is was the
real thing. They'd want to make me tell where dad kept his gold or
whatever it was they wanted, and they'd have me tied to a chair--and
then, cut to Lone Morgan (that's a perfectly _wonderful_ name for the
lead!) hearing shots and coming on a dead run to the rescue." She
picked up the cat and walked slowly down the hard-trodden path to the
stable. "But there aren't any bandits, and dad hasn't any gold or
anything else worth stealing--Ket, if dad isn't a miser, he's _poor_!
And Lone Morgan is merely ashamed of the way I talked to him, and afraid
I'll queer myself with the neighbors. No Western lead that _I_ ever saw
would act like that. Why, he didn't even want to ride home with me, that
day.

"And Bob Warfield and his Ford are incidents of the past, and not one
soul at the Sawtooth seems to give a darn whether I'm in the country or
out of it. Soon as they found out where I belonged, they brought me over
here and dropped me and forgot all about me. And that, I suppose, is
what they call in fiction the Western spirit!

"Dad looked exactly as if he'd opened the door to a book agent when I
came. He--he _tolerates_ my presence, Ket! And Frank Johnson's pipe
smells to high heaven, and I hate him in the house and 'the boys'--hmhm!
The _boys_--Ket, it would be terribly funny, if I didn't have to stay
here."

She had reached the corral and stood balancing the cat on a warped top
rail, staring disconsolately at Yellowjacket, who stood in a far corner
switching at flies and shamelessly displaying all the angularity of his
bones under a yellowish hide with roughened hair that was shedding
dreadfully, as Lorraine had discovered to her dismay when she removed
her green corduroy skirt after riding him. Yellowjacket's lower lip
sagged with senility or lack of spirit, Lorraine could not tell which.

"You look like the frontispiece in that horse-doctor book," she
remarked, eyeing him with disfavor. "I can't say that comedy hide you've
got improves your appearance. You'd be better peeled, I believe."

She heard a chuckle behind her and turned quickly, palm up to shield her
eyes from the straight, bright rays of the sun. Now here was a live man,
after all, with his hat tilted down over his forehead, a cigarette in
one hand and his reins in the other, looking at her and smiling.

"Why don't you peel him, just on a chance?" His smile broadened to a
grin, but when Lorraine continued to look at him with a neutral
expression i