nference was too plain to be
ignored.

She turned her head slowly and looked Grant over with an air of
disparagement, while she nodded negligently as an acknowledgment to
the introduction. "Pete thinks he's awfully witty," she remarked. "It's
really pathetic."

Pete bristled--as much as a fat man could bristle on so hot a day.
"Well, you said you wanted to flirt, and so I took it for granted you'd
like--"

Good Indian looked straight past the girl, and scowled at Pete.

"Pete, you're an idiot ordinarily, but when you try to be smart you're
absolutely insufferable. You're mentally incapable of recognizing the
line of demarcation between legitimate persiflage and objectionable
familiarity. An ignoramus of your particular class ought to confine
his repartee to unqualified affirmation or the negative monosyllable."
Whereupon he pulled his hat more firmly upon his head, hunched his
shoulders in disgust, remembered his manners, and bowed to Miss Georgie
Howard, and stalked out, as straight of back as the Indian whose blanket
he brushed, and who may have been, for all he knew, a blood relative of
his.

"I guess that ought to hold you for a while, Pete," Miss Georgie
approved under her breath, and stared after Grant curiously. "'You're
mentally incapable of recognizing the line of demarcation between
legitimate persiflage and objectionable familiarity.' I'll bet two bits
you don't know what that means, Pete; but it hits you off exactly. Who
is this Mr. Imsen?"

She got no reply to that. Indeed, she did not wait for a reply. Outside,
things were happening--and, since Miss Georgie was dying of dullness,
she hailed the disturbance as a Heaven-sent blessing, and ran to see
what was going on.

Briefly, Grant had inadvertently stepped on a sleeping dog's paw--a dog
of the mongrel breed which infests Indian camps, and which had attached
itself to the blanketed buck inside. The dog awoke with a yelp, saw
that it was a stranger who had perpetrated the outrage, and straightway
fastened its teeth in the leg of Grant's trousers. Grant kicked it
loose, and when it came at him again, he swore vengeance and mounted his
horse in haste.

He did not say a word. He even smiled while he uncoiled his rope,
widened the loop, and, while the dog was circling warily and watching
for another chance at him, dropped the loop neatly over its front
quarters, and drew it tight.

Saunders, a weak-lunged, bandy-legged individual, who was officiall