, from the bandanna
that loosely embraced the brown throat above the flannel shirt to the
encrusted boots but through it the good humor of his tanned face smiled
fraternally on a young woman he passes at the entrance to the hotel. Her
gay smile met his cordially, and she was still in his mind while he
ran his eye down the register in search of the name he wanted. There
it was--Miss Nora Darling, Detroit, Michigan--in the neatest of little
round letters, under date of the previous day's arrivals.

"Is Miss Darling in?" asked McWilliams of the half-grown son of the
landlady who served in lieu of clerk and porter.

"Nope! Went out a little while ago. Said to tell anybody to wait that
asked for her."

Mac nodded, relieved to find that duty had postponed itself long enough
for him to pursue the friendly smile that had not been wasted on him
a few seconds before. He strolled out to the porch and decided at once
that he needed a cigar more than anything else on earth. He was helped
to a realization of his need by seeing the owner of the smile disappear
in an adjoining drug store.

She was beginning on a nut sundae when the puncher drifted in. She
continued to devote even her eyes to its consumption, while the foreman
opened a casual conversation with the drug clerk and lit his cigar.

"How are things coming in Gimlet Butte?" he asked, by way of prolonging
his stay rather than out of desire for information.

Yes, she certainly had the longest, softest lashes he had ever seen, and
the ripest of cherry lips, behind the smiling depths of which sparkled
two rows of tiny pearls. He wished she would look at HIM and smile
again. There wasn't any use trying to melt a sundae with it, anyhow.

"Sure, it's a good year on the range and the price of cows jumping," he
heard his sub-conscious self make answer to the patronizing inquiries of
him of the "boiled" shirt.

"Funny how pretty hair of that color was especially when there was so
much of it. You might call it a sort of coppery gold where the little
curls escaped in tendrils and ran wild. A fellow--"

"Yes, I reckon most of the boys will drop around to the Fourth of July
celebration. Got to cut loose once in a while, y'u know."

A shy glance shot him and set him a-tingle with a queer delight.
Gracious, what pretty dark velvety lashes she had!

She was rising already, and as she paid for the ice cream that innocent
gaze smote him again with the brightest of Irish eyes conceiv