ll Rattlers Ridge, stepped from the coach which she had
glorified by occupying as an invited guest.

"What makes him run away?" she asked quickly, opening her lovely eyes in
a possibly innocent wonder that anything could be found to run away from
her.

"He don't like the brass band," we explained eagerly.

"How funny," murmured the girl; "is it as out of tune as all that?"

This irresistible witticism alone would have been enough to satisfy
us--we did nothing but repeat it to each other all the next day--but we
were positively transported when we saw her suddenly gather her dainty
skirts in one hand and trip off through the red dust toward Bones, who,
with his eyes over his yellow shoulder, had halted in the road,
and half-turned in mingled disgust and rage at the spectacle of the
descending trombone. We held our breath as she approached him. Would
Bones evade her as he did us at such moments, or would he save our
reputation, and consent, for the moment, to accept her as a new kind of
inebriate? She came nearer; he saw her; he began to slowly quiver with
excitement--his stump of a tail vibrating with such rapidity that
the loss of the missing portion was scarcely noticeable. Suddenly she
stopped before him, took his yellow head between her little hands,
lifted it, and looked down in his handsome brown eyes with her two
lovely blue ones. What passed between them in that magnetic glance no
one ever knew. She returned with him; said to him casually: "We're not
afraid of brass bands, are we?" to which he apparently acquiesced, at
least stifling his disgust of them while he was near her--which was
nearly all the time.

During the speechmaking her gloved hand and his yellow head were always
near together, and at the crowning ceremony--her public checking of Yuba
Bill's "waybill" on behalf of the township, with a gold pencil presented
to her by the Stage Company--Bones' joy, far from knowing no bounds,
seemed to know nothing but them, and he witnessed it apparently in the
air. No one dared to interfere. For the first time a local pride in
Bones sprang up in our hearts--and we lied to each other in his praises
openly and shamelessly.

Then the time came for parting. We were standing by the door of the
coach, hats in hand, as Miss Pinkey was about to step into it; Bones
was waiting by her side, confidently looking into the interior, and
apparently selecting his own seat on the lap of Judge Preston in the
corner, when Miss