During the first ten minutes of supper Miss Messiter did not appear, and the two guardians who flanked her chair solicitously were the object of much badinage. “She got one glimpse of that red haid of Tex and the pore lady’s took to the sage,” explained Yorky. “And him scrubbed so shiny fust time since Christmas before the big blizzard,” sighed Doc Rogers. “Shucks! She ain’t scared of no sawed-off, hammered-down runt like Texas, No, siree! Miss Messiter’s on the absent list ’cause she’s afraid she cayn’t resist the blandishments of Soapy. Did yo’ ever hear about Soapy and that Caspar hash slinger?” “Forget it, Slim,” advised Soapy, promptly. He had been engaged in lofty and oblivious conversation with Texas, but he did not intend to allow reminiscences to get under way just now. At this opportune juncture arrived the mistress of the “gasoline bronc,” neatly clad in a simple white lawn with blue trimmings. She looked like a gleam of sunshine in her fresh, sweet youth; and not even in her own school room had she ever found herself the focus of a cleaner, more unstinted admiration. For the outdoors West takes off its hat reverently to women worthy of respect, especially when they are young and friendly. Helen Messiter had come to Wyoming because the call of adventure, the desire for experience outside of rutted convention, were stirring her warm-blooded youth. She had seen enough of life lived in a parlor, and when there came knocking at her door a chance to know the big, untamed outdoors at first hand she had at once embraced it like a lover. She was eager for her new life, and she set out skillfully to make these men tell her what she wanted to know. To them, of course, it was an old story, and whatever of romance it held was unconscious. But since she wanted to talk of the West they were more than ready to please her. So she listened, and drew them out with adroit questions when it was necessary. She made them talk of life on the open range, of rustlers and those who lived outside the law in the upper Shoshone country, of the deadly war waging between the cattle and sheep industries. “Are there any sheep near the Lazy D ranch?” she asked, intensely interested in Soapy’s tale of how cattle and sheep could no more be got to mix than oil and water. For an instant nobody answered her question; then Soapy replied, with what seemed elaborate carelessness: “Ned Bannister runs a bunch of about twelve thousand not more’n fifteen or twenty miles from your place.” “And you say they are spoiling the range?” “They’re ce’tainly spoiling it for cows.” “But can’t something be done? If my cows were there first I don’t see what right he has to bring his sheep there,” the girl frowned. The assembled company attended strictly to supper. The girl, surprised at the stillness, looked round. “Well?” “Now you’re shouting, ma’am! That’s what we say,” enthused Texas, spurring to the rescue.