r head--down under the hair. That'll
tell me you're Baby Jean Prince. Then I c'n find the gold."

Lucy clutched Al Drummond's arm. "Listen to him! Listen to him!" she
breathed.

Hiram Hooker stood aghast in the entrance of the Palace Dance Hall.
All eyes within were focused on a couple waltzing in the center of the
floor to low music. The man was a Mr. Dalworth, Ragtown's new banker,
in charge of the branch of a Los Angeles banking institution that had
been opened in the frontier camp. The girl, smiling and radiant and
glistening with pale-blue silk and gems, was his adventure girl,
Jerkline Jo.

Never had Hiram seen Jo in anything but a flannel shirt, Stetson hat,
and chaps or divided riding skirt. Despite the fact that she was
making money fast and that he was working for her at ninety dollars a
month, Hiram had not before looked upon her as entirely out of his
reach. He was learning fast, and had lost much of his backwoods
uncouthness. He loved Jerkline Jo as only a big-hearted, simple-souled
man can love a woman. Some day, he had told himself, he would do
something to make himself worthy of her, for he never would ask her to
marry him while he was in her employ. He was too proud to ask an
independent girl to marry him when he had nothing to offer.

That rare feminine creature gliding so gracefully over the floor with
the dapper, well-dressed banker, however, plunged Hiram into the depths
of despair. Financially, mentally, and now socially, he felt her
altogether out of his world. He had forgotten until now her days at
school and in polite society.

It did not make him think the worse of her to see her dancing in a
saloon, with rough men from the cities standing about and looking on
admirably. Ragtown was Ragtown, and people did things here which would
have ostracized them from decent society elsewhere. It was not this
that hurt; he knew that the girl was pure-minded and that her morals
were flawless, despite what prudish persons--of which there were none
in Ragtown--might have thought of her choice of the place which she
chose to satisfy her whim of the evening. Jo was one of those rare
souls who can pass among evil men and women and not only not be
contaminated, but preserve an unsullied reputation, too. It was the
dress and the glittering tones and the wonderful coiffure, and her
gentlemanly, well-groomed partner of the dance, that caused him to turn
away, bitter and broken in spirit.

"We