That was her given title, but to every cow-puncher on the ranges she was known as “Jac” During, who rode, shot, and sometimes swore as well as any man of them all. She was Jacqueline to her father alone, and to him only at such a time as this. “Well?” she said belligerently, and her eyes fixed on her father as steadily and as angrily as those of a man. “Your hands was made for feet! Go back to the kitchen. We don’t need you till the boys is through with their coffee. Too bad, Maurie.” “Nothin’ at all!” said the latter heartily, and waved the matter out of existence. He might banish Jac from his thoughts with a gesture, but he could not drive away her thoughts of him so easily, it seemed; for she stopped in the shadow of the doorway which led into the kitchen and stared back with big eyes at the cow-puncher. “Who you takin’ to the dance?” said her father. “Dolly Maxwell,” said Maurie, naming the prettiest girl in many, many miles. “That pale-faced--thing!” muttered Jac, relapsing into a feminine vocabulary at this crisis. But she sighed as she turned back into the kitchen. She threw open the door of the stove so that the light flamed on her red hair, which was tied in a hard knot on top of her head--the quickest, easiest, and unquestionably the most ugly manner of dressing hair. A vast and unreasoning rage made her blood hot. The anger was partly for her own blunder in spilling the hot coffee. It was even more because of Maurie’s ejaculation. With that one word he had banished the vision of Sir Maurice de Gordon. The plumed helmet had fallen from his head; his bright armor had blown away on a gust of reality. In the fury of her chagrin Jac caught up the poker and raked the grate of the stove loudly. The rattling helped to relieve her as swearing, perhaps, relieves a man. In the midst of the racket she heard a chuckle from the dining-room, and her blood went cold at the thought that some one might understand the deeps of her shame and wrath. She ran to the door. There she sighed again, but it was relief this time. At least it was not Maurie who laughed. He was deep in conversation with his neighbor. She swept the other faces with a quick glance that halted at a pair of bright, quizzical eyes. Only one man had apparently understood the meaning of her racket at the stove. “That bum!” said Jac, and turned on her heel. But something made her stop and look back. Perhaps it was the brightness of those eyes; certainly nothing else could have made her look twice at this fellow. Even among these rough citizens of the mountain desert he was wild and ragged. His shirt was soiled and frayed from elbow to wrist. A bush of black hair was so long that it almost entirely hid his ears, and his face, apparently untouched by a razor for months, was covered by a tremendous growth of whiskers. She could only faintly guess at the features behind that mask.