rst visit, the foreman's wife told him that the
young lady was still too sick to talk much. The second time he went, Pop
Bridgers spied him first and cackled over his coming to see the girl.
Lone grinned and dissembled as best he could, knowing that Pop Bridgers
fed his imagination upon denials and argument and remonstrance and was
likely to build gossip that might spread beyond the Sawtooth. Wherefore
he did not go near the foreman's house that day, but contented himself
with gathering from Pop's talk that the girl was still there.

After that he rode here and there, wherever he would be likely to meet a
Sawtooth rider, and so at last he came upon Al Woodruff loping along the
crest of Juniper Ridge. Al at first displayed no intention of stopping,
but pulled up when he saw John Doe slowing down significantly. Lone
would have preferred a chat with some one else, for this was a
sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued man; but Al Woodruff stayed at the ranch and
would know all the news, and even though he might give it an ill-natured
twist, Lone would at least know what was going on. Al hailed him with a
laughing epithet.

"Say, you sure enough played hell all around, bringin' Brit Hunter's
girl to the Sawtooth!" he began, chuckling as if he had some secret
joke. "Where'd you pick her up, Lone? She claims you found her at Rock
City. That right?"

"No, it ain't right," Lone denied promptly, his dark eyes meeting Al's
glance steadily. "I found her in that gulch away this side. She was in
amongst the rocks where she was trying to keep outa the rain. Brit
Hunter's girl, is she? She told me she was going to the Sawtooth. She'd
have made it, too, if it hadn't been for the storm. She got as far as
the gulch, and the lightning scared her from going any farther." He
offered Al his tobacco sack and fumbled for a match. "I never knew Brit
Hunter had a girl."

"Nor me," Al said and sifted tobacco into a cigarette paper. "Bob, he
drove her over there yesterday. Took him close to all day to make the
trip--and Bob, he claims to hate women!"

"So would I, if I'd got stung for fifty thousand. She ain't that kind.
She's a nice girl, far as I could tell. She got well, all right, did
she?"

"Yeah--only she was still coughing some when she left the ranch. She
like to of had pneumonia, I guess. Queer how she claimed she spent the
night in Rock City, ain't it?"

"No," Lone answered judicially, "I don't know as it's so queer. She
never realized how fa