y, looking fairly at each other in
understanding, twentieth-century fashion. She was not to play the
classic damsel or he the classic rescuer. Yet the fact of a young man
finding a young woman brutally annoyed on the roof of the world, five
or six miles from a settlement--well, it was a fact. Over the bump of
their self-introduction, free of the serious impression of her
experience, she could think for him as well as for herself. This struck
her with sudden alarm.

"I fear I have made you a dangerous enemy," she said. "Pete Leddy is the
prize ruffian of our community of Little Rivers."

"I thought that this would be an interesting valley," he returned, in
bland appreciation of her contribution of information about the habits of
the specimen.

II

DINOSAUR OR DESPERADO

She faced a situation irritating and vitalizing, and inevitably, under
its growing perplexity, her observation of his appearance and
characteristics had been acute with feminine intuition, which is so
frequently right, that we forget that it may not always be. She imagined
him with a certain amiable aimlessness turning his pony to one side so as
not to knock down a danger sign, while he rode straight over a precipice.

What would have happened if Leddy had really drawn? she asked herself.
Probably her deliverer would have regarded the muzzle of Leddy's gun in
studious vacancy before a bullet sent him to kingdom come. All
speculation aside, her problem was how to rescue her rescuer. She felt
almost motherly on his account, he was so blissfully oblivious to
realities. And she felt, too, that under the circumstances, she ought to
be formal.

"Now, Mister--" she began; and the Mister sounded odd and stilted in her
ears in relation to him.

"Jack is my name," he said simply.

"Mine is Mary," she volunteered, giving him as much as he had given
and no more. "Now, sir," she went on, in peremptory earnestness, "this
is serious."

"It _was_," he answered. "At least, unpleasant."

"It is, _now_. Pete Leddy meant what he said when he said that he
would draw."

"He ought to, from his repeated emphasis," answered Jack, in agreeable
affirmation.

"He has six notches on his gun-handle--six men that he has killed!"
Mary went on.

"Whew!" said Jack. "And he isn't more than thirty! He seems a hard worker
who keeps right on the job."

She pressed her lips together to control her amusement, before she asked
categorically, with the precision of a