ht him out a few
minutes later and attended to his wound. From the top of "Lost Creek"
divide, the ride had been made almost in silence. The cowboy's
reference to his jug had angered the girl into a moody reserve which
he made no effort to dispel.

The news of Patty's rescue from the horse herd had preceded her,
having been recounted by the Samuelson riders upon their return to the
ranch, and Mrs. Samuelson blamed herself unmercifully for having
allowed the girl to venture down the valley alone. Which
self-accusation was promptly silenced by Patty, who gently forced the
old lady into an arm chair, and called her Mother Samuelson, and
seated herself upon the step at her feet, and assured her that she
wouldn't have missed the adventure for the world.

"We'll have a jolly little dinner party this evening," beamed Mrs.
Samuelson, an hour later when the girl had finished recounting her
part in the night's adventure, "there'll be you and Mr. Christie, and
Doctor Mallory, and the boys from the bunk house, and Vil Holland, and
it will be in honor of Mr. Samuelson's turn for the better, and your
escape, and the successful routing of the horse-thieves."

"Too late to count Vil Holland in," smiled the doctor, who had
returned to the veranda in time to hear the arrangement, "said he had
important business in town, and pulled out as soon as I'd got his arm
rigged up." And, in the doorway, the Reverend Len Christie smiled
behind a screen of cigarette smoke as he noted the toss of the head,
and the decided tightening of the lips with which Patty greeted the
announcement.

"But, he's wounded!" protested Mrs. Samuelson. "In his condition,
ought he attempt a ride like that?"

The doctor laughed: "You can't hurt these clean-blooded young bucks
with a flesh wound. As far as fitness is concerned, he can ride to
Jericho if he wants to. Too bad he won't quit prospecting and settle
down. He'd make some girl a mighty fine husband."

Christie laughed. "I don't think Vil is the marrying kind. In the
first place he's been bitten too deep with the prospecting bug. And,
again, women don't appeal to him. He's wedded to his prospecting. He
only stops when driven to it by necessity, then he only works long
enough to save up a grub-stake and he's off for the hills again. I
can't imagine that high priest of the pack horse and the frying pan
living in a house!"

And so the talk went, everyone participating except Patty, who sat and
listened with