“He—­he wants you to—­to marry Angela Hardy, don’t he?”

Gilbert looked surprised.  “Hardy’s daughter?”

“Red” nodded.

“How did you know?” Jones asked.

“Because he ain’t talked of nothin’ else for six months.  You wasn’t thinkin’ of doin’ it, was you?” He hung on Gilbert’s answer.

“Hardly!” with a smile.

The relief of “Red”!

“I know, I know!” he cried.  “But once she gets her mind set on a thing—­”

“You mean you think she wants to marry me?  Is that it?” Gilbert asked, not taking the matter very seriously.  He was busy at the box again, pulling the top farther back.

“Well, I don’t know as I’d say that,” “Red” offered; “but I think she thinks she wants to.”  He was sitting on the edge of the table, swinging one leg.  “She’s prone to fancies, Angela is.  Even I gotter admit that!”

“Even you?” Gilbert inquired, puzzled.

The question made “Red” a bit nervous.  He jumped to the floor, and then sat down in the chair beside the table, pretending to be very much at ease.  “Like that traveling man from Saint Looey,” he explained.  “She thought she cared for him.  I tried to tell her different.  I had to run him out of town with a gun to prove it.  But even then she didn’t believe it until that New York surveyor come along.”

Gilbert looked up, “And she thought she loved him?”

“Until she met up with that hoss doctor from Albuquerque!  An’ now there’s a new feller in Bisbee!”

Jones was a trifle mystified, “Say, how do you happen to know so much about her affairs, ’Red’?”

How involved he had become!  He blushed like a schoolboy; got up, took his pipe out of his mouth and emptied it in the fireplace.  “Me?” he said.  “Oh, I’ve knowed her a long time.”

Jones was beginning to see the truth, to read the heart of this young rascal.  So it was over at the Hardy’s that he spent so many hours!

“Oh, so that’s it, is it?  What’s the matter?  Does her father object?”

“Oh, no!” “Red” was quick to deny.  “I stand all right with him.  He’s knowed me a long time.  It’s her.”

Gilbert laughed outright; and “Red,” humanly embarrassed now that his secret was out, paced the room, his hands behind his back, digging his heel every now and then in the floor.  “Aw—­” he began.

“Listen, ‘Red,’” said Jones, in sympathy with the lad, and hoping to cover up his confusion.  “If Hardy comes, keep him out till I’m alone.  I don’t want any war talk before the Pells.”

“I get yer,” said “Red,” visibly relieved.

“Any stronger cord on the place anywhere?” Gilbert looked around the room.  Maybe one of the many Indian jugs contained a string.  “Red” and he had a habit of putting any old thing in them.

“There’s some down in the hay barn.  Want me to get it for you?” “Red” offered.

“No; I’ll get it, thanks.  You see if you can’t prod up the cook a little.  I’m hungry now.”