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 troubled Texas for an answer as he rode beside her toward the stream. For a woman who had lost her way she was mightily composed and easy of mind. Perhaps that was her nature, having been around so much, and accustomed to meeting all kinds of people. It was the way, also, of one used to the life she said she had followed once. Yet he knew very well that anybody who had ridden after cattle on the range never would get turned around and drop the road in the broad of day.

It was her own business, he concluded. If a woman wanted to go roaming around that way, let her go. This was a bold woman, with a large experience among men, larger indeed, he feared, than had been good for her. She would take care of herself in her own way, no matter where she might make her bed. But she had no honest purpose there on the border. Texas was forced to admit that belief in spite of the promptings of gratitude.

Texas gathered dry sumac for the fire, and that was as far as Fannie would allow him to go in the supper preparations. If he had doubted before that she ever had lived a cowboy's life all misgivings were dispelled at sight of her deftness with frying-pan over the little fire. She belonged to the craft; the slightest doubt of that was a slander. Of course, she couldn't jide and throw a rope to com-