man whom she might never know!  Of course he knew hers.  She wondered if he remembered it and her.  But of course he was so glad to get off with his life that he never thought of anything else.  Yet she did not give more than four or five minutes to these speculations, and, like a sensible girl, thought of something else.  Once again, however, in opening the closet, she found the brown holland gown she had worn on the day before; thought it very unbecoming, and regretted that she had not worn her best gown on her visit to Red Pete’s cottage.  On such an occasion she really might have been more impressive.

When her father came home that night she asked him the news.  No, they had not captured the second horse-thief, who was still at large.  Judge Boompointer talked of invoking the aid of the despised law.  It remained, then, to see whether the horse-thief was fool enough to try to get rid of the animal.  Red Pete’s body had been delivered to his widow.  Perhaps it would only be neighborly for Salomy Jane to ride over to the funeral.  But Salomy Jane did not take to the suggestion kindly, nor yet did she explain to her father that, as the other man was still living, she did not care to undergo a second disciplining at the widow’s hands.  Nevertheless, she contrasted her situation with that of the widow with a new and singular satisfaction.  It might have been Red Pete who had escaped.  But he had not the grit of the nameless one.  She had already settled his heroic quality.

“Ye ain’t harkenin’ to me, Salomy.”

Salomy Jane started.

“Here I’m askin’ ye if ye’ve see that hound Phil Larrabee sneaking by yer today?”

Salomy Jane had not.  But she became interested and self-reproachful, for she knew that Phil Larrabee was one of her father’s enemies.  “He wouldn’t dare to go by here unless he knew you were out,” she said quickly.

“That’s what gets me,” he said, scratching his grizzled head.  “I’ve been kind o’ thinkin’ o’ him all day, and one of them Chinamen said he saw him at Sawyer’s Crossing.  He was a kind of friend o’ Pete’s wife.  That’s why I thought yer might find out ef he’d been there.”  Salomy Jane grew more self-reproachful at her father’s self-interest in her “neighborliness.”  “But that ain’t all,” continued Mr. Clay.  “Thar was tracks over the far pasture that warn’t mine.  I followed them, and they went round and round the house two or three times, ez ef they mout hev bin prowlin’, and then I lost ’em in the woods again.  It’s just like that sneakin’ hound Larrabee to hev bin lyin’ in wait for me and afraid to meet a man fair and square in the open.”

“You just lie low, dad, for a day or two more, and let me do a little prowlin’,” said the girl, with sympathetic indignation in her dark eyes.  “Ef it’s that skunk, I’ll spot him soon enough and let you know whar he’s hiding.”

“You’ll just stay where ye are, Salomy,” said her father decisively.  “This ain’t no woman’s work—­though I ain’t sayin’ you haven’t got more head for it than some men I know.”