not turn her head, and
he rode on more confidently. At the mouth of Lazy A coulee, just where
stood the cluster of huge rocks that had at one time come hurtling down
from the higher slopes, and the clump of currant bushes beneath which
Jean used to hide her much-despised saddle when she was a child, she
disappeared from view. Gil, knowing very little of the ways of the
range folk, and less of the country, kicked his horse into a swifter
pace and galloped after her.

Fifty yards beyond the currant bushes he heard a sound and looked back;
and there was Jean, riding out from her hiding-place, and coming after
him almost at a run. While he was trying to decide what to do about
it, she overtook him; rather, the wide loop of her rope overtook him.
He ducked, but the loop settled over his head and shoulders and pulled
tight about the chest. Jean took two turns of the rope around the
saddle horn and then looked him over critically. In spite of herself,
she smiled a little at his face, streaked still with grease paint, and
at his eyes staring at her from between heavily penciled lids.

"That's what you get for following," she said, after a minute of
staring at each other. "Did you think I didn't know you were trailing
along behind me? I saw you before I turned the cattle loose, but I
just let you think you were being real sly and cunning about it. You
did it in real moving-picture style; did your fat Mr. Robert Grant
Burns teach you how? What is the idea, anyway? Were you going to
abduct me and lead me to the swarthy chief of your gang, or band, or
whatever you call it?"

Having scored a point against him and so put herself into a good humor
again, Jean laughed at him and twitched the rope, just to remind him
that he was at her mercy. To be haughtily indignant with this
honest-eyed, embarrassed young fellow with the streaky face and
heavily-penciled eyelids was out of the question. The wind caught his
high, peaked-crowned sombrero and sent it sailing like a great,
flapping bird to the ground, and he could not catch it because Jean had
his arms pinioned with the loop.

She laughed again and rode over to where the hat had lodged. Gil
Huntley, to save himself from being dragged ignominiously from the
saddle, kicked his horse and kept pace with her. Jean leaned far over
and picked up the hat, and examined it with amusement.

"If you could just live up to your hat, my, wouldn't you be a villain,
though!" she comme