eyes widened. Then he recovered himself swiftly.

"I mean Miss Mary Thorne," he explained; "the--er--owner of this outfit."

The girl smiled faintly, a touch of veiled wistfulness in her eyes.

"I'm Mary Thorne," she said quietly. "There's only one, you know."

CHAPTER IV

THE BRANDING-IRON

Stratton was never sure just how long he stood staring at her in dumb,
dazed bewilderment. After those mental pictures of the Mary Thorne he had
expected to find, it was small wonder that the sight of this slip of a
black-frocked girl, with her soft voice, her tawny-golden hair and wistful
eyes, should stun him into temporary speechlessness. Even when he finally
pulled himself together to feel a hot flush flaming in his face and find
one gloved hand recklessly crumpling his new Stetson, he could not quite
credit the evidence of his hearing.

"I--I beg pardon," he said stiffly. "But it doesn't seem possible that--"

He hesitated. The girl's smile deepened whimsically.

"I know," she said ruefully. "It never does. Nobody seems to think a girl
can seriously attempt to run a cattle-ranch--even the way I'm trying to
run it, with a capable foreman to look after things. Sometimes I wonder
if--"

She paused, her glance falling on the book she held. Stratton saw that it
was a shabby account-book, a stubby pencil thrust between the leaves.

"Yes?" he prompted, scarcely aware what made him ask the question.

She looked up at him, her eyes a little wider than before. They were a
warm hazel, and for an instant in their depths Stratton glimpsed a
troubled expression, so veiled and swiftly passing that a moment later he
could not be sure he had read aright.

"It's nothing," she shrugged. "You probably know what a lot of nagging
little worries a ranchman has, and sometimes it seems to me they all have
to come at once. I suppose even a man gets a bit discouraged, now and
then."

"He sure does," agreed Buck. "What--er--particular sort of worry do you
mean?"

He asked the question impulsively without realizing how it might sound,
coming from a total stranger. The girl's slim figure stiffened and her
chin went up. Then--perhaps something in his expression told her he had
not meant to be impertinent--her face cleared.

"The principal one is lack of help," she explained readily enough, and yet
Stratton got a curious impression, somehow, that this wasn't really the
worst of her troubles. "We're awfully short-handed." She hesitate