The stock inspector stopped again, on his way back to the railroad. Billy Louise was so anxious that she smothered her dislike and treated him nicely, which thawed the man to an alarming amiability. She questioned him artfully--trust Billy Louise for that!--and she decided that the stock inspector was either a very poor detective or a very good actor. He did not, for instance, mention any corral hidden in a blind canyon away back in the hills, and Billy Louise did not mention it, either. He had not found any worked brands, he said. And he did not appear to know anything further about Ward than the mere fact of his existence. "There's a fellow holding down a claim, away over on Mill Creek," he had remarked. "I'll look him up when I come back, though Seabeck says he's all right." "Ward is all right," asserted Billy Louise, rather unwisely. "Haven't a doubt of it. I thought maybe he might have seen something that might give us a clew." Perhaps the stock inspector was wiser than she gave him credit for being. He did not at any rate pursue the subject any farther, until he found an opportunity to talk to Mrs. MacDonald herself. Then he artfully mentioned the fellow on Mill Creek, and because she did not know any reason for caution, he got all the information he wanted, and more, for mommie was in one of her garrulous humors. He went away in a thoughtful mood, and I may as well tell you why. Do you remember that evening when Ward sat before the fire thinking so intently of a man that he pulled a gun on Billy Louise when she startled him? Well, this stock inspector was the man. And this man went away from the Wolverine thinking of Ward quite as intently as Ward sometimes thought of him. If Billy Louise had thrown a chip and hit the stock inspector on the back of the neck, it is very likely that he would have pulled a gun, also. I've an idea that Billy Louise might have done something more than throw a chip at him if she had known who he was; but she did not know, and she slept the sounder for her ignorance. After that the days drifted quietly for a month and grew nippier at each end and lazier in the middle; which meant that the short summer was over, and that fall was getting ready to paint the wooded slopes with her gayest colors, and that one must prepare for the siege of winter. It was some time in the latter part of September that Billy Louise got up in the middle of a frosty night because she heard her mother moaning. That was the beginning. She sent John off before daylight for the doctor, and before the next night she stood with her lips pressed together and watched the doctor count mommie's pulse and take mommie's temperature, and drew in her breath hardly when she saw how long he studied the thermometer afterwards.