h its
running-boards loaded with canvas-covered suitcases. Three goggled,
sunburned women in ugly khaki suits were disconsolately drinking soda
water from bottles without straws, and a goggled, red-faced,
angry-looking man was jerking impatiently at the hood of the machine.
Lorraine and her suitcase apparently excited no interest whatever in
Echo, Idaho.

The station agent was carrying two boxes of oranges and a crate of
California cabbages in out of the sun, and a limp individual in blue
gingham shirt and dirty overalls had shouldered the mail sack and was
making his way across the dusty, rut-scored street to the post-office.

Two questions and two brief answers convinced her that the station agent
did not know Britton Hunter,--which was strange, unless this happened to
be a very new agent. Lorraine left him to his cabbages and followed the
man with the mail sack.

At the post-office the anemic clerk came forward, eyeing her with
admiring curiosity. Lorraine had seen anemic young men all her life, and
the last three years had made her perfectly familiar with that look in a
young man's eyes. She met it with impatient disfavor founded chiefly
upon the young man's need of a decent hair-cut, a less flowery tie and a
tailored suit. When he confessed that he did not know Mr. Britton Hunter
by sight he ceased to exist so far as Lorraine was concerned. She
decided that he also was new to the place and therefore perfectly
useless to her.

The postmaster himself--Lorraine was cheered by his spectacles, his
shirt sleeves, and his chin whiskers, which made him look the part--was
better informed. He, too, eyed her curiously when she said "My father,
Mr. Britton Hunter," but he made no comment on the relationship. He gave
her a telegram and a letter from the General Delivery. The telegram, she
suspected, was the one she had sent to her dad announcing the date of
her arrival. The postmaster advised her to get a "livery rig" and drive
out to the ranch, since it might be a week or two before any one came in
from the Quirt. Lorraine thanked him graciously and departed for the
livery stable.

The man in charge there chewed tobacco meditatively and told her that
his teams were all out. If she was a mind to wait over a day or two, he
said, he might maybe be able to make the trip. Lorraine took a long look
at the structure which he indicated as the hotel.

"I think I'll walk," she said calmly.

"_Walk_?" The stableman stopped chewi