and his
little sallies which had formerly elicited nothing beyond her silent
contempt now provoked her ready laughter.

"It ain't a little jolt of brandy that made the difference, either,"
Dart informed himself thoughtfully in the midst of an enthusiastic
recital of the gallant way in which his pal, Red, had saved him from a
horrible death in some wonderful land whose geographical location he
failed to make perfectly clear. "She's wise I'm the gent with a noodle
full of things she's dying to know. Red ain't told her what I told
him. We're sure going to have an awful chummy time on our jingle bell
party back to old Mart's."

And he went on with his tale until Wayne returning from the kitchen
stopped him.

Shandon had written his note and gave it to Dart as the two men went
out to saddle the horses. Ten minutes later Helga Strawn and her guide
left the Bar L-M. During the long ride, although Dart seemed the most
ingenuous of creatures, Helga Strawn obtained no satisfactory report of
the news which he had brought and which had so obviously steeled
Shandon's will.

An hour before they came to the Echo Creek the snow ceased abruptly and
it began to rain.

When at last they reached the ranch house the girl was clinging wearily
to the horn of her saddle, drenched to the skin, her face pinched and
white and drawn from cold and the hardest day's physical work her
woman's body had ever buffeted through. When Dart glanced at her in
the lamplight of the living room he filed a swift mental note of the
fact that what Helga Strawn set out to do she was very likely to
accomplish. For her eyes, their brilliancy undimmed, their calculating
penetration unaltered, told of a fighting spirit which no bodily
fatigue could touch.

There had been only two lights burning in the house; one in Martin's
private room from which came the voices of Garth Conway and Leland
himself; one in Wanda's bedroom. But at Dart's knock both Wanda and
her mother hastened to receive them, replenished the fireplace until it
roared lustily in its deep throat, found warm, dry clothing and hot
drinks, and made them comfortable for the night. If Wanda were "sore"
as Dart had expressed it, she did not in any way give evidence of it.

"Them ginneys that go chasing off to climb the North Pole," was Dart's
cheery comment as he reappeared from a brief absence in the kitchen,
"ain't going to find me choking up the trail in front of 'em. This
here is good e