able. It
lingered for just a ponderable sunlit moment or him. She had smiled once
more.

After a decent interval Mac pursued his petit charmer to the hotel.
She was seated on the porch reading a magazine, and was absorbedly
unconscious of him when he passed. For a few awkward moments he hung
around the office, then returned to the porch and took the chair most
distant from her. He had sat there a long ten minutes before she let
her hands and the magazine fall into her lap and demurely gave him his
chance.

"Can you tell me how far it is to the Lazy D ranch?"

"Seventy-two miles as the crow flies, ma'am."

"Thank you."

The conversation threatened to die before it was well born. Desperately
McWilliams tried to think of something to say to keep it alive without
being too bold.

"If y'u were thinking of traveling out that way I could give y'u a lift.
I just came in to get another lady--an old lady that has just come to
this country."

"Thank you, but I'm expecting a conveyance to meet me here. You didn't
happen to pass one on the way, I suppose?"

"No, I didn't. What ranch were y'u going to, ma'am?

"Miss Messiter's--the Lazy D."

A suspicion began to penetrate the foreman's brain. "Y'u ain't Miss
Darling?"

"What makes you so sure I'm not?" she asked, tilting her dimpled chin
toward him aggressively.

"Y'u're too young," he protested, helplessly.

"I'm no younger than you are," came her quick, indignant retort.

Thus boldly accused of his youth, the foreman blushed. "I didn't mean
that. Miss Messiter said she was an old lady--"

"You needn't tell fibs about it. She couldn't have said anything of the
kind. Who are you, anyhow?" the girl demanded, with spirit.

"I'm the foreman of the Lazy D, come to get Miss Darling. My name is
McWilliams--Jim McWilliams."

"I don't need your first name, Mr. McWilliams," she assured him,
sweetly. "And will you please tell me why you have kept me waiting here
more than thirty hours?"

"Miss Messiter didn't get your letter in time. Y'u see, we don't get
mail every day at the Lazy D," he explained, the while he hopefully
wondered just when she was going to need his last name.

"I don't see why you don't go after your mail every day at least,
especially when Miss Messiter was expecting me. To leave me waiting
here thirty hours--I'll not stand it. When does the next train leave for
Detroit?" she asked, imperiously.

The situation seemed to call for diplomacy, and Jim