all, first; to win your confidence and teach you to look upon me in
the light of a mother. Then, when I have won your confidence, I want
to organize a Cowboys' Mutual Improvement and Social Society, to help
you in the way of self-improvement and to resist the snares laid for
homeless boys like you. Don't you think I'm very--_brave_?" She was
smiling at him again, leaning back in her chair and regarding him
playfully over her glasses.

"You sure are," Andy assented, deliberately refraining from saying
"yes, ma'am," as had been his impulse.

"To come away out here--_all alone_--among all you wild cowboys with
your guns buckled on and your wicked little mustangs--Are you sure you
won't shoot me?"

Andy eyed her pityingly. If she meant it, he thought, she certainly
was wabbly in her mind. If she thought that was the only kind of talk
he could savvy, then she was a blamed idiot; either way, he felt
antagonistic. "The law shall be respected in your case," he told her,
very gravely.

She smiled almost as if she could see the joke; after which she became
twitteringly, eagerly in earnest. "Since you live near here, you must
know the Whitmores. Miss Whitmore came out here, two or three years
ago, and married her brother's coachman, I believe--though I've heard
conflicting stories about it; some have said he was an artist, and
others that he was a jockey, or horse-trainer. I heard too that he was
a cowboy; but Miss Whitmore certainly wrote about this young man
driving her brother's carriage. However, she is married and I have a
letter of introduction to her. The president of our club used to be a