tily. "You may call me at twenty
minutes of four, if you please," and she disappeared into the house.

Scott stood a moment after she was gone, an odd little smile on his lips.

"I wonder if she'd care--or would it be another case of Joyce Henderson?"
he said. "Well, serve me right for a fool if it was!" He kicked a stick
out of his way as he made for the wagon. "What have you got to offer a
girl, anyhow?" He took a pocket torch out and examined the wheel of the
wagon. "I've seen better looking wheels and then again I've seen worse,"
he decided, pessimistically. "If our luck holds we'll make it. Doggone it,
being civilized makes an awful idiot of a man. I'm going to dream of those
poor Yaquis we've just buried, sure as shoe leather."

Four o'clock does indeed come along early when you have not closed your
eyes before midnight. It also comes along chilly and dark and generally
uncomfortable. The women were awakened by Hard, who had to knock loudly on
their door in order to accomplish it. They tumbled to their feet and
performed the necessary dressing operations in the dark, except for a
candle which Clara lighted cautiously.

"And to think that people once lived by candlelight!" murmured Polly,
sleepily. "Were born, married, and finally died by it. Well, the race has
come up a peg, I'll say that for it."

Mrs. Conrad was ready first. She was very rapid, in a quiet, unhurried
fashion. In her corduroy skirt and jacket, she looked very girlish. Polly
mentally took five years off her estimate of her new acquaintance's age.

"Awfully natural looking woman, too," she commented, silently. "Most of
the pretty women I know at home are always doing things to
themselves--fussing over their looks; but she just seems to keep herself
fresh and neat and let it go at that, and she manages to look young and
handsome. As for me, I'm a rag and I look it, but perhaps as there are no
tremendous beauties around, I'll pass."

She followed Mrs. Conrad into the kitchen, where she found her busy with
Herrick over the breakfast. The pleasant odors of burning wood and boiling
coffee had already made themselves noticed. Scott, in a corner of the
kitchen, was working over the harness which he was getting into a
condition possible for use. He looked up and nodded as Polly entered.

"Your gentleman friend left a few things; we won't have to starve on the
road," he said, drily. "There's a side of bacon--wonder why he left
that?"

"Perhaps he di