orgive."

He hesitated, then touched the tips of her fingers with his lips. She
did not look up. With a gesture, which she did not see, he stooped to
his pack and swung into the woods.

Barbara stood motionless. Not a line of her figure stirred. Only the
chiffon parasol dropped suddenly to the ground.

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STORIES OF THE WILD LIFE

I

THE GIRL WHO GOT RATTLED

This is one of the stories of Alfred. There are many of them still
floating around the West, for Alfred was in his time very well known. He
was a little man, and he was bashful. That is the most that can be said
against him; but he was very little and very bashful. When on horseback
his legs hardly reached the lower body-line of his mount, and only his
extreme agility enabled him to get on successfully. When on foot,
strangers were inclined to call him "sonny." In company he never
advanced an opinion. If things did not go according to his ideas, he
reconstructed the ideas, and made the best of it--only he could make the
most efficient best of the poorest ideas of any man on the plains. His
attitude was a perpetual sidling apology. It has been said that Alfred
killed his men diffidently, without enthusiasm, as though loth to take
the responsibility, and this in the pioneer days on the plains was
either frivolous affectation, or else--Alfred. With women he was lost.
Men would have staked their last ounce of dust at odds that he had never
in his life made a definite assertion of fact to one of the opposite
sex. When it became absolutely necessary to change a woman's
preconceived notions as to what she should do--as, for instance,
discouraging her riding through quicksand--he would persuade somebody
else to issue the advice. And he would cower in the background blushing
his absurd little blushes at his second-hand temerity. Add to this
narrow, sloping shoulders, a soft voice, and a diminutive pink-and-white
face.

But Alfred could read the prairie like a book. He could ride anything,
shoot accurately, was at heart afraid of nothing, and could fight like a
little catamount when occasion for it really arose. Among those who
knew, Alfred was considered one of the best scouts on the plains. That
is why Caldwell, the capitalist, engaged him when he took his daughter
out to Deadwood.

Miss Caldwell was determined to go to Deadwood. A limited experience of
the lady's sort, where they hav