Page:Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point.djvu/167

Rh "That's me—Bill Hicks. Bill Hicks, of Bullhide, Montanny."

"I hope you have not come here, Mr. Hicks, to be disappointed. But I must tell you at the start," said Miss Kate, "that I never heard o you before I received your very remarkable telegram."

"Huh! that can well be, ma'am—that can well be. But they got your letter at the ranch, and Jib, he took it into Colonel Penhampton, and the Colonel telegraphed me to New York, where I'd come a-hunting her"

"Wait, wait, wait!" cried Miss Kate, eagerly. "I don't understand at all what you are talking about."

"Why—why, I'm aimin' to talk about my Jane Ann," exclaimed the cattle man.

"Jane Ann who?" she gasped.

"Jane Ann Hicks. My little gal what you've got her and what you wrote about"

"You are misinformed, sir," declared Miss Kate. "I have never written to you—or to anybody else—about any person named Jane Ann Hicks."

"Oh, mebbe you don't know her by that name. She had some hifalutin' idee before she vamoosed about not likin' her name—an' I give her that thar name myself!" added Bill Hicks, in an aggrieved tone.

"Nor have I written about any other little girl,