Like the light from a snuffed candle the boyish recklessness had
gone out of his face. His jaws were set like a vise and he looked
hard as hammered steel.

"My name is Bannister," he said, coldly.

"Ned Bannister, the outlaw," she let slip, and was aware of a
strange sinking of the heart.

It seemed to her that something sinister came to the surface in
his handsome face. "I reckon we might as well let it go at that,"
he returned, with bitter briefness.



CHAPTER 2. THE KING OF THE BIG HORN COUNTRY

Two months before this time Helen Messiter had been serenely
teaching a second grade at Kalamazoo, Michigan, notwithstanding
the earnest efforts of several youths of that city to induce her
to retire to domesticity "What's the use of being a schoolmarm?"
had been the burden of their plaint. "Any spinster can teach kids
C-A-T, Cat, but only one in several thousand can be the prettiest
bride in Kalamazoo." None of them, however, had been able to
drive the point sufficiently home, and it is probable that she
would have continued to devote herself to Young America if an
uncle she had never seen had not died without a will and left her
a ranch in Wyoming yclept the Lazy D.

When her lawyer proposed to put the ranch on the market Miss