getting
cold. Buck learned that the visitors were from Chicago, where they had
been close friends of the Thorne family for years, and then he managed to
break away and join the fellows in the kitchen.

During the meal there was a lot of more or less quiet joking on the
subject of Stratton's acquaintance with the lady, which he managed to
parry rather cleverly. As a matter of fact the acute horror he felt at the
very thought of the truth about himself getting out, quickened his wits
and kept him constantly on his guard. He kept his temper and his head,
explaining calmly that Miss Manning had been one of the nurses detailed to
look after the batch of wounded men of whom he had been one. Naturally he
had seen considerable of her during the long and tedious voyage, but there
were one or two others he liked equally well.

His careless manner seemed to convince the men that there was no
particular amusement to be extracted from the situation, and to Buck's
relief they passed on to a general discussion of strangers on a ranch, the
bother they were, and the extra amount of work they made.

"Always wantin' to ride around with yuh an' see what's goin' on," declared
Butch Siegrist sourly. "If they're wimmin, yuh can't even give a cuss
without lookin' first to see if they're near enough to hear."

Stratton made a mental resolution that if anything of that sort came up,
he would do his best to duck the job of playing cicerone to Miss Stella
Manning, attractive as she was. So far his bluff seemed to have worked,
but with a mind so entirely blank of the slightest detail of their
acquaintance, he knew that at any moment the most casual remark might
serve to rouse her suspicion.

Fortunately, his desire to remain in the background was abetted by Tex
Lynch. Whether or not the foreman wanted to keep him away from the
ranch-owner's friends as well as from Miss Thorne herself, Buck could not
quite determine. But while the fence-repairing progressed, Stratton was
never by any chance detailed to other duties which might keep him in the
neighborhood of the ranch-house, and on the one occasion when Miss Thorne
and her guests rode out to where the men were working, Lynch saw to it
that there was no opportunity for anything like private conversation
between them and the object of his solicitude.

Buck watched his manoeuvering with secret amusement.

"Wouldn't he be wild if he knew he was playing right into my hands?" he
thought.

His fac