"I'm an awfully good friend of Laury's. She's a poor cripple, dependent on her brother for everything, an' if he marries, as he's bound to do, I'd hate to see her turned out of here. This house is just Laury through and through. Don't you think so? 'Course, though, if York marries again--" Stellar Bahrr stopped meditatively. "All the women in the Sage Brush Valley's just crazy about York. He's some flirt, but everybody thought he'd settled his mind once sure. But I guess he flared up again, from what they say. She's too fur away from town a'most. Them that's furtherest away don't have a chance like them that's nearest him. But it may be all just gossip. There was a lot of talk about him an' a girl down the river that's got a crippled brother--Paul Ekblad's his name; hers is Thelmy--an' some considerable about one of the Poser girls where he was up the Sage Brush to this week. The married one now, I think, an' a bouncin' big baby, but what do you care for all that?" "Nothing," Jerry replied, innocently. The steel hooks turned slowly to lacerate deeper. "Well, I must be goin'. You give me your word you wouldn't cheep about my forgettin' an' runnin' in here. York's such a torment, I'd never hear the last of it. I know you are a honorable one with your promises, an' I like that kind. I'm glad I met you. An' I'll not say a word, neither, 'bout your goin' to see York in his private office. It's a bargain 'tween us two. Laury's an awfully good friend of yours an' she'll keep you here a good long while, she's that hos_pit_able." The steel hooks tore their way out, and the woman rose and strode quickly away. In a minute she had literally dropped from view in the shaded slope beyond the driveway. "I might as well punch a stick in water or stick a pin in old Granddad Poser's tombstone out in the cimetery, an' expect to find a hole left, as to do anything with that pink-an'-white-an'-gold critter!" she exclaimed, viciously, as she disappeared in the shadows. "I'm afraider of her than I would be of a real mad-cat, but she can't scare me!" Out on the lawn the moon just then seemed to cast a weird gleam of light, and to veil rather than reveal the long street beyond it. For a minute after the passing of her uninvited caller Jerry Swaim was filled with an unaccountable fright. Then her pulse beat calmly again and she smiled at herself.