pipes, and taking peaceful morning trips like this--to see whether we'd caught a coyote in our traps, or a bobcat, or a skunk."

"Yes, that's all right for us; but Lahoma ain't smoking no pipe, nor is her interest in skunks such as ours."

"Just so--but see how Greer County is getting settled up--that's what's going to save us, Brick--civilization is coming to Lahoma, she won't have to go out gunning after it."

"Of course I've thought of that. I ain't got your grammar, but my mind don't have to wait to let in an idea after it's put its clothes on. Maybe they comes in nothing but a nightshirt, but I ain't ever knowed YOU to think of nothing yet, that I hadn't entertained in some fashion. Of course, civilization is a-creeping up to the mountain, and I reckon by the time Lahoma is my age it'll be playing an organ in church. But she's at the age that calls for quick work--she's got the rest of her life to settle down in. Most all of a person's life is spent in settling and it's befitting to lay in the foundation aforetime. Look at that dear girl in The Children of the Abbey, all them love-passages and the tears she sheds--she was being a young woman! What would that noble book of been had that lovely creature been shut up in a cove till nineteen year of age? Is Lahoma going to have a chance like that amongst these settlers? Will she ever hear that high talk, that makes your flesh sort of creep with pride in your race when you read it aloud?"

"Do you want Lahoma to have a lover, Brick Willock?"

"Bill, if he is fit, I say she ought to have a chance."

"And where are you going to find the man?"

"I'm going to help Lahoma find him. I'm like you, Bill, I hates that lover like a snake this minute, though I ain't no idea who, where, or what he is, or may be. I hates him--but I ain't going to stand in Lahoma's way. No, sir, I 'low to meet civilization half-way. There it is--look!"

Willock stood erect and pointed toward the plain, where perhaps twenty tents had been pitched within the last two weeks. Bill gave an unwilling glance, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and resumed progress up the difficult defile.

Willock continued: "Two weeks ago, there wasn't nothing there but naked sand. Now there's three saloons, a hardware store, a grocery, a bank--all of 'em under canvas--and the makings of a regular town. Right out there in the broiling sun! Carloads of lumber and machinery is on its way, and the stage-coach will be putting off mail there before long. That's how civilization is a-seeking out our little gal. But I means to meet it halfway."

"Oh, come on, don't say anything more about it--when I look at those tents I can't breathe freely. What do you gamble on--a skunk. or a coyote, in the traps?"

"'Tain't them tents that's seeping your breath, it's pure unalloyed age. Yes, sir, I means to meet civilization half-way. I've already been prospecting. There's a party over there in Tent City that's come on from Chicago just from the lust of seeing pioneer-life at first hand, people that haven't no idee of buying or settling--it's a picnic to them. They're camping out, watching life develop--and what's life-and-death earnestness to others is just amusement to them. That there's a test of people high-up. Real folks in the big world don't do nothing, it takes all their time just being folks. You and me could bag a dozen polecats whilst a fine lady was making her finger-nails ready for the day. And these Chicago people is that kind."

"Do you think they'll make friends with Lahoma just to suit you? The kind of people you're talking about are more afraid of getting to know strangers than they are of being set on by wildcats."

"They'll make friends with Lahoma, all right, and invite her home with 'em. That's the way I 'low to set her out in the big world. Lahoma don't know my plans and neither do they, but I was never a man to make my plans knowed when I was going to hold up people. Of course I'M speaking in a figger, but in a figger I may say I've held up several, in my day."

"THEY won't invite Lahoma to Chicago, not if they are the right sort."

"They will invite Lahoma to Chicago," retorted Willock firmly, "and they are the right sort. Wait and see; and when you have saw, render due honor to your Uncle Brick."

CHAPTER XIII A SURE-ENOUGH MAN

"Pardner, I sure am glad to see you--put 'er there again! How are you feeling, anyhow? Look mighty tough and wiry, I do say; Here, Bill!" Willock raised his voice to a powerful shout, "Bill! come and see what's blowed in with the tumbleweed and tickle-grass. A sure-enough man, that's what I call him, and me to fight if any dispute's made to the title, according."

The tall bronzed man who was leading his horse along the road entering the mountain horseshoe, smiled with a touch of gravity in the light of his gray eyes. Willock found his chin more resolute, his glance more assured and penetrating, while his step, firm and alert, told of dauntless purpose. He was no longer the wandering cowboy content with a bed on the ground wherever chance might find him at night, but a mature man who had taken root in the soil of his own acres. Only twenty-five or six, his features were still touched with the last lingering mobility of youth; but the set of his mouth and the gleam of his eyes hinted at years of battle against storms, droughts and loneliness. He was already a veteran of the prairie, despite his youth.

"Everything looks very natural!" murmured Wilfred Compton, gazing about on the seamed walls of granite in whose crevices the bright cedars mocked at winter's threatening hand.

"Yes, mountains is lots more natural than humans. They just sets there serene and indifferent not caring whether you likes their looks or not, and they let 'er blow and let 'er snow, it's all one to them. I reckon when we've been dead so long that nobody could raise a dispute as to whether we'd ever lived or not, that there same boulder what they calls Rocking Stone will still be a-making up its mind whether to roll down into the valley or stay where it was born. Wilfred, if you knowed how glad I am to see you again, you'd be sort of scared, I reckon, thinking you'd fell amongst cannibals. Wonder where that aged trapper is?" He shouted more lustily, and a bristling white head suddenly appeared on the summit of Turtle Hill.

"Great Scott!" yelled Bill Atkins, glaring down upon the approaching figure, "if it ain't Wilfred Compton again! Come on, come on, I was never as glad to see anybody in all my life!"

The young man looked at Willock somewhat dubiously. "He's very much altered, then, since I met him last. I'm afraid he has a gun hidden up there among the rocks."

"Oh, nux, nux," retorted Willock. "He's a-speaking fair. Come along!"

As they ascended the winding road, Wilfred vividly recalled the day when, from the same elevation, he had watched Lahoma buried in her day-dreams. A sudden turn brought the cove into view. Lahoma was not to be seen, but there was the cabin, the dugout and the three cedar trees in whose shade he had made the discovery that he could not regard Lahoma as a little girl. It seemed that the cabin door trembled--was Lahoma's hand upon the latch? And when she opened the door, what expression would flash upon that face he remembered so well? Would she be as glad as Willock and Bill Atkins, when she recognized him? Even one half as glad?

He sighed deeply--it was not to be expected. She had known him only an hour; since then, many settlers had invaded the country about the Granite Mountains, a city had sprung up, not far away--other towns were peeping through the sand, and blooming from canvas to wood and brick. The air tingled with the electric currents of new life and intense competition.

"Did Lahoma marry?" he asked abruptly as all three descended to the lower level of the cove.

"She never did, yet," replied Bill dryly. "Young man, I'm powerful glad to see you. It's rather chilly out here. I'll take your horse and we'll gather in the dugout and talk over what's happened since we last met. Brick, don't you begin on anything interesting till I come."

"You give me that horse," retorted Brick. "You're too aged a man to be messing with horses. You'll get a fall one of these days that'll lay you flat. You'll never knit them bones together, if you do; you ain't vital enough."

Bill clung grimly to the bridle, muttering something that showed no lack of vitality in his vocabulary.

"He won't let me take no care of him," complained Brick, as he conducted Wilfred to the dugout.

Wilfred cast a longing glance toward the cabin, and again he thought Lahoma's parlor door quivered. He even stopped in the path; but Willock went on, unconscious, and he was obliged to follow.

"It's a strange thing," remarked Brick, as he descended the hard dirt steps, "how Lahoma has acted on me. I mean, living with her these past twelve years, and all the rest of the world shut out, except Bill. Could I of been told before I saved little Lahoma from the highwaymen that I'd ever worry over an old coon like Bill Atkins, as to whether he broke his neck or not, I'd 'a' laughed, for I'd 'a' had to. But it sure does gall me to have him exposing himself as he does. I never wanted Bill to come here, but he just come, like a stray cat. First thing I knowed, he was a-purring at the fireside--well, not exactly a-purring, nuther, but sort of mewing, and looking ready to scratch. He just took up with us and now it's like always being scared to close a door for fear of catching his tail in the jamb--I'm talking in a figger. Come in, pard--this used to be Lahoma's boudoir before we built that cabin for her. See the carpet? Don't tell ME you're a-walking on it, and not noticing! See that little stove? I brung it clear across the mountains from a deserted wagon, when I was young. Two legs is gone