Ordinarily that would be accepted as final, even by Mary V. But ordinarily Mary V did not climb out of her bedroom window to ride all night, even though there was a perfectly intoxicating moon.  Certainly not to a far line-camp where a young man lived alone, just to ask him why some one else answered his telephone for him.

To-night was her night for extraordinary behavior, evidently.  She certainly showed that she had designs on Jake.  She held out the feed pan, and gritted her teeth when Tango gratefully ducked his nose into it.  She let him have one quivery-lipped nibble, and pushed the pan ingratiatingly toward the black muzzle beyond.

Jake was not a bronk.  Having “good blood” he was tame to a degree.  He knew Mary V very well by sight, and, if horses can talk, he had no doubt learned a good deal about her from his friend Tango, who usually came home with a grievance.  Jake accepted the feed pan graciously, and he did not shy off when Mary V pushed Tango out of her way and began to smooth Jake’s crinkly mane and coax him with endearing words.  After a little he permitted her to slip the bridle reins over his head, and to press the bit gently into his mouth.  She set the pan on the ground and so managed to tuck his stiff, brown ears under the headstall, and to pull out his forelock comfortably while he nosed the pan.  The bridge was too small for Jake, but Mary V thought it would do, since she was in a great hurry and the buckles would be stiff and hard to open.  The throat latch would not fasten where Tango always wore it, but went down three holes farther.  Jake was bigger than she had thought.

But she led him over to the shed door and adjusted the saddle blanket and, standing on her tip-toes, managed to heave her saddle into place.  The cinch had to be let out too.  Mary V was trembling with impatience to be gone, now that she had two heinous sins loaded upon her conscience instead of one, but she knew better than to start off before her saddle was right.  And, impressed now with the size of Jake, she stood on a box and let out the headstall two holes.

Jake did not seem to approve of her camera and canteen and field glasses and rifle, and stepped restlessly away from her when she went to tie them on.  So she compromised on the canteen and field glasses, and hid camera and rifle under some sacks in the shed.  It seemed to her that she would never get started; as though daylight—­and Bill Hayden—­would come and find her still in a nightmare struggle with the details of departure.  Back of all that the thought of that strange, disguised voice talking for Johnny Jewel nagged at her nerves as something sinister and mysterious.

She led Jake by a somewhat roundabout way to the gate, opened it and closed it behind them before she attempted to mount.  Jake was very tall—­much taller than he had ever before seemed to be.  She had to hunt a high spot and coax him to stand on the lower ground beside it before she could feel confidence enough to lift her toe to the stirrup.  Bill Hayden always danced around a good deal on one foot, she remembered, before he essayed to swing up.  Standing on an ant hill did not permit much of the preliminary dancing around to which Jake was accustomed, so Mary V caught reins and saddle horn and made a desperate, flying leap.