makes 'em
look it, and as for that Molly, they call her, that's rid off on
Chiquita, she's just as plain and folksy as get out! So's the red-headed
one with the high-falutin' name, out of that song Pa sings about the
'blue Juniata' and 'bright Alfaretta,' or some such trash. Them
boys--Well, they hain't took no notice o' me yet--but I can show 'em a
thing or two. I bet I can shoot better than any of 'em. I bet, if they
don't hurry off too early to-morrow, I'll get up a match and teach 'em
how a Colorado girl can hit the bull's-eye every time!"

With these ambitious reflections the inn-keeper's daughter arrived at
the kitchen and the presence of the red-headed girl in it, instead of
the portly form of her mother.

"What on earth does it mean?" demanded Mattie, scarcely believing her
own eyes.

It didn't take Alfy long to explain, and she added the warning:

"You keep it up! Don't you let on to Mrs. Ford that there's the least
misdoubt in your mind but what them searchers will be back, right to
once, same's I'm pretending! Oh! I hope they do! I hope they do! I hope
it so much I dassent hardly think and just have to keep talking to stop
it. If I had hold that Molly Breckenridge I'd shake her well! The dear
flighty little thing! To go addin' another scare to a big enough one
before, and now about that Leslie. He's a real nice boy--Leslie is--if
you let him do exactly what he wants and don't try to make him
different. His ma just sets all her store by him. I never got the rights
of it, exactly, Aunt Betty Calvert--she 't I've been hired out to--she
never approved of gossip. She said that folks quarrellin' was just plain
makin' fools of themselves, or words to that effect. The Fords had done
it and now, course, they was thicker 'n blueberries again and didn't
want to hear nothing about the time they wasn't. Don't leave them
'tatoes in that water so long! Why, child o' grace, don't you know yet,
and you keepin' tavern, that soon's a potato is cooked it ought to be
snatched out the pot and set to steamin', to get dry? Soggy potatoes
gives you the dyspepsy and that's a disease I ain't sufferin' to catch.
It makes folks so cross."

By this time Mattie had entered into the spirit of the thing and had
never been happier in her life. This Alfaretta was so jolly, so
friendly, so full of talk. So wholly satisfied in her conscience, too,
now that "one of the family" was beside her to share the risk she had
assumed of using other