ng her in his arms, he kissed her again and again.

"Kissing again," shouted Polly from the doorway. "Say, will you two
never settle down to business? There's Bud Lane and a bunch of others
just into the corral--maybe they want you, Jack."

Jack excused himself. As he stepped out on the piazza he asked Polly:
"Shall I send Bud in?"

"Let him come in if he wants to. I'm not sending for him." Polly
spitefully turned up her nose at him. Jack laughed as he closed the
door.

Echo reseated herself at the piano, fingering the keys.

"How are you getting on with Bud?" she asked the younger girl.

"We don't get on a little bit," she snapped. "Bud never seems to
collect much revenue an' we just keep trottin' slow like--wish I was
married and had a home of my own."

"Aren't you happy with father and mother?"

Polly glanced at Echo with a smile. "Lord, yes," she replied, "in a
way, but I'm only a poor relation--your ma was my ma's cousin or
something like that."

Echo laughed. "Nonsense," she retorted. "Nonsense--you're my dear
sister, and the only daughter that's at the old home now."

"But I want a home of my own, like this," said Polly.

"Then you'd better shake Bud and give Slim a chance."

Polly was too disgusted to answer at once. "Slim Hoover, shucks! Slim
doesn't care for girls--he's afraid of 'em," she said at length. "I
like Bud, with all his orneriness," she declared.

"Why doesn't he come to see you more often?"

"I don't know, maybe it's because he's never forgiven you for marryin'
Jack."

"Why should he mind that?" she asked, startled.

"Well, you know," she answered between stitches, drawing the needle
through the cloth with angry little jerks, "Bud, he never quite
believed Dick was dead."

Echo rose hastily. The vague, haunting half-thoughts of weeks were
crystallized on the instant. She felt as if Dick was trying to speak
to her from out of the great beyond. With a shudder she into a chair
at the table opposite Polly.

"Don't," she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper, "I can't bear to
hear him spoken of. I dreamed of him the other night--a dreadful
dream."

Polly was delighted with this new mystery. It was all so romantic.

"Did you? let's hear it."

With unseeing eyes Echo gazed straight ahead rebuilding from her dream
fabric a tragedy of the desert, in which the two men who had played so
great a part in her life were the actors.

"It seems," she told, "that I was