Hank plainly was startled, but he got his breath and came back gallantly with: “I won’t, honey. By the holy poker—this is your own business! I don’t see why it ain’t—just as much as if you was a man a hundred and thirteen years old, instead of a little girl only thirteen.” Hilda had all along assured herself, almost feverishly, that Uncle Hank would understand; but now, climbing the stairs to bed, looking back over her shoulder to where he sat, the sense of his forbearance was like a pang in her heart. She’d done something she dared not tell Uncle Hank. She’d deceived him. And she had done it for a boy who didn’t like Uncle Hank—who, for some strange, unaccountable reason seemed almost to hate him! Well, that had to be. But now she would make up to him for it. Never again—not on any other subject, anyhow—would she keep anything back from him. But Pearse—she knew if Pearse needed it she would again deceive the old man. It was very strange and puzzling; it hurt her. She fell asleep, finally, then waked to the startling thought—that she’d put Uncle Hank second. He’d always been first. Well—she couldn’t help that, either. CHAPTER XVI “TWEN-TY—SEV-EN—HUN-DRED—CAT-TLE!” Sheriff Daniels clung resolutely to the trail of that broken-shoed pony. He discovered, finally, who the man was that had ridden it away from the ranch where it was stolen. The thief was traced into old Mexico, then into a little place in Arizona, brought back from there, tried and convicted of that and of the killing. Every one supposed that it was he who had been at the Three Sorrows that day. His trial brought out the fact that the Romero brothers were the others in the affair. They disappeared from Lame Jones County and stayed away. The matter was cleared up now; Pearse Masters could have come back openly now, if he’d wanted to. But he didn’t—he didn’t even write. A whole year rolled round, and Hilda had heard nothing from him or of her Sunday pony. Yet in the cattle country, where the distances were so great, people sometimes borrowed a horse and kept it for more than a year, waiting for the time when it would be convenient to return it by some friend traveling in the necessary direction. Of course, feeling as he did about Uncle Hank, Pearse himself would never ride up to the Three Sorrows leading Sunday. Yet, in her own mind, Hilda never gave up the hope that some time she would find a way to bring the two together and make them friends. Nobody, she felt sure, could really know Uncle Hank and not love and trust him.