Page:BM Bower - Her Prairie Knight.djvu/219

 remarked. "You don't look good to me, and that's no dream." "Aw, stay and warm up," the fourth man expostulated. "Yuh don't need t' mind Le Febre; he's drunk.'

But Rowdy opened the door decisively, and Miss Conroy, her cheeks like two storm-buffeted poppies, followed him out with dignity—albeit trailing a yard of red-and-yellow Navajo blanket behind her. Rowdy lifted her into the saddle, tucked her feet carefully under the blanket, and said never a word.

"Mr. Vaughan," she began hesitatingly, "this is too bad; you need not have left. I—I wasn't afraid."

"I know you weren't," conceded Rowdy. "But it was a hard formation—for a woman. Are there any more places on this flat marked Unavailable?"

Miss Conroy replied misanthropically that if there were they would be sure to find them.

They took up their weary wanderings again, while the yellow eye of the window winked after them. They missed Rodway's by a scant hundred yards, and didn't know it, because the side of the house next them had no lighted windows. They traveled in a wide, half circle, and thought that 213