“Are you surprised that I did not wait for an introduction?” the girl in the riding clothes asked, noticing Mary’s evident uneasiness; “but you don’t know how good it is to see a girl.  I’m so tired of spurs and sombreros and cattle and dust and distance, and there’s nothing else here.”

“Where I come from it’s just the other way—­too many petticoats and hat-pins.”

The horseman who was no horseman dropped Miss Carmichael’s hand and went into the house.  Mary wondered if she ought to have been more cordial.

From the back door came Leander, with dishcloths, which he began to hang on the line in a dumb, driven sort of way.

“Who is she?” asked Mary.

“Her?” he interrogated, jerking his head in the direction of the house.  “The postmistress, Judith Rodney; yes, that’s her name.”  He dropped his voice in the manner of one imparting momentous things.  “She never wears a skirt ridin’, any more than a man.”

Mary felt that she was tempting Leander into the paths of gossip, undoubtedly his besetting sin, but she could not resist the temptation to linger.  He had disposed of his last dish-cloth, and he withdrew the remaining clothes-pin from his mouth in a way that was pathetically feminine.

“She keeps the post-office here, since Mrs. Dax lost the job, and boards with us; p’r’aps it’s because she is my wife’s successor in office, or p’a’ps it’s jest the natural grudge that wimmin seem to harbor agin each other, I dunno, but they don’t sandwich none.”

Leander having disposed of his last dish-towel, squinted at it through his half-closed eyes, like an artist “sighting” a landscape, saw apparently that it was in drawing, and next brought his vision to bear on the back premises of his own dwelling, where he saw there was no wifely figure in evidence.

“Sh-sh-h!” he said, creeping towards Mary, his dull face transfigured with the consciousness that he had news to tell.  “Sh-sh—­her brother’s a rustler.  If ’twan’t for her”—­Leander went through the grewsome pantomime of tying an imaginary rope round his neck and throwing it over the limb of an imaginary tree.  “They’re goin’ to get him for shore this time, soon as he comes out of jail; but would you guess it from her bluff?”

There was no mistaking the fate of a rustler after Mr. Dax’s grisly demonstration, but of the quality of his calling Mary was as ignorant as before.

“And why should they do that?” she inquired, with tenderfoot simplicity.

“Stealin’ cattle ain’t good for the health hereabouts,” said Leander, as one who spoke with authority.  “It’s apt to bring on throat trouble.”

But Mary did not find Leander’s joke amusing.  She had suddenly remembered the pale, gaunt man who had walked into the eating-house the previous morning and walked out again, his errand turned into farce-comedy by the cowardice of an unworthy antagonist.  The pale man’s grievance had had to do with sheep and cattle.  His name had been Rodney, too.  She understood now.  He was Judith Rodney’s brother, and he was in danger of being hanged.  Mary Carmichael felt first the admiration of a girl, then the pity of a woman, for the brave young creature who so stoutly carried so unspeakable a burden.  But she could not speak of her new knowledge to Leander.