Page:Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point.djvu/109

Rh "Thank you!" replied Mary, her head in the air. "I wouldn't care to be liked by the boys. It isn't ladylike to think of the boys all the time"

"These are grown men, I mean," said Nita, coolly. "The punchers that work for—well, just cow punchers. You call them cowboys. They know what's good and fine, jest as well as Eastern folks. And a girl that talks like you do about a cripple wouldn't go far with them."

"I suppose your friend, the half-Indian, is a critic of deportment," said The Fox, with a laugh.

"Well, Jib wouldn't say anything mean about a cripple," said Nita, in her slow way, and The Fox seemed to have no reply.

But this little by-play drew Ruth Fielding closer to the queer girl who had selected her "hifaluting" name because it was the name of a girl in a paper-covered novel.

Nita had lived out of doors, that was plain. Ruth believed, from what the runaway had said, that she came from the plains of the great West. She had lived on a ranch. Perhaps her folks owned a ranch, and they might even now be searching the land over for their daughter. The thought made the girl from the Red Mill very serious, and she determined to try and gain Nita's confidence and influence her, if she could, to tell the truth about herself and to go back to her