Chapter 5

Into the Lion's Mouth.

Perry Potter, when he had read the foreman's note, asked how long since I left camp; when I told him that I was there at daylight, he looked at me queerly and walked off without a word. I didn't say anything, either.

I stayed at the ranch overnight, intending to start back the next morning. The round-up would be west of where I had left them, according to the foreman--or wagon-boss, as he is called. Logically, then, I should take the trail that led through Kenmore, the mining-camp owned by King, and which lay in the heart of White Divide ten miles west of King's Highway. That, I say, was the logical route--but I wasn't going to take it. I wasn't a bit stuck on that huddle of corrals and sheds, with the trail winding blindly between, and I wasn't in love with the girl or with old King; but, all the same, I meant to go back the way I came, just for my own private satisfaction.

While I was saddling Shylock, in the opal-tinted sunrise, Potter came down and gave me the letter to the wagon-boss, an answer to the one I had brought.

"Here's some chuck the cook put up for yuh," he remarked, handing me a bundle tied up in a flour-sack. "You'll need it 'fore yuh get through to camp; you'll likely be longer going than yuh was comin'."

"Think so?" I smiled knowingly to myself and left him staring disapprovingly after me. I could easily give a straight guess at what he was thinking.

I jogged along as leisurely as I could without fretting Shylock, and, once clear of the home field, headed straight for King's Highway. It wasn't the wisest course I could take, perhaps, but it was like to prove the most exciting, and I never was remarkable for my wisdom. It seemed to me that it was necessary to my self-respect to return the way I came--and I may as well confess that I hoped Miss King was an early riser. As it was, I killed what time I could, and so spent a couple of hours where one would have sufficed.

Half a mile out from the mouth of the pass, I observed a human form crowning the peak of a sharp-pointed little butte that rose up out of the prairie; since the form seemed to be in skirts, I made for the spot. Shylock puffed up the steep slope, and at last stopped still and looked back at me in utter disgust; so I took the hint and got off, and led him up the rest of the way.

"Good morning. We meet on neutral ground," I greeted when I was close behind her. "I propose a truce."

She jumped a bit, and looked very much astonished to see me there so close. If it had been some other girl--say Ethel Mapleton--I'd have suspected the genuineness of that surprise; as it was, I could only think she had been very much absorbed not to hear me scrambling up there.

"You're an early bird," she said dryly, "to be so far from home." She glanced toward the pass, as though she would