e didn't pull any love talk at all."

"Charlie?" Pop ruminated over a fresh quid of tobacco. "Charlie! Mebby
Bob, he stakes himself to a different name now and then. There ain't any
Charlie, except Charlie Werner; she wouldn't mean him, do yuh s'pose?"

"Charlie Werner? Hunh! Say, Pop, she ain't no squaw--is she, Loney?" Sid
Sterling remonstrated.

"If I can read brands," Lone testified, "she's no girl of Bob's. She's
a good, honest girl when she ain't crazy."

"And no good, honest girl who is not crazy could possibly be a girl of
mine! Is that the idea, Lone?"

Lone turned unhurriedly and looked at young Bob Warfield standing in the
stable door with his hands in his trousers pockets and his pipe in his
mouth.

"That ain't the argument. Pop, here, was wondering if she was another
heart-ballum girl of yours," Lone grinned unabashed. "I don't know such
a hell of a lot about heart-balm ladies, Bob. I ain't a millionaire. I'm
just making a guess at their brand--and it ain't the brand this little
lady carries."

Bob removed one hand from his pocket and cuddled the bowl of his pipe.
"If she's a woman, she's a heart-balmer if she gets the chance. They all
are, down deep in their tricky hearts. There isn't a woman on earth that
won't sell a man's soul out of his body if she happens to think it's
worth her while--and she can get away with it. But don't for any sake
call her _my_ heart-balmer."

"That was Pop," drawled Lone. "It don't strike me as being any subject
for you fellows to make remarks about, anyway," he advised Pop firmly.
"She's a right nice little girl, and she's pretty darn sick." He touched
John Doe with the spurs and rode away, stopping at the foreman's gate to
finish his business with Hawkins. He was a conscientious young man, and
since he had charge of Elk Spring camp, he set its interests above his
own, which was more than some of the Sawtooth men would have done in his
place.

Having reported the damage to the bridge and made his suggestions about
the repairs, he touched up John Doe again and loped away on a purely
personal matter, which had to do with finding the bag which the girl had
told him was under a bush where a rabbit had been sitting.

If she had not been so very sick, Lone would have laughed at her naive
method of identifying the spot. But he was too sorry for her to be
amused at the vagaries of her sick brain. He did not believe anything
she had said, except that she had been coming to