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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
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