u do to pass away the time? I don't see how you can have the
nerve to live in an empty space like this and purr!"

She got up then, looked into the kitchen and saw the paper on the
table. This was new and vaguely promised some sort of break in the
deadly monotony which she saw stretching endlessly before her.
Carrying the nameless cat in her arms, Lorraine went in her bare feet
across the grimy, bare floor to the table and picked up the note. It
read simply:

"Your brekfast is in the oven we wont be back till dark maby. Dont
leave the ranch today. Yr loveing father."

Lorraine hugged the cat so violently that she choked off a purr in the
middle. "'Don't leave the ranch to-day!' Ket, I believe it's going to
be dangerous or something, after all."

She dressed quickly and went outside into the sunlight, the cat at her
heels, the thrill of that one command filling the gray monotone of the
hills with wonderful possibilities of adventure. Her father had made
no objection before when she went for a ride. He had merely instructed
her to keep to the trails, and if she didn't know the way home, to let
the reins lie loose on Yellowjacket's neck and he would bring her to
the gate.

Yellowjacket's instinct for direction had not been working that day,
however. Lorraine had no sooner left the ranch out of sight behind her
than she pretended that she was lost. Yellowjacket had thereupon
walked a few rods farther and stopped, patiently indifferent to the
location of his oats box. Lorraine had waited until his head began to
droop lower and lower, and his switching at flies had become purely
automatic. Yellowjacket was going to sleep without making any effort
to find the way home. But since Lorraine had not told her father
anything about it, his injunction could not have anything to do with
the unreliability of the horse.

"Now," she said to the cat, "if three or four bandits would appear on
the ridge, over there, and come tearing down into the immediate
foreground, jump the gate and surround the house, I'd know this was the
real thing. They'd want to make me tell where dad kept his gold or
whatever it was they wanted, and they'd have me tied to a chair--and
then, cut to Lone Morgan (that's a perfectly _wonderful_ name for the
lead!) hearing shots and coming on a dead run to the rescue." She
picked up the cat and walked slowly down the hard-trodden path to the
stable. "But there aren't any bandits, and dad hasn