Baby Girl hurried, her curls whipping around her face as she ran.  She brought a coil of cotton clothesline to Casey, looking up at him with wide, measuring eyes of a tawny shade like sunlight shining through thin brown silk.  “I wish you’d give Joe a beating too,” she said with grave earnestness.  “He’s a badder man than Ole.  He hurt my mamma.  Will you give Joe a beating and tie his naughty hands jus’ like that when he wakes up?” She lifted her plump little body on her scuffed toes, her brown, dimpled fingers clutching the radiator to hold her steady while she watched Casey tie Ole’s naughty hands behind his back.

“Now will you tie Joe’s naughty hands jus’ like that?  Don’t use up all the rope!  My mamma hasn’t got any more rope, and you have to tie—­”

“Babe!  Come over here and don’t bother the gentleman.  Stand away over there so you can’t hear the naughty words Ole is saying.”  The little woman smiled, but not much.  Casey, glancing up from the last efficient knot, felt suddenly sorry that he had not first gagged Ole.  Casey had not thought of it before; mere cussing was natural to him as breathing, and he had scarcely been aware of the fact that Ole was speaking.  Now he cuffed the Swede soundly and told him to shut up, and yanked him off the car.

“Joe is regaining consciousness.  He’ll be nasty to handle as a rabid coyote if you wait much longer.  Just cut the rope.  It’s my clothesline, but we must not balk at trifles in a crisis like this.”  The little woman had recovered her gun and was holding it ready for Joe in case the predicted rabidness became manifest.

Casey tied Joe very thoroughly while consciousness was slowly returning.  The situation ceased to be menacing; it became safe and puzzling and even a bit mysterious.  Casey reached for his plug, remembered his manners and took away his hand.  Robbed of his customary inspiration he stood undecided, scowling at the feebly blinking ruffian called Joe.

“It’s very good of you not to ask what it’s all about,” said the little woman, taking off the man’s hat and shaking back her hair like a schoolgirl.  “I have some mining claims here—­four of them.  My husband left them to me, and since that’s all he did leave I have been keeping up the assessment work every year.  Last year I had enough money to buy Jawn.”  She nodded toward the Ford.  “I outfitted and came out here with an old fellow I’d known for years, kept camp until he’d done the assessment work, and paid him off and that was all there was to it.

“This summer the old man is prospecting the New Jerusalem, I expect.  He died in April.  I hired these two scoundrels.  I was foolish enough to pay half their wages in advance, because they told me a tale of owing money to a widow for board and wanting to pay her.  I have,” she observed, “a weakness for widows.  And they have just pretended to be working the claims.  I hurt my ankle so that I haven’t been able to walk far for a month, and they took advantage of it and have been prospecting around on their own account, at my expense, while I religiously marked down their time and fed them.  They have located four claims adjoining mine, and put up their monuments and done their location work in the past month, if you please, while I supposed they were working for me.”