r she'd walked, I reckon. She was plumb crazy when
I found her. You couldn't take any stock in what she said. Say, you
didn't see that bay I was halter-breaking, did yuh, Al? He jumped the
fence and got away on me, day before yesterday. I'd like to catch him up
again. He'll make a good horse."

Al had not seen the bay, and the talk tapered off desultorily to a final
"So-long, see yuh later." Lone rode on, careful not to look back. So she
was Brit Hunter's girl! Lone whistled softly to himself while he studied
this new angle of the problem,--for a problem he was beginning to
consider it. She was Brit Hunter's girl, and she had told them at the
Sawtooth that she had spent the night at Rock City. He wondered how
much else she had told; how much she remembered of what she had told
him.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a round leather purse
with a chain handle. It was soiled and shrunken with its wetting, and
the clasp had flecks of rust upon it. What it contained Lone did not
know. Virginia had taught him that a man must not be curious about the
personal belongings of a woman. Now he turned the purse over, tried to
rub out the stiffness of the leather, and smiled a little as he dropped
it back into his pocket.

"I've got my calling card," he said softly to John Doe. "I reckon I had
the right hunch when I didn't turn it over to Mrs. Hawkins. I'll ask her
again about that grip she said she hid under a bush. I never heard about
any of the boys finding it."

His thoughts returned to Al Woodruff and stopped there. Determined still
to attend strictly to his own affairs, his thoughts persisted in playing
truant and in straying to a subject he much preferred not to think of at
all. Why should Al Woodruff be interested in the exact spot where Brit
Hunter's daughter had spent the night of the storm? Why should Lone
instinctively discount her statement and lie whole-heartedly about it?

"Now if Al catches me up in that, he'll think I know a lot I don't know,
or else----" He halted his thoughts there, for that, too, was a
forbidden subject.

Forbidden subjects are like other forbidden things: they have a way of
making themselves very conspicuous. Lone was heading for the Quirt ranch
by the most direct route, fearing, perhaps, that if he waited he would
lose his nerve and would not go at all. Yet it was important that he
should go; he must return the girl's purse!

The most direct route to the Quirt took him down