Remounting, he made his way through the crowd back over the course. Kate was still on the hill. "You won, didn't you?" she cried as he rode toward her. "If I hadn't, I guess I'd have had to head straight across the creek for home. Could you see?" "I watched you the whole way. What a long arm you have." "While these tin horns are counting their money, would you like to show me the ponies?" "You have a long memory, too." "I was brought up a good deal with Indians. Shall I hunt up Van Horn to go with us?" She darted a quick glance at him: "Why, yes, surely," she retorted, "if you want him." Laramie was tearing out a cigarette paper: "I could look at them without him," he returned calmly. "I don't see him, anyway," murmured Kate, professing to sweep the crowded course with her eyes. "Don't look too hard," cautioned Laramie. "I suppose we might save time," she suggested, ignoring his last remark, "by going without him." CHAPTER XIV LEFEVER ASKS QUESTIONS Those closest to headquarters sometimes know least of what is going on. That the big celebration at the ranch could have been anything more or less than what it professed to be, did not occur to Kate; nor could anyone actually say that it was more or less. Hawk could contemptuously refuse its overtures; Laramie could for reasons of his own accept them; the Falling Wall rustlers were out for a good time or they would not have been rustling and they would celebrate any time at anybody's expense--except their own; Carpy could believe it was to usher in a better feeling--everyone to his taste. But the suspicious, because they did not quite understand such a move, harbored their suspicions, and among the doubting was Belle Shockley--shrewd and very much alive to the drift of things since her struggle with a cyclone. Had Belle, instead of Kate, been out at the ranch, things now coming along that Kate failed to see, would have told volumes to her. But Kate did not feel at liberty to make of Belle a confidant in everything--certainly not in what happened at home; so she neither said anything to Belle nor asked of her any explanation of things that she herself did not understand--such as guarded and more frequent consultations between her father and Van Horn, Pettigrew and Stone; and such as men riding up with a clatter to the ranch-house at night and calling Doubleday out and calling for Van Horn who often now spent the night at the ranch and left before daybreak. Some of this, Kate saw. She could see how absent-minded her father was. He grew so taciturn she hardly knew him but the reason for it was beyond her. More than she saw, she picked up from Bradley, working then at the ranch. Bradley had taken a liking to Kate and often reminded her of the night he brought her into the Falling Wall country.