wind lifted the hair at her temples as it came through the
open window. She felt lonely--inexpressibly lonely. She thought of Alice
Freoff and restlessness grew. Downstairs she heard Essie Tisdale's merry
laughter and it changed the current of her thoughts.

She had learned her story now and the mystery of her identity had given
the little belle of Crowheart an added attraction. Everybody in
Crowheart knew her story for that matter; it was one of the stock tales
of the country to be repeated to interest strangers.

In the old days when Crowheart was a blacksmith shop and the stamping
ground of "Snow-shoe" Brown, whose log cabin hung on the edge of the
bench overlooking the stream like a crow's nest in a cottonwood tree,
"Snow-shoe" Brown had yelled in vain, one spring day, at a man and woman
on the seat of a covered wagon who were preparing to ford the stream at
the usual crossing. But the sullen roar of the water drowned his warning
that it was swimming depth, and, even while he ran for his horse and
uncoiled his saddle rope, the current was sweeping the wagon and the
struggling horses down stream. He followed along the bank until the
horse's feet came up and the wagon went down, while there floated from
the open end, among other things, something that looked to his
astonished eyes like a wooden cradle. He threw his rope, and threw
again, with the skill which long practice in roping mavericks had given
him; and gently, gently, with a success which seemed miraculous even to
"Snow-shoe" Brown, he had drawn the bobbing cradle gradually to shore.
Inside, a baby smiled up at him with the bluest eyes he ever had seen.
There was a picture primer tucked beneath the flannel coverlet and it
contained the single clue to her identity. "Esther Tisdale" was written
on the fly-leaf with a recent date.

"Snow-shoe" Brown said she was a maverick and unblushingly declared that
he claimed all mavericks that he had had his rope on; therefore "Esther
Tisdale" belonged to him. He left her in the care of the wife of a
cattleman who hoped thereby to purchase immunity from "Snow-shoe's"
activities, which he did, though that person rustled elsewhere with
renewed energy, since he said he had a family to keep. So she learned to
ride and shoot as straight as "Snow-shoe" himself and even as a child
gave promise of a winsome, lovely girlhood. The unique relationship
ended when her guardian died in his boots in the little cowtown over
beyond the Li