ell us that my little Jane Ann
was found?" gasped the man.

"No, sir."

"Somebody else wrote, then?"

"I do not know it, if they did," Miss Kate declared.

"Then somebody's been a-stringin' of me?" he roared, punching his big
hat with a clenched, freckled fist in a way that made Miss Kate jump.

"Oh!" she cried.

"Don't you be afeared, ma'am," said the big man, more gently. "But
I'm mighty cast down--I sure am! Some miser'ble coyote has fooled me.
That letter said as how my little niece was wrecked on a boat here and
that a party named Stone had taken her into their house at Lighthouse
Point----"

"It's Nita!" cried Miss Kate.

"What's that?" he demanded.

"You're speaking of Nita, the castaway!"

"I'm talkin' of my niece, Jane Ann Hicks," declared the rancher.
"That's who I'm talking of."

"But she called herself Nita, and would not tell us anything about
herself."

"It might be, ma'am. The little skeezicks!" chuckled the Westerner,
his eyes twinkling suddenly. "That's a mighty fancy name--'Nita.'
And so she _is_ here with you, after all?"

"No."

"Not here?" he exclaimed, his big, bony face reddening again.

"No, sir. I believe she has been here--your niece."

"And where'd she go? What you done with her?" he demanded, his
overhanging reddish eyebrows coming together in a threatening scowl.

"Hadn't you better sit down, Mr. Hicks, and let me tell you all about
it?" suggested Miss Kate.

"Say, Miss!" he ejaculated. "I'm anxious, I be. When Jane Ann first
run away from Silver Ranch, I thought she was just a-playin' off some
of her tricks on me. I never supposed she was in earnest 'bout it--no,
ma'am!

"I rid into Bullhide arter two days. And instead of findin' her
knockin' around there, I finds her pony at the greaser's corral, and
learns that she's took the train East. That did beat me. I didn't
know she had any money, but she'd bought a ticket to Denver, and it
took a right smart of money to do it.

"I went to Colonel Penhampton, I did," went on Hicks, "and told him
about it. He heated up the wires some 'twixt Bullhide and Denver; but
she'd fell out o' sight there the minute she'd landed. Denver's some
city, ma'am. I finds that out when I lit out arter Jane Ann and struck
that place myself.

"Wal! 'twould be teejious to you, ma'am, if I told whar I have chased
arter that gal these endurin' two months. Had to let the ranch an'
ev'rythin' else go to loose ends while I follered news of her al