hed him mount his horse and ford the
creek and ride away westward.

"I don't like that man," declared Miss Dale, and caught her lower lip
between her white teeth. "I wonder what he wanted?"

"You'll find out when he comes back." Dryly.

"I hope he never comes back. I never want to see him again. Do you
know him?"

"Not me. First time I ever saw him was this morning in Farewell. He
was with Lanpher. When I was coming out here he and Lanpher caught up
with me and passed me."

"He didn't bring Lanpher here with him anyhow."

"He didn't for a fact," assented Racey Dawson, his eyes following the
dwindling figures of the rider and his horse. "I wonder why?"

"I wonder, too." Thus Miss Dale with a gurgling chuckle.

Both laughed. For Racey's sole visit to the Dale place had been made
in company with Lanpher. The cause of said visit had been the rustling
and butchering of an 88 cow, which Lanpher had ill-advisedly essayed
to fasten upon Mr. Dale. But, due to the interference of Chuck Morgan,
a Bar S rider, who later married Jane Dale, Lanpher's attempt had been
unavailing. It may be said in passing that Lanpher had suffered both
physically and mentally because of that visit. Of course he had
neither forgiven Chuck Morgan nor the Bar S for backing up its
puncher, which it had done to the limit.

"I quit the 88 that day," Racey Dawson told the girl.

"I know you did. Chuck told me. Look at the time, will you? Get your
hat. We mustn't keep Jane waiting."

"No," he said, thoughtfully, his brows puckered, "we mustn't keep Jane
waitin'. Lookit, Miss Dale, as I remember yore pa he had a moustache.
Has he still got it?"

Miss Dale puzzled, paused in the doorway. "Why, no," she told him. "He
wears a horrid chin whisker now."

"He does, huh? A chin whisker. Let's be movin' right along. I think
I've got something interesting to tell you and yore sister and Chuck."

But they did not move along. They halted in the doorway. Or, rather,
the girl halted in the doorway, and Racey looked over her shoulder.
What stopped them short in their tracks was a spectacle--the spectacle
of an elderly chin-whiskered man, very drunk and disorderly, riding in
on a paint pony.

"Father!" breathed Miss Dale in a horror-stricken whisper.

And as she spoke Father uttered a string of cheerful whoops and topped
off with a long pull at a bottle he had been brandishing in his right
hand.

"Please go," said Miss Dale to Racey Dawson.

He hesita