he corrals yet."

"Excellent." Her black eyes flashed from him to the various rude
appointments of the room, flashed back to him. "I am Helga Strawn,"
she said abruptly.

He repeated the name after her in surprise:

"Helga Strawn?"

"Yes. Perhaps you guess right away what has brought me West, to you
first of all?"

"No," he said. "I don't think that I do."

"Then I'll tell you. That's what I am here for. Don't begin to think
that I saw a picture of you somewhere and fell in love with it."

The finely chiselled lips, too faultlessly perfect at any time to be
warmly womanly, were suddenly hard. Her eyes had become brilliant,
twin spots of colour came into her cheeks.

"At least you remember my name?"

"Helga Strawn? Yes, I remember it. You learned from a mutual
acquaintance that I was in New York some time ago. You wrote me then.
You are a cousin of Sledge Hume."

"Not exactly a cousin," she corrected him. "I am not so proud of the
relationship as to wish to make it closer than it is. But that does
not matter. You remember also why I wrote you?"

"Yes. You said that yourself and Hume had inherited equal interests in
the Dry Lands. That through letters Hume had persuaded you to sell
your interest to him. After you had sold you began to think that he
had japped you. You wanted to know from me what the property was
actually worth."

"I am glad that you remember. You answered my letter. You told me
that you had always considered the land hardly worth paying taxes on."

"Yes."

"If I asked you now, that same question, what would you say?"

He hesitated. The Dry Lands were no whit more valuable to-day than
they had been last year. But if the scheme Hume was engineering went
through it would be a different matter.

"You have already sold your interest, given the deed, haven't you, Miss
Strawn? What difference does it make?" he asked bluntly.

"What if I have?" she countered coolly. "I am not the sort of woman,
Mr. Shandon, to sit with my hands in my lap when a man has done a piece
of sharp business with me. I needed the money and like a fool I sold
to Hume. And now I know as well as I know anything that he didn't pay
me a tenth of what the property was worth. Yes, I have given the deed.
You think that I am a fool again to come clear across the continent
upon a matter that went out of my hands a year ago!" She laughed, her
laugh reminding him unpleasantly of the man of whom they we