tains. And like as not Jack's in Shellanne roosting on somebody's
pool table and telling it scary, instead uh staying at home looking
after his stuff. Where yuh going, Bud?"

"I'm going to ride down there," Thurston answered constrainedly. "The
women may be all alone."

"Well, I'll go along, if you'll hold on a minute. Jack ain't got a lick
uh sense. I don't care if he is Mona's brother."

"Half brother," corrected Thurston, as he swung up into the saddle. He
had a poor opinion of Jack and resented even that slight relation to
Mona.

The road was soggy with the rain which fell steadily; down in the
bottom, the low places in the road were already under water, and the
river, widening almost perceptibly in its headlong rush down the narrow
valley, crept inch by inch up its low banks. When they galloped into the
yard which sloped from the house gently down to the river fifty yards
away, Mona's face appeared for a moment in the window. Evidently she had
been watching for some one, and Thurston's heart flopped in his chest
as he wondered, fleetingly, if it could be himself. When she opened the
door her eyes greeted him with a certain wistful expression that he had
never seen in them before. He was guilty of wishing that Park had stayed
in camp.

"Oh, I'm glad you rode over," she welcomed--but she was careful, after
that first swift glance, to look at Park. "Jack wasn't at camp, was he?
He went to town this morning, and I looked for hi back long before now.
But it's a mistake ever to look for Jack until he's actually in sight."

Park smiled vaguely. He was afraid it would not be polite to agree with
her as emphatically as he would like to have done. But Thurston had no
smile ready, polite or otherwise. Instead he drew down his brows in a
way not complimentary to Jack.

"Where is your mother?" he asked, almost peremptorily.

"Mamma went to Great Falls last week," she told him primly, just
grazing him with one of her impersonal glances which nearly drove him to
desperation. "Aunt Mary has typhoid fever--there seems to be so much of
that this spring and they sent for mamma. She's such a splendid nurse,
you know."

Thurston did know, but he passed over the subject. "And you're alone?"
he demanded.

"Certainly not; aren't you two here?" Mona could be very pert when she
tried. "Jack and I are holding down the ranch just now; the boys are all
on roundup, of course. Jack went to town today to see some one.

"Um-m-yes, of