wasn't quite so independent. You remember the days when old McAllister
was keepin' us apart, and how she used to send me the sign that she
wanted to see me? Old man Mac promised to make me look like a colander
if I ever come in gun-shot of the ranch. You remember the sign she
used to send, Baldy--the heart with a cross inside of it?"

"Me?" cried Baldy, with intoxicated archness. "You old sugar-stealing
coyote! Don't I remember! Why, you dad-blamed old long-horned turtle-
dove, the boys in camp was all cognoscious about them hiroglyphs. The
'gizzard-and-crossbones' we used to call it. We used to see 'em on
truck that was sent out from the ranch. They was marked in charcoal on
the sacks of flour and in lead-pencil on the newspapers. I see one of
'em once chalked on the back of a new cook that old man McAllister
sent out from the ranch--danged if I didn't."

"Santa's father," explained Webb gently, "got her to promise that she
wouldn't write to me or send me any word. That heart-and-cross sign
was her scheme. Whenever she wanted to see me in particular she
managed to put that mark on somethin' at the ranch that she knew I'd
see. And I never laid eyes on it but what I burnt the wind for the
ranch the same night. I used to see her in that coma mott back of the
little horse-corral."

"We knowed it," chanted Baldy; "but we never let on. We was all for
you. We knowed why you always kept that fast paint in camp. And when
we see that gizzard-and-crossbones figured out on the truck from the
ranch we knowed old Pinto was goin' to eat up miles that night instead
of grass. You remember Scurry--that educated horse-wrangler we had--
the college fellow that tangle-foot drove to the range? Whenever
Scurry saw that come-meet-your-honey brand on anything from the ranch,