“Ain’t used to being careful for my own sake.” The Westerner all at once felt inspired that the occasion was one for a show of good-cheer. “Like as not, though, I’d better take your advices to heart, especially as they’re gratis, for the sake of my friends and playmates.” Harford snapped him up. “At any rate, in the future don’t involve women. If you must run amuck, run it and muck it alone. If you make any more disturbance around Miss Lauderdale, you’ll hear from me.” Now, this sounded more like “legitimate” than the movies. The potential villain’s sneer and tone of superiority brought out the regular impulses of a hero like a rash on Pape. Only with effort did he guard his tongue. “Wouldn’t take any bets on my being in a listening mood, Harfy,” he made remark. “You’ll listen to what I have to say, I guess, mood or no mood,” Harford continued. “Your debut into a circle where you never can belong was amusing at first. But any joke may be overplayed. This one is getting too tiresome to be practical. I’ve tried to keep to myself what I think about an oil-stock shark like you catapulting himself into such a family as the Sturgis’, but if you want me to illustrate——” He had slid over on the seat from behind the steering wheel. Now he half rose, his hand upon the latch of the car door, as though about to descend to the pavement. But he did not turn the handle. With synchronous movements Pape stepped to the running board, clapped two heavy hands upon the real-estater’s immaculately tailored shoulders and sat his would-be social mentor down upon the seat with what must have been a tooth-toddling jar. That mention of oil stock had been several syllables too many in strictures to which he was not accustomed. Only Jane and Curtis Lauderdale had direct knowledge of his wrong-righting mission to the East and they, he felt certain, had not spoken with Harford since he with them. The question was pertinent how this handsome, fiery-pated young metropolitan, so frankly and unexpectedly showing himself as an out-and-out enemy, had happened on the connection. To wring the facts out of him then and there would have been a treat. Yet neither the time nor set was propitious for measures as drastic as their slump to type in character and motivation made imminent. “Having just been before the august court, I ain’t homesick to return,” Pape said, easing, but not foregoing his shoulder hold. “So if you’ll just postpone that illustration until a more suitable time and place for me to illustrate back what I think of your dam’ impudence, I won’t get hauled in again and you hauled out of a reg’lar back-home bashing up.” By way of agreement, Harford threw off his hold and moved across the seat. That he made no further effort to leave the car did not deceive Pape as to his courage or capacity. His coloring bespoke a temper of fierce impulses and physically he looked fit, a few pounds heavy, but strong-framed and plastered with muscles.