“I wish you all would please go away,” she said. “You are making mamma sick. She's got it in her head that you are going to do something awful, and I can't convince her you're not. I told her you wouldn't do anything so sneaking, but she's awfully nervous about it. Won't you please go, right now?” They looked sheepishly at one another; every man of them feared the ridicule of his neighbor. “Why, sure we'll go,” cried Park, rallying. “We were going anyway in a minute. Tell your mother we were just congratulating Lauman on rounding up these Wagners. Come on, boys. And you, Bud, hurry up and get well again; we miss yuh round the Lazy Eight.” The three who were sitting on Lauman got up, and he gave a sigh of relief. “Say, yuh darned cowpunchers don't have no mercy on an old man's carcass at all,” he groaned, in exaggerated self-pity. “Next time yuh want to congratulate me, I wish you'd put it in writing and send it by mail.” A little ripple of laughter went through the crowd. Then they swung up on their horses and galloped away in the moonlight. CHAPTER VIII. A QUESTION OF NERVE “That was your victory, Miss Stevens. Allow me to congratulate you.” If Thurston showed any ill grace in his tone it was without intent. But it did seem unfortunate that just as he was waxing eloquent and felt sure of himself and something of a hero, Mona should push him aside as though he were of no account and disperse a bunch of angry cowboys with half a dozen words. She looked at him with her direct, blue-gray eyes, and smiled. And her smile had no unpleasant uplift at the corners; it was the dimply, roguish smile of the pastel portrait only several times nicer. Re could hardly believe it; he just opened his eyes wide and stared. When he came to a sense of his rudeness, Mona was back in the kitchen helping with the supper dishes, just as though nothing had happened--unless one observed the deep, apple-red of her cheeks--while her mother, who showed not the faintest symptoms of collapse, flourished a dish towel made of a bleached flour sack with the stamp showing a faint pink and blue XXXX across the center. “I knew all the time they wouldn't do anything when it came right to the point,” she declared. “Bless their hearts, they thought they would--but they're too soft-hearted, even when they are mad. If yuh go at 'em right yuh can talk 'em over easy. It done me good to hear yuh talk right up to 'em, Bud.” Mrs. Stevens had called hi Bud from the first time she laid eyes on him. “That's all under the sun they needed--just somebody to set 'em thinking about the other side. You're a real good speaker; seems to me you ought to study to be a preacher.”