r own room she could hear the loud voices of
her imposed suitors. "I'll blow you full o' holes!" shouted Ross.
"Witnesses," shrieked Etienne, waving his hand at the cook and me. She
could not have known the previous harassed condition of the men,
fretting under indoor conditions. All she knew was, that where she had
expected the frank freemasonry of the West, she found the subtle tangle
of two men's minds, bent upon exacting whatever romance there might be
in her situation.

She tried to dodge Ross and the Frenchman by spells of nursing me. They
also came over to help nurse. This combination aroused such a natural
state of invalid cussedness on my part that they were all forced to
retire. Once she did manage to whisper: "I am so worried here. I
don't know what to do."

To which I replied, gently, hitching up my shoulder, that I was a
hunch-savant and that the Eighth House under this sign, the Moon being
in Virgo, showed that everything would turn out all right.

But twenty minutes later I saw Etienne reading her palm and felt that
perhaps I might have to recast her horoscope, and try for a dark man
coming with a bundle.

Toward sunset, Etienne left the house for a few moments and Ross, who
had been sitting taciturn and morose, having unlocked Mark Twain, made
another dash. It was typical Ross talk.

He stood in front of her and looked down majestically at that cool and
perfect spot where Miss Adams' forehead met the neat part in her
fragrant hair. First, however, he cast a desperate glance at me. I
was in a profound slumber.

"Little woman," he began, "it's certainly tough for a man like me to
see you bothered this way. You"--gulp--"you have been alone in this
world too long. You need a protector. I might say that at a time like
this you need a protector the worst kind--a protector who would take a
three-ring delight in smashing the saffron-colored kisser off of any
yeller-skinned skunk that made himself obnoxious to you. Hem. Hem. I
am a lonely man, Miss Adams. I have so far had to carry on my life
without the"--gulp--"sweet radiance"--gulp--"of a woman around the
house. I feel especially doggoned lonely at a time like this, when I
am pretty near locoed from havin' to stall indoors, and hence it was
with delight I welcomed your first appearance in this here shack.
Since then I have been packed jam full of more different kinds of
feelings, ornery, mean, dizzy, and superb, than has fallen my way i