mind and laid her
plans while she sat there pinning on her hat.

She got up quietly and slipped out. She was going to Nogales, Mexico,
wherever that was. She was going to get Art Osgood, and she didn't
care whether she had to fight her way clear through "Warring Mexico."
She would find him and get him and bring him back.

In the lobby, while she paused with a truly feminine instinct to tip
her hat this way and that before the mirror, and give her hair a
tentative pat or two at the back, the grinning face of Lite Avery in
his gray Stetson appeared like an apparition before her eyes. She
turned quickly.

"Why, Lite!" she said, a little startled.

"Why, Jean!" he mimicked, in the bantering voice that was like home to
her. "Don't rush off; haven't seen you to-day. Wait till I get you a
ticket, and then you come back and help me admire ourselves. I came
down on a long lope when somebody said you caught a street car headed
this way. Thought maybe I'd run across you here. Knew you couldn't
stay away much longer from seeing how you look. Ain't too proud to sit
alongside a rough-neck puncher, are you?"

Jean looked at him understandingly. Lite's exuberance was unusual; but
she knew, as well as though he had told her, that he had been lonesome
in this strange city, and that he was overjoyed at the sight of her,
who was his friend. She unpinned her hat which she had been at some
pains to adjust at the exact angle decreed by fashion.

"Yes, I'll go back with you," she drawled. "I want to see how you like
the sight of yourself just as you are. It--it's good for one, after the
first shock wears off." She would not say a word about that Mexican
picture, she thought; but she wanted to see if Lite also would
recognize Art Osgood, and feel as sure of his identity as she had felt.
That would make her doubly sure of her self. She could do what she
meant to do without any misgivings whatsoever. She could afford to
wait a little while and have the pleasure of Lite's presence beside
her. Lite was homesick and lonesome;--she felt it in every tone and in
every look;--almost as homesick and lonesome as she was herself. She
would not hurt him by going off and leaving him alone, even if she had
not wanted to be with him and to watch the effect that Mexican picture
would have upon him. Lite believed Art Osgood was in the Klondyke.
She would wait and see what he believed after he had seen that Nogales
picture.

She waited.