“I see.  And Mr. Briscoe will be a molder of public opinion?”

“So far as he can he will.  We must forestall him.”

“Beat him to it, and give me a clean bill of moral health, eh?”

She frowned.  “This is serious business, my friend.”

“I’m taking it that way,” he said smilingly.

“I shouldn’t have guessed it.”

Yet for all his debonair ease the man had an air of quiet competence.  His strong, bronzed face and neck, the set of his shoulders, the light poise of him in the saddle, the steady confidence of the gray eyes, all told her as much.  She was aware of a curiosity about what was hidden behind that stone-wall face of his.

“You didn’t finish telling me about that enemy in Texas,” she suggested suddenly.

“Oh, there ain’t much to tell.  He broke out from the pen, where I had put him when I was a kid.  He was a desperado wanted by the authorities, so I arrested him again.”

“Sounds easy.”

“He made some trouble, shot up two or three men first.”  Fraser lifted his hand absently.

“Is that scar on your hand where he shot you?” Arlie asked.

He looked up in quick surprise.  “Now, how did you know that?”

“You were talking of the trouble he made and you looked at your hand,” she explained.  “Where is he now?  In the penitentiary?”

“No.  He broke away before I got him there.”

She had another flash of inspiration.  “And you came to Wyoming to get him again.”

“Good gracious, ma’am, but you’re ce’tainly a wizard!  That’s why I came, though it’s a secret.”

“What is he wanted for?”

“Robbing a train, three murders and a few other things.”

As she swung from her pony in front of the old-fashioned Southern log house, Artie laughed at him over her shoulder.

“You’re a fine officer!  Tell all you know to the first girl you meet!”

“Well, you see, the girl happened to be—­ you!”

After the manner of the old-fashioned Southern house a wide “gallery” bisected it from porch to rear.  Saddles hung from pegs in the gallery.  Horse blankets and bridles, spurs and saddlebags, lay here and there in disarray.  A disjointed rifle which some one had started to clean was on the porch.  Swiftly Arlie stripped saddle, bridle, and blanket from her pony and flung them down as a contribution to the general disorder, and at her suggestion Fraser did the same.  A half-grown lad came running to herd the horses into a corral close at hand.

“I want you when you’ve finished feeding, Bobbie,” Arlie told the lad.  Then briefly to her guest:  “This way, please.”

She led him into a large, cheerful living room, into which, through big casement windows, the light streamed.  It was a pleasant room, despite its barbaric touch.  There was a grizzly bear skin before the great open, stone fireplace, and Navajo rugs covered the floor and hung on the walls.  The skin of a silver-tip bear was stretched beneath a writing desk, a trophy of Arlie’s rifle, which hung in a rack above.  Civilization had furnished its quota to the room in a piano, some books, and a few photographs.