But she seemed to be looking for something. Rock merely surmised that. For a week after he happened on the Maltese Cross, they covered the surrounding country, day by day. Nona talked very little. She rode like a man, easily, carelessly, a component part of her mount. She could handle a rope with fair skill. There was strength in her slender arms, an amazing endurance in her slim body. She knew her stock, bunch by bunch-- leader cows and oddly marked bulls. She knew where to find certain little herds. It was as if she watched over them jealously, as a miser gloats over his hoard. There was something in that Rock couldn’t fathom. Branded cattle on a recognized range were safer than bonds in a steel safe, as a rule. Sometimes there were exceptions to that rule. If there was such an exception here, Nona never breathed it, and the riders of a cow outfit were usually the first to be warned if there was any suspicion of rustling in the air. And Rock would not ask. But he wondered. He began to grow a little uneasy, too. He had accepted pay from Uncle Bill Sayre to secure certain information. He was on the ground, but he was not learning much about the Maltese Cross and Buck Walters. He had grown personally curious about Buck Walters, too, since meeting him. He didn’t like the man. Rock wasn’t given to sudden likes and dislikes. Nevertheless, on that one eye-to-eye clash he disliked Buck Walters--a much more active feeling than he could muster up either for or against Elmer Duffy, for instance. Rock had plenty of time for these mental conjectures. They were like mariners stranded on an island in midocean--himself, Nona Parke, the half-breed girl, and Baby Betty. No riders passed. Elmer Duffy did not come again. The sun rose, swung in a hot arc across a sapphire sky, and sank behind the far-off Rockies. They rode, rested, and slept, while the stars twinkled in a cool canopy, and the frogs along the Marias croaked antiphony to the soprano of a myriad of unseen crickets in the grass. Then one day Rock rode alone on the benches to the North. When he splashed through the shallows and came to the corrals late in the afternoon, there was a bay horse in the stable, and Charlie Shaw sat talking to Nona in the shade of the porch. CHAPTER VIII: GETTING DOWN TO CASES Under his ready laugh and effervescent smile, Charlie Shaw gave the impression of entire competence. The downright self-reliance demanded by the range of all who would pass muster in its service, was quite apparent to Rock. In a cow camp a man was judged by the way he carried himself, and what he could do, rather than his years. Charlie had been giving Nona an account of things on round-up. Apparently he had just ridden in. He nodded to Rock and went on with his talk. Rock sat down beside them to roll a cigarette.