ust be the small part at last
visible of Echo, Idaho--Lorraine went on. She had been walking steadily
for four hours, and she must surely have come nearly twenty miles. If
she ever reached the top of the hill, she believed that she would see
her father's ranch just beyond.

The afterglow had deepened to dusk when she came at last to the highest
point of that long grade. Far ahead loomed a cluster of square, black
objects which must be the ranch buildings of the Quirt, and Lorraine's
spirits lightened a little. What a surprise her father and all his
cowboys would have when she walked in upon them! It was almost worth the
walk, she told herself hearteningly. She hoped that dad had a good cook.
He would wear a flour-sack apron, naturally, and would be tall and lean,
or else very fat. He would be a comedy character, but she hoped he would
not be the grouchy kind, which, though very funny when he rampages
around on the screen, might be rather uncomfortable to meet when one is
tired and hungry and out of sorts. But of course the crankiest of comedy
cooks would be decently civil to _her_. Men always were, except
directors who are paid for their incivility.

A hollow into which she walked in complete darkness and in silence, save
the gurgling of another stream, hid from sight the shadowy semblance of
houses and barns and sheds. Their disappearance slumped her spirits
again, for without them she was no more than a solitary speck in the
vast loneliness. Their actual nearness could not comfort her. She was
seized with a reasonless, panicky fear that by the time she crossed the
stream and climbed the hill beyond they would no longer be there where
she had seen them. She was lifting her skirts to wade the creek when the
click of hoofs striking against rocks sent her scurrying to cover in a
senseless fear.

"I learned this act from the jack rabbits," she rallied herself shakily,
when she was safely hidden behind a sagebush whose pungency made her
horribly afraid that she might sneeze, which would be too ridiculous.

"Some of dad's cowboys, probably, but still they _may_ be bandits."

If they were bandits they could scarcely be out banditting, for the two
horsemen were talking in ordinary, conversational tones as they rode
leisurely down to the ford. When they passed Lorraine, the horse nearest
her shied against the other and was sworn at parenthetically for a fool.
Against the skyline Lorraine saw the rider's form bulk squatty an