work right alongside me in all that outdoor stuff, because I am going
to quit doing all those spectacular, stagey stunts, and get down to
real business. I've made Burns see that there will be money in it for
his company, so he is perfectly willing to let me go ahead with it and
do it my way. Our way, Lite, because, once you start with it, you can
help me plan things." Whereupon, having said almost everything she
could think of that would tend to soften that stubborn look in Lite's
face, Jean waited.

Lite did a great deal of thinking in the next two or three minutes, but
being such a bottled-up person, he did not say half of what he thought;
and Jean, closely as she watched his face, could not read what was in
his mind. Of Aleck he thought, and the slender chance there was of any
one doing what Jean hoped to do; of Art Osgood, and the meager
possibility that Art could shed any light upon