ou
one of his riders? Are we close to the Rocking Chair Ranch?" she cried.

He flung a quick glance at her. "Not very close. Are you from the
Rocking Chair?"

"Yes. I'm Mr. Mackenzie's niece."

"Major Mackenzie's daughter?" demanded the man quickly.

"Yes." She said it with a touch of annoyance, for he looked at her as a
man does who has heard of her before. She knew that the story had been
bruited far and wide of how she had passed through the hands of the
train robbers carrying thirty thousand dollars on her person. She had no
doubt that it was in this connection her rescuer had heard of her.

He drew off to one side and called his companion to him.

"Hardman, you ride up to the ranch and tell Leroy I've just found Miss
Mackenzie wandering around on the desert, lost. Ask him whether I'm to
bring her up. She's played out and can't travel far, tell him."

The showman rode on his errand and the other returned to Helen.

"You better light, ma'am. We'll have to wait here a few minutes," he
explained.

He helped her dismount. She did not understand why it was necessary to
wait, but that was his business and not hers. Her roving eyes fell upon
the cattle again.

"They ARE my uncle's, aren't they?"

"They were," he corrected. "Cattle change hands a good deal in this
country," he added dryly.

"Then you're not one of his riders?" Her stark eyes passed over him
swiftly.

"No, ma'am."

"Are we far from the Rocking Chair?"

"A right smart distance. You've been traveling, you see, for eight or
nine hours."

It occurred to her that there was something elusive, something not quite
frank, about the replies of this young man. Her glance raked him again
and swept up the details of his person. One of them that impressed
itself upon her mind was the absence of a finger on his right hand.
Another was that he was a walking arsenal. This startled her, though
she was not yet afraid. She relapsed into silence, to which he seemed
willing to consent. Once and again her glance swept him. He looked a
tough, weather-beaten Westerner, certainly not a man whom a woman need
be afraid to meet alone on the plains, but the oftener she looked the
more certain she became that he was not a casual puncher busy at the
legitimate work of his craft.

"Do you--live near here?" she asked presently.

"I live under my hat, ma'am," he told her.

"Sometimes near here, sometimes not so near."

This told her exactly nothing.

"How far did