m
for his work. What was it he had said? "Do you know, Tom, I believe
there's a bad Injun." And Thompson had referred to Bethune as "a
pretty slick article." Surely, Thompson, whole-souled, generous
Thompson, would not malign a man. Here were two men whom the girl knew
instinctively she could trust, who stood four-square with the world,
and whose opinions must carry weight. And both had spoken with
suspicion of Bethune and both had spoken of Vil Holland as one of
themselves. "I don't understand it," she muttered. "Everybody seems to
be against Mr. Bethune, and everybody seems to like Vil Holland, in
spite of his jug, and his gun, and his boorishness. Maybe it's because
Mr. Bethune's a--a breed," she speculated. "Why, they even hinted that
he's a--a horse-thief. It isn't fair to despise him for his Indian
blood. Why should he be made to suffer because his grandmother was an
Indian--the daughter of a Cree chief? It sounds interesting and
romantic. The people of some of our very best families point with
pride to the fact that they are descendants of Pocahontas! Poor
fellow, everybody seems down on him--everybody that is, but Ma Watts
and Microby. And, as a matter of fact, he appears to better advantage
than any of them, not excepting the very militant and unorthodox
'Bishop of All Outdoors.'"

The result of the girl's cogitations left her exactly where she
started. She was no nearer the solution of her problem of the hills.
And her lurking doubt of Bethune still remained despite the excuses
she invented to account for his unpopularity, nor had her opinion of
Vil Holland been altered in the least.

Upon arriving at her cabin she was not at all surprised to find that
it had been thoroughly searched, albeit with less care than the
searcher had been in the habit of bestowing upon the readjustment of
the various objects of the room exactly as she had left them. Canned
goods and dishes were disarranged upon their shelves, and the loose
section of floor board beneath her bunk that had evidently served as
the secret _cache_ of the sheep herder, had been fitted clumsily into
its place. The evident boldness, or carelessness of this latest
outrage angered her as no previous search had done. Heretofore each
object had been returned to its place with painstaking accuracy so
that it had been only through the use of fine-spun cobwebs and
carefully arranged bits of dust that she had been able to verify her
suspicion that the room had r