ng herself from the night's rest into the day's activities. There
had been no stealthy trip out to the _arroyo_; no duel; no wound; no
Senor Don't Care. She had only a story which involved all these elements,
a most preposterous story, to tell.

"Now you shall hear all about it!" she called to her father as soon as
she saw him; "the strangest, most absurd, most amusing affair"--she piled
up the adjectives--"that has ever occurred in Little Rivers!"

She began at once, even before she poured his coffee, her voice a trifle
high-pitched with her simulation of humor. And she was exactly veracious,
avoiding details, yet missing nothing that gave the facts a pleasant
trail. She told of the meeting with Leddy on the pass and of the arrival
of the gorgeous traveller; of Jack's whistle; of Pete's challenge.

Jasper Ewold listened with stoical attentiveness. He did not laugh, even
when Jack's vagaries were mentioned.

"Why didn't you tell me last night?" was his first question.

"To be honest, I was afraid that it would worry you. I was afraid that
you would not permit me to go to the pass alone again. But you will?" She
slipped her hand across the table and laid her fingers appealingly on the
broad back of his heavily tanned hand, from which the veins rose in
bronze welts. "And he was nice about it in his ridiculous, big-spurs
fashion. He said that it was all due to the whistle."

"Go on! Go on! There must be more!" her father insisted impatiently.

She gave him the pantomime of the store, not as a bit of tragedy--she was
careful about that--but as something witnessed by an impersonal
spectator and narrator of stories.

"He walked right toward a muzzle, this Wingfield?" Jasper asked, his
brows contracting.

"Why, yes. I told you at the start it was all most preposterous,"
she answered.

"And he was not afraid of death--this Wingfield!" Jasper repeated.

He was looking away from her. The contraction of his brows had become a
scowl of mystification.

"Why do you always speak of him as 'this Wingfield,'" she demanded, "as
if the town were full of Wingfields and he was a particular one?"

He looked around quickly, his features working in a kind of confusion.
Then he smiled.

"I was thinking of the whistle," he explained. "Well, we'll call him this
Sir Chaps, this Senor Don't Care, or whatever you please. As for his
walking into the gun, there is nothing remarkable in that. You draw on a
man. You expect him to throw u