tly outgrown her dress, which was made for a smaller child, and
the too brief skirt disclosed a bare, freckled, and sandy desert of
shapely limb, for which the darned stockings were equally too scant.
Lance let his grasp slip from her thin wrist to her hand, and then with
a good-humored gesture tossed it lightly back to her.

She did not retreat, but continued looking at him in a half-surly
embarrassment.

"I ain't a bit frightened," she said; "I'm not going to run away,--don't
you fear."

"Glad to hear it," said Lance, with unmistakable satisfaction, "but why
did you go for my revolver?"

She flushed again and was silent. Presently she began to kick the earth
at the roots of the tree, and said, as if confidentially to her foot,--

"I wanted to get hold of it before you did."

"You did?--and why?"

"Oh, you know why."

Every tooth in Lance's head showed that he did, perfectly. But he was
discreetly silent.

"I didn't know what you were hiding there for," she went on, still
addressing the tree, "and," looking at him sideways under her white
lashes, "I didn't see your face."

This subtle compliment was the first suggestion of her artful sex.
It actually sent the blood into the careless rascal's face, and for a
moment confused him. He coughed. "So you thought you'd freeze on to that
six-shooter of mine until you saw my hand?"

She nodded. Then she picked up a broken hazel branch, fitted it into the
small of her back, threw her tanned bare arms over the ends of it, and
expanded her chest and her biceps at the same moment. This simple action
was supposed to convey an impression at once of ease and muscular force.

"Perhaps you'd like to take it now," said Lance, handing her the pistol.

"I've seen six-shooters before now," said the girl, evading the
proffered weapon and its suggestion. "Dad has one, and my brother had
two derringers before he was half as big as me."

She stopped to observe in her companion the effect of this capacity of
her family to bear arms. Lance only regarded her amusedly. Presently she
again spoke abruptly:--

"What made you eat that grass, just now?"

"Grass!" echoed Lance.

"Yes, there," pointing to the yerba buena.

Lance laughed. "I was hungry. Look!" he said, gayly tossing some silver
into the air. "Do you think you could get me some breakfast for that,
and have enough left to buy something for yourself?"

The girl eyed the money and the man with half-bashful curiosity.