Wayland dismounted and knocked on the door with his riding stock. It opened on an anaemic sulphur face with blond hair screwed in curl papers over a full row of gold headlights where an enterprising dentist had engrafted as much of Klondike as possible. "Sheriff Flood in?" the Ranger raised his hat. "Oh, how j' do, Mr. Wayland." All the curl papers nodded like clover tops in the wind, while the coy brows arched, and an inviting smile played round the simpering headlights. "No, he ain't! Dan ain't in!" The curl papers nodded again and the gold teeth simpered again. "Is he--_home_?" The word home came out with the force of a bullet. "No, he ain't home! Mr. Flood ain't home! The sheriff was called 'way! Is there any message?" Wayland stood back and watched the fray. The old man gazed full at the frowsy apparition in the doorway. If dagger looks could have stabbed her, the lady would have dropped dead stuck full of as many daggers as a cushion is of pins. The gold headlights suffered eclipse behind a pair of tightly perked lips; and one hand darted hold of the door knob. "Yes," he said, looking fixedly at the deep V of ash-colored skin where the lady had turned back the neck of her pink wrapper in imitation of gowns seen in the Sunday supplement of "The Smelter City Herald." "There was murder done on the Rim Rocks last night! There's festering bodies lying on top of yon Mesas! 'Tis a job for the sheriff, not for an outsider--" "Yes, Sir," said the gold headlights, "I think he's gone to see about it." He had looked her slowly over again from the blondine hair and the ash-colored V of unclean skin and waistless slop of slattern wrapper to clock work stockings and high heeled slippers. "A ha' ma doubts he's sprintin' fr' the back door this minute! Are ye the sheriff's--woman?" and oddly enough the lady didn't flush; but the faintest gloss came over the saffron skin--of what? It was the same nonchalant, wordless insolence that had played in the eyes of the man who had come out from the Senator's ranch. "Yes, Sir, I'll deliver your message a' right," flickered the headlights reassuringly. The old man stood stolidly and scorched the lady's eyes. "How long since y'r sheriff thing set out? Did he break loose by the back door?" "There ain't no back door," snapped the headlights; and the front door slammed in their faces. Wayland burst in a peal of laughter. "'Tis no laughing matter! 'Tis bad enough t' depend on that broken reed of a dastard coward sheriff hidin' under the bed! A've a mind to go back an' have him oot; but that--pot ash pate--" what else the old man called her was more truthful than elegant for an expurgated age. They replaced the post of the barbed wire gate in its loop and mounted their horses. "Well, Sir?" asked Wayland. "I don't wish to offend your British sense of law; but which way now?"