ld have believed that they were
anything but day laborers.

"It's a comedy part for the cattle-queen's daughter," she admitted,
putting out a hand to stroke the lean, gray cat that jumped upon her bed
from the open window. "Ket, it's a _scream_! I'll take my West before
the camera, thank you; or I would, if I hadn't jumped right into the
middle of this trick West before I knew what I was doing. Ket, what do
you do to pass away the time? I don't see how you can have the nerve to
live in an empty space like this and purr!"

She got up then, looked into the kitchen and saw the paper on the table.
This was new and vaguely promised some sort of break in the deadly
monotony which she saw stretching endlessly before her. Carrying the
nameless cat in her arms, Lorraine went in her bare feet across the
grimy, bare floor to the table and picked up the note. It read simply:

"Your brekfast is in the oven we wont be back till dark maby. Don't
leave the ranch today. Yr loveing father."

Lorraine hugged the cat so violently that she choked off a purr in the
middle. "'Don't leave the ranch to-day!' Ket, I believe it's going to be
dangerous or something, after all."

She dressed quickly and went outside into the sunlight, the cat at her
heels, the thrill of that one command filling the gray monotone of the
hills with wonderful possibilities of adventure. Her father had made no
objection before when she went for a ride. He had merely instructed her
to keep to the trails, and if she didn't know the way home, to let the
reins lie loose on Yellowjacket's neck and he would bring her to the
gate.

Yellowjacket's instinct for direction had not been working that day,
however. Lorraine had no sooner left the ranch out of sight behind her
than she pretended that she was lost. Yellowjacket had thereupon walked
a few rods farther and stopped, patiently indifferent to the location of
his oats box. Lorraine had waited until his head began to droop lower
and lower, and his switching at flies had become purely automatic.
Yellowjacket was going to sleep without making any effort to find the
way home. But since Lorraine had not told her father anything about it,
his injunction could not have anything to do with the unreliability of
the horse.

"Now," she said to the cat, "if three or four bandits would appear on
the ridge, over there, and come tearing down into the immediate
foreground, jump the gate and surround the house, I'd know th