"I am afraid you didn't find the house very orderly," he observed, as Creede backed off and the conversation sagged; and the two girls glanced at each other guiltily. "Of course you're just as welcome," he added hastily, "and I suppose you couldn't help cleaning house a bit; but you gave us both a bad scare, all the same. Didn't you notice how pale we looked?" he asked, to mask his embarrassment. "But you were right, Jeff," he continued enigmatically. "Does he always defer to you that way, Mr. Creede?" inquired Kitty Bonnair, with an engaging smile. "_We_ used to find him rather perverse." She glanced roguishly at Hardy as she gave this veiled rebuke. "But what was it that you were right about?--I'm just dying to ask you questions!" She confessed this with a naive frankness which quite won the big cowboy's heart, and, his nerve coming back, he grinned broadly at his former suspicions. "Well," he said, "I might as well come through with it--I told him I bet we'd been jumped." "Jumped?" repeated Miss Kitty, mystified. "Oh, is that one of your cowboy words? Tell me what it means!" "W'y, it means," drawled Creede, "that two young fellers like me and Rufe goes out to ride the range and when we come back some other outfit has moved into our happy home and we're orphans. We've been havin' a little trouble with the sheep lately, and when I heard them pots and kittles rattlin' around in here I thought for sure some Mormon sheepman had got the jump on us and located the ranch." "And what would you have done if he had?" continued Kitty eagerly. "Would you have shot him with that big pistol?" She pointed to the heavy Colt's which Creede had slung on his hip. But this was getting too romantic and Western, even for Jeff. "No, ma'am," he said modestly. "We just carry that to balance us in the saddle." "Oh!" exclaimed Kitty, disappointed, "and didn't you ever shoot _anybody_?" Creede blushed for her, in spite of himself. "Well," he replied evasively, "I don't know how it would be up where you come from, but that's kind of a leadin' question, ain't it?" "Oh, you have, then!" exclaimed Kitty Bonnair ecstatically. "Oh, I'm so glad to see a really, truly cowboy!" She paused, and gazed up at him soulfully. "Won't you let me have it for a minute?" she pleaded, and with a sheepish grin Creede handed over his gun. But if there had been another cowboy within a mile he would have hesitated, infatuated as he was. Every land has its symbolism and though the language of flowers has not struck root in the cow country--nor yet the amorous Mexican system of "playing the bear"--to give up one's pistol to a lady is the sign and token of surrender. However, though it brought the sweat to his brow, the byplay was pulled off unnoticed, Hardy and Lucy Ware being likewise deep in confidences.