Mary did not wait to hear the continuation of the fat lady’s advice.  She went out on the desert to have one last look at the west.  The sun had taken his plunge for the night, leaving his royal raiment of crimson and gold strewn above the mountain-tops.

Her sunset reflections were presently interrupted by the fat lady, who proposed that they should walk till Mr. Dax had tidied up his house, observing, with logic, that it did not devolve on them to clean the place, since they were paying for supper and lodging.  They had gone but a little way when sudden apprehension caused the fat lady to grasp Mary’s arm.  Miss Carmichael turned, expecting mountain-lions, rattlesnakes, or stage-robbers, but none of these casualties had come to pass.

“Land sakes!  Here we be parading round the prairie, and I never found out how that man cooked his coffee.”

“What difference does it make, if we can drink it?”

“The ways of men cooks is a sealed book to you, I reckon, or you wouldn’t be so unconcerned—­’specially in the matter of coffee.  All men has got the notion that coffee must be b’iled in a bag, and if they ’ain’t got a regular bag real handy, they take what they can get.  Oh, I’ve caught ’em,” went on the fat lady, darkly, “b’iling coffee in improvisations that’d turn your stomach.”

“Yes, yes,” Mary hastily agreed, hoping against hope that she wasn’t going to be more explicit.

“And they are so cute about it, too; it’s next to impossible to catch ’em.  You ask a man if he b’iles his coffee loose or tight, and he’ll declare he b’iles it loose, knowing well how suspicious and prone to investigate is the female mind.  But you watch your chance and take a look in the coffee-pot, and maybe you’ll find—­”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard—­”

“I’ve seen—­”

“Let’s hurry,” implored Mary.

“Have you made your coffee yet?” inquired the fat lady.

“Yes, marm,” promptly responded Johnnie.

“I hope you b’iled it in a bag—­it clears it beautiful, a bag does.”

Johnnie shifted uneasily.  “No, marm, I b’iles it loose.  You see, bags ain’t always handy.”

The fat lady plied her eye as a weapon.  No Dax could stand up before an accusing feminine eye.  He quailed, made a grab for the coffee-pot, and rushed with it out into the night.

“What did I tell you?” she asked, with an air of triumph.

Johnnie returned with the empty coffee-pot.  “To tell the truth, marm, I made a mistake.  I ’ain’t made the coffee.  I plumb forgot it.  P’raps you could be prevailed on to assist this yere outfit to coffee while I organizes a few sody-biscuits.”

After supper, when the fat lady was so busy talking “goo-goo” language to the baby as to be oblivious of everything else, Mary Carmichael took the opportunity to ask Johnnie if he knew anything about Lost Trail.  The name of her destination had come to sound unpleasantly ominous in the ears of the tired young traveller, and she feared that her inquiry did not sound as casual as she tried to have it.  Nor was Johnnie’s candid reply reassuring.