Perhaps there was something like an accusation in Nat’s tone. At least, it was not just the tone to take with such a high-spirited person as Tavia. Her head came up and her eyes flashed. She reached for the letter. “Isn’t that nice!” she cried. “Another from dear old Lance. He’s _such_ a desperately determined chap.” At first the other young folk had not noted Nat’s tone or Tavia’s look. But the young man’s next query all understood: “Still at it, are you, Tavia? Can’t possibly keep from stringing ’em along? It’s meat and drink to you, isn’t it?” “Why, of course,” drawled Tavia, two red spots in her cheeks. She walked away, slitting Lance Petterby’s envelope as she went. Nat’s brow was clouded, and all through dinner he said very little. Tavia seemed livelier and more social than ever, but Dorothy apprehended “the fly in the amber.” CHAPTER XVII “DO YOU UNDERSTAND TAVIA?” “You got this old timer running round in circles, Miss Tavia, when you ask about a feller named Garford Knapp anywhere in this latitude, and working for a feller named Bob. There’s more ‘Bobs’ running ranches out here than there is bobwhites down there East where you live. Too bad you can’t remember this here Bob’s last name, or his brand. “Now, come to think, there was a feller named ‘Dimples’ Knapp used to be found in Desert City, but not in Hardin. And you ought to see Hardin—it’s growing some!” * * * * * This was a part of what was in Lance Petterby’s letter. Had Nat White been allowed to read it he would have learned something else—something that not only would have surprised him and his brother and cousin, but would have served to burn away at once the debris of trouble that seemed suddenly heaped between Tavia and himself. It was true that Tavia had kept up her correspondence with the good-natured and good-looking cowboy in whom, while she was West, she had become interested, and that against the advice of Dorothy Dale. She did this for a reason deeper than mere mischief. Lance Petterby had confided in her more than in any of the other Easterners of the party that had come to the big Hardin ranch. Lance was in love with a school teacher of the district while the party from the East was at Hardin; and now he had been some months married to the woman of his choice. When Tavia read bits of his letters, even to Dorothy, she skipped all mention of Lance’s romance and his marriage. This she did, it is true, because of a mischievous desire to plague her chum and Ned and Nat. Of late, since affairs had become truly serious between Nat and herself, she would have at any time explained the joke to Nat had she thought of it, or had he asked her about Lance. The very evening previous to the arrival of this letter from the cowpuncher to which Nat had so unwisely objected, Nat and Tavia had gone for a walk together in the crisp December moonlight and had talked very seriously.