ce from under her lashes, and Bud
straightened and stepped back.

"You let folks stop here, I take it. I've a pack outfit and a couple of
saddle horses with me. Will it be all right to turn them in the corral?
I hate to have them eat post hay all day. Or I could perhaps go back to
the creek and camp."

"Oh, just turn your horses in the corral and make yourself at home till
uncle comes," she told him with that tantalizing half-smile. "We keep
people here--just for accommodation. There has to be some place in the
valley where folks can stop. I can't promise that uncle will give you a
job, but There's going to be chicken and dumplings for dinner. And the
mail will be in, about noon--you'll want to wait for that."

She was standing just within the screen door, frankly watching him as
he came past the house with the horses, and she came out and halted him
when she spied the top of the pack.

"You'd better leave those things here," she advised him eagerly. "I'll
put them in the sitting-room by the piano. My goodness, you must be a
whole orchestra! If you can play, maybe you and I can furnish the music
for the dance, and save Uncle Dave hiring the Saunders boys. Anyway, we
can play together, and have real good times."

Bud had an odd feeling that Honey was talking one thing with her lips,
and thinking an entirely different set of thoughts. He eyed her covertly
while he untied the cases, and he could have sworn that he saw her
signal someone behind the lace curtains of the nearest window. He
glanced carelessly that way, but the curtains were motionless. Honey was
holding out her hands for the guitar and the mandolin when he turned, so
Bud surrendered them and went on to the corrals.

He did not return to the house. An old man was pottering around a
machine shed that stood backed against a thick fringe of brush, and when
Bud rode by he left his work and came after him, taking short steps and
walking with his back bent stiffly forward and his hands swinging limply
at his sides.

He had a long black beard streaked with gray, and sharp blue eyes set
deep under tufted white eyebrows. He seemed a friendly old man whose
interest in life remained keen as in his youth, despite the feebleness
of his body. He showed Bud where to turn the horses, and went to work
on the pack rope, his crooked old fingers moving with the sureness of
lifelong habit. He was eager to know all the news that Bud could tell
him, and when he discovered tha