The little lady nodded: "Yes, Bill thinks there's no one like him. You see, Bill shot a man, one day when--he was not quite himself. Over in the Blackfoot country, it was, and Vil Holland knew the facts in the case, and he rode over and told Mr. Samuelson all about it, and they both went and talked it over with the prosecuting attorney, and with old Judge Nevers, with the result that they agreed to give the boy a chance. So Mr. Samuelson brought him here. That was five years ago. Bill is foreman of this outfit now, and our other three riders are boys that were headed the same way Bill was. Vil Holland brought one of them over, and Bill and Mr. Samuelson picked up the other two--and, if I do say it myself," she declared, proudly, "there isn't an outfit in Montana that can boast a more capable or loyal, or a straighter quartet of riders than this one." As Patty listened she understood something of what was behind the words of Thompson and Len Christie, when they had spoken that day of "Old Man" Samuelson. But, there was something she did not understand. And that something was--Vil Holland. Everybody liked him, everybody spoke well of him, and apparently everybody but herself trusted him implicitly. And yet, to her own certain knowledge, he did carry a jug, he did follow her about the hills, and he did tell her to her face that when she found her father's claim she would have a race on her hands, and that if she were beaten she would have to be satisfied with what she would get. But Vil Holland, his comings and his goings were soon forgotten in the absorbing interest with which Patty listened as her little gray-haired hostess recounted incidents and horrors of the Indian uprising, the first sporadic depredations, the coming of the troops, and finally the forcing of the belligerent tribes onto their reservations. It had been Patty's intention to ride back to her cabin in the evening, but Mrs. Samuelson would not hear of it. And, indeed the girl did not insist, for despite the fact that she had become thoroughly accustomed to her surroundings, the anticipation of a dinner prepared and served by the highly efficient Wong Yie, in the tastefully appointed dining room, with its real silver and china, proved sufficiently attractive to overcome even her impatience to begin the working out of her father's map. And the realization fully justified the anticipation. When the meal was finished the two women had talked the long evening away before the cheerful blaze of the wood fire, and when at last she was shown to her room, the girl retired to luxuriate in a real bed of linen sheets and a box mattress. CHAPTER XV THE HORSE RAID