“Oh, thank you, so much!  You know the sheep lost on the Rim Rocks belonged to our ranch; and I wouldn’t like to think that he had lost his life defending our interests.”

Then something odd occurred with the telephone.  She distinctly heard the voice at the other end telling somebody that, “Brydges was up there now.”  Then, the voice was assuring her, “They would let her know if they heard anything more.”

Eleanor rang off with a sense of relief; and yet with a sickening feeling, of what?  It was the same feeling she had had when Brydges came in with his jaunty air.

She was standing at the Ranch House gate waiting for the stage to Smelter City.  Calamity had carried down the yellow suit case.  The words came from Eleanor’s lips before she thought; or she could never have asked the question: 

“Calamity, who was it took your little baby away?”

The suit case fell from the Indian woman’s hand.

“D’ pries’,” she said, “Father Moran.”

Eleanor thought a moment, racking her memory in vain for that name in her convent life of Quebec.  She was digging her toe in the dust of the road.

“Was that before or after you went to the Black Hills, Calamity?”

But Calamity had gone without a word; and the stage came whipping across the bridge from the Moyese Ranch; a double-tandem stage driven by a bronzed fellow with one arm, whose management of the reins absorbed Eleanor so that she forgot to notice the fat form hoisting her suit case to the roof.  Then, she was inside; and the door had swung shut; and the fat form squeezed in next to the door; and she was lost in her own thoughts oblivious of her close packed neighbors till the stage stopped again with a jerk, and the sharp edge of a black cart-wheel-hat decorated with plumes enough for an undertaker’s wagon cut a swath that threatened to slice off one of Eleanor’s ears.

“I beg your pardon,” said Eleanor.

“Oh, I guess tha’ wuz my fault,” and a mouthful of gold teeth above an ash colored V of neck and below the most wonderful straw stack of wheat colored hair simpered up at Eleanor from beneath the black cart-wheel-hat; simpered and ended up in a funny little tittering laugh.  Eleanor took a quick glance at her neighbors, all men but the cart-wheel-hat to one side and a little young-old lady opposite with a hectic flush, and very protuberant hard mouth and beady little brown eyes.  Eleanor noticed the brown eyes were accompanied by red hair, and she recognized the presiding genius of the English Colony.

“A beautiful morning for a ride down the Valley,” remarked Eleanor absently.

“What?  I beg your pardon?  Did you speak to me?”

It wasn’t the words.  It was the hard tone of surprise.

“We’re in luck to have such a morning to ride down,” amplified Eleanor.

“Yes,” said the lady with the hectic flush; and Eleanor felt the gold teeth simpering beneath the undertaker’s plumes.