Her rescuer laughed again and turned away, moving his hand involuntarily toward his head, and discovering that it was bare. The discovery seemed to amuse him even more highly, and he made two or three strides to where his hat lay in the middle of the street, and went across to his office, dusting the hat with long, elaborate flirts of his gayly bordered silk handkerchief. The knot of men began to disperse, and the boys, who lingered longest, finally straggled away, stifling their regret that no one was mangled beyond recognition. Parker climbed into the wagon, and drove over to Saunders's store. "I don't know as I'd better buy a jersey to-day," giggled Idy, as she stepped from the wagon to the elevated wooden sidewalk. "I'm afraid it won't fit. I feel as if I'd been scared out o' ten years' growth." IV. As they drove home in the chill, yellow evening, Idy turned to her lover, and asked abruptly,-- "Who was that felluh?" "What felluh?" "The young felluh with the sandy _mus_tache, the one that stopped the team." Parker's manner had been evasive from the first, but at this the evasiveness became a highly concentrated unconcern. He looked across the lake, and essayed a yawn with feeble success. "There was a good many standin' around when I got there. What sort o' lookin' felluh was he?" "I just told ye; with a sandy mustache, short, and middlin' heavy set." "Sh-h-h!" said Parker, reaching for his gun. Idy stopped the horses. A bronze ibis arose from the tules at the water's edge, and flapped slowly westward, its pointed wings and hanging feet dripping with the gold of the sunset. Parker laid down his gun. "What did you want to shoot at that thing fer?" asked Idy. "They ain't fit to eat." "The wings is pretty. I thought you might like another feather in your cap." The girl gave him a look of radiant contempt, and he spoke again hurriedly, anxious to prevent a relapse in the conversation. "You was sayin' somethin' to-day about signin' the pledge, Idy: I've been layin' off to sign the pledge this good while. The next time there's a meetin' of the W. X. Y. Z. women, you fetch on one o' their pledges, an' I'll put my fist to it." "W. C. T. U.," corrected Idy, with emphasis. "All right; W. C. T. me, if that suits you any better. It's a long time since I learned my letters, an' I get 'em mixed. But I've made up my mind on the teetotal business, and don't ye forget it." "There ain't any danger of _me_ forgettin' it," said the young woman significantly. "What ye goin' to do about that other business?" she added, turning her wide eyes upon him abruptly--"about gettin' even with that cheatin' Barden?" They had driven into the purple shadow of the mountains, and Parker seemed to have left his enthusiasm behind him with the sunlight. "I don't know," he said gloomily. "Do ye want me to kill 'im?"