"Not if I was a farmer's wife," Jo responded quickly. "Oh, Jo, do you really want to be a city girl?" Todd's face was frankly sorrowful. "Could you never be satisfied on a farm?" "I don't believe I ever could," Jo said prettily. "Thaine's a farmer all right, Jo." "He isn't going to be one always," Jo broke in quickly. "He's going to the Kansas University and there's no telling after that." "No, he's just going to Wykerton, that's all. Nay, he have went. Him and him fraulein. And say, there's another pretty fraulein went up the trail just ahead of the Aydelot horse party. A sweetheart of a girl whom Thaine Aydelot took home after all last night." "I don't care where Thaine goes," Jo cried. "And you don't care for a farmer anyhow," Todd said suavely. "Oh, that depends on how helpful he is," Jo responded tactfully. Todd sprang up and began to fling the chairs about with extravagant energy in his pretense of being useful. "Let's help Mrs. Aydelot as swift as possible. It's hot as the dickens this morning, and the prognostics are for a cyclone before twelve hours. It's nearly eleven of 'em now. I'll take you home when we are through. Thaine isn't the whole of Grass River and the adjacent creeks and tributaries and all that in them is." CHAPTER XV THE COBURN BOOK And I see, from my higher level, It is not the path but the pace That wearies the back, and dims the eye, And writes the lines on the face. --Margaret E. Sangster. Meanwhile the May sunshine beat hot upon the green prairie, and the promised storm gathered itself together behind the horizon where the three headlands were lost in an ash-colored blur. Wykerton, shut in by the broken country about Big Wolf Creek, was more uncomfortable than the open prairie. And especially was it uncomfortable in the "blind tiger" of the Wyker eating-house. Today the men of the old firm of Champers & Co. were again holding a meeting in this little room that could have told of much lawless plotting if walls could only tell. "It's danged hot in here, Wyker. Open that window," Darley Champers complained. "What kept you fellows so long, anyhow?" "Business kep' me, and Smith here, he stop to peek at a pretty girl for goot as ten minute," Hans Wyker said jocosely. Champers stared at Thomas Smith, whose small eyes gleamed back at him. "Oh, I just turned to look at Miss Shirley in the dining room. Can't a man look at a pretty girl if he is past forty-five? She didn't see me, though." "Naw, she see nopotty but young Aydelot sitting mit her. Why you take oop precious time peekin' trough der crack in der kitchen door? I be back in a minute vonce. Smitt haf business mit you," Wyker declared as he turned to the kitchen again. Left together, the two men sat silent a moment. Then Champers said with a frown: