al of
experience to make such an investment pay. I really think--"

"My school ends on the fourteenth of June. I'll get a substitute for the
last two months. I shall start for Wyoming on the eighteenth of April."

The man of law gasped, explained the difficulties again carefully as to
a child, found that he was wasting his breath, and wisely gave it up.

Miss Messiter had started on the eighteenth of April, as she had
announced. When she reached Gimlet Butte, the nearest railroad point
to the Lazy D, she found a group of curious, weatherbeaten individuals
gathered round a machine foreign to their experience. It was on a flat
car, and the general opinion ran the gamut from a newfangled sewing
machine to a thresher. Into this guessing contest came its owner with
so brisk and businesslike an energy that inside of two hours she was
testing it up and down the wide street of Gimlet Butte, to the wonder
and delight of an audience to which each one of the eleven saloons of
the city had contributed its admiring quota.

Meanwhile the young woman attended strictly to business. She had
disappeared for half an hour with a suit case into the Elk House;
and when she returned in a short-skirted corduroy suit, leggings and
wide-brimmed gray Stetson hat, all Gimlet Butte took an absorbing
interest in the details of this delightful adventure that had happened
to the town. The population was out _en masse_ to watch her slip down
the road on a trial trip.

Presently "Soapy" Sothern, drifting in on his buckskin from the Hoodoo
Peak country, where for private reasons of his own he had been for the
past month a sojourner, reported that he had seen the prettiest sight
in the State climbing under a gasoline bronc with a monkey-wrench in
her hand. Where? Right over the hill on the edge of town. The immediate
stampede for the cow ponies was averted by a warning chug-chug that
sounded down the road, followed by the appearance of a flashing whir
that made the ponies dance on their hind legs.

"The gasoline bronc lady sure makes a hit with me," announced "Texas,"
gravely. "I allow I'll rustle a job with the Lazy D outfit."

"She ce'tainly rides herd on that machine like a champeen," admitted
Soapy. "I reckon I'll drift over to the Lazy D with you to look after
yore remains, Tex, when the lightning hits you."

Miss Messiter swung the automobile round in a swift circle, came to an
abrupt halt in front of the hotel, and alighted without delay. A