ust mean human beings of one sort or another, and thereby a means
to reach home.

She kept on. The wavering gleam came from behind a thicket--an open
fire, she saw at length. Beyond the fire she heard a horse sneeze.
Within a few yards of the thicket through which wavered the yellow
gleam she halted, smitten with a sudden panic. This endured but a few
seconds. All that she knew or had been told of frontier men reassured
her. She had found them to a man courteous, awkwardly considerate.
And she could not wander about all night.

She moved cautiously, however, to the edge of the thicket, to a point
where she could see the fire. A man sat humped over the glowing
embers, whereon sizzled a piece of meat. His head was bent forward, as
if he were listening. Suddenly he looked up, and she gasped--for the
firelight showed the features of Roaring Bill Wagstaff.

She was afraid of him. Why she did not know nor stop to reason. But
her fear of him was greater than her fear of the pitch-black night and
the unknown dangers of the forest. She turned to retreat. In the same
instant Roaring Bill reached to his rifle and stood up.

"Hold on there!" he said coolly. "You've had a look at me--I want a
look at you, old feller, whoever you are. Come on--show yourself."

He stepped sidewise out of the light as he spoke. Hazel started to
run. The crack of a branch under foot betrayed her, and he closed in
before she took three steps. He caught her rudely by the arm, and
yanked her bodily into the firelight.

"Well--for the--love of--Mike!"

Wagstaff drawled the exclamation out in a rising crescendo of
astonishment. Then he laid his gun down across a roll of bedding, and
stood looking at her in speechless wonder.

CHAPTER VII

A DIFFERENT SORT OF MAN

"For the love of Mike!" Roaring Bill said again. "What are you doing
wandering around in the woods at night? Good Lord! Your teeth are
chattering. Sit down here and get warm. It is sort of chilly."

Even in her fear, born of the night, the circumstances, and partly of
the man, Hazel noticed that his speech was of a different order from
that to which she had been listening the past ten days. His
enunciation was perfect. He dropped no word endings, nor slurred his
syllables. And cast in so odd a mold is the mind of civilized woman
that the small matter of a little refinement of speech put Hazel Weir
more at her ease than a volume of explanation or protest o