e, Miss Mallory, but I
reckon I know your father."

Her father! What made him say that? She wanted to speak, but she
felt she could not. In another moment, if he went on, she must do
SOMETHING--she would cry!

"I reckon you'll be wanting to go to the hotel first, anyway?"

There!--she knew it! He WOULD keep on! And now she had burst into tears.

The mare was still walking slowly; the man was lazily bending forward
over the shafts as if nothing had occurred. Then suddenly, illogically,
and without a moment's warning, the pride that had sustained her
crumbled and became as the dust of the road.

She burst out and told him--this stranger!--this man she had
disliked!--all and EVERYTHING. How she had felt, how she had been
deceived, and what she had overheard!

"I thought as much," said her companion, quietly, "and that's why I sent
for your father."

"You sent for my father!--when?--where?" echoed Rose, in astonishment.

"Yesterday. He was to come to-day, and if we don't find him at the hotel
it will be because he has already started to come here by the upper and
longer road. But you leave it to ME, and don't you say anything to him
of this now. If he's at the hotel, I'll say I drove you down there to
show off the mare. Sabe? If he isn't, I'll leave you there and come back
here to find him. I've got something to tell him that will set YOU all
right." He smiled grimly, lifted the reins, the mare started forward
again, and the vehicle and its occupants disappeared in a vanishing dust
cloud.

CHAPTER VI

It was nearly noon when Mr. Dawson finished rubbing down his sweating
mare in the little stable shed among the wheat. He had left Rose at the
hotel, for they found Mr. Mallory had previously started by a circuitous
route for the wheat ranch. He had resumed not only his working clothes
but his working expression. He was now superintending the unloading of
a wain of stores and implements when the light carryall of the Randolphs
rolled into the field. It contained only Mrs. Randolph and the driver.
A slight look of intelligence passed between the latter and the nearest
one of Dawson's companions, succeeded, however, by a dull look of stupid
vacancy on the faces of all the others, including Dawson. Mrs. Randolph
noticed it, and was forewarned. She reflected that no human beings ever
looked NATURALLY as stupid as that and were able to work. She smiled
sarcastically, and then began with dry distinctness and narrowing