He leaned over the wheel confidentially, and Lounsbury bent toward him, so that the smoke of the pipe fed the storekeeper's nostrils. They talked for a half-hour, the one relating his story, the other putting in quick questions. At the end of their conversation, Lounsbury held out his hand. "If their letter brings him, Mike," he said, "don't you fail to let me know." "Aye, aye," promised the pilot, earnestly. They parted. Old Michael continued his way with an easy mind. But Lounsbury was troubled. Instead of carrying--as on his former visit--good news to the little family on the bend, he must now be the bearer of evil. And when, having stalled his horse with Ben and Betty, he entered the cottonwood shack, his heart smote him still more. For, secretly, he had hoped that he was to tell them what they already knew. But it seemed precisely the reverse. There was nothing in the appearance and actions of the Lancasters that suggested anxiety. The section-boss, though his manner was not without a certain reserve (as if he half believed something was about to be wormed out of him), greeted Lounsbury good-naturedly enough. Marylyn hurried up in a timid flutter to take his cap and coat. While, facing him from the hearth-side, her hair coiled upon her head like a crown, her grey eyes bright, her cheeks glowing, was a new Dallas. "Well, how've you all been?" asked Lounsbury, accepting a bench. "Oh, spright 'nough," answered the section-boss. "But it's cold, it's cold. Keeps me tremblin' like a guilty nigger." "You'll get over that," assured the other, rubbing the blood into his hands. "It's natural for you to be soft as chalk-rock the first winter--you've been living South." "Ah reckon," agreed Lancaster. He sat down beside the younger man, eyeing him closely. "How d' y' come t' git away fr'm business?" he queried. "Well, you see," Lounsbury answered, "I've got an A 1 man in my Bismarck store, and at Clark's there's nothing to do week days, hardly. So I just took some tobacco to Skinney's, where the boys could get at it, and loped down here." Then, playfully, "But I don't see much happening in these parts." He stretched toward a window. "The town of Lancaster ain't growing very fast." Dallas, seated on a bench with Marylyn, looked across at him smilingly. "I'm glad of it," she declared. "We ain't used to towns." "You folks've never lived in one?" "No--we never even _been_ in one." He puckered his forehead. "Funny," he said. "Somehow, I always think of you two as town girls." "Aw, shucks!" exclaimed Lancaster, scowling. But Dallas was leaning forward, interested. "That's on account of our teachers," she said. "There was a school-house up the track, in Texas, and we went to it on the hand-car. Every year we had a different teacher, and all of 'em came from big Eastern places like New Orleans or St. Louis. So--so you see, we kinda got towny from our school-ma'ams."