point to the Lazy D, she found a group of curious, weatherbeaten
individuals gathered round a machine foreign to their experience.
It was on a flat car, and the general opinion ran the gamut from
a newfangled sewing machine to a thresher. Into this guessing
contest came its owner with so brisk and businesslike an energy
that inside of two hours she was testing it up and down the wide
street of Gimlet Butte, to the wonder and delight of an audience
to which each one of the eleven saloons of the city had
contributed its admiring quota.

Meanwhile the young woman attended strictly to business. She had
disappeared for half an hour with a suit case into the Elk House;
and when she returned in a short-skirted corduroy suit, leggings
and wide-brimmed gray Stetson hat, all Gimlet Butte took an
absorbing interest in the details of this delightful adventure
that had happened to the town. The population was out _en masse_
to watch her slip down the road on a trial trip.

Presently "Soapy" Sothern, drifting in on his buckskin from the
Hoodoo Peak country, where for private reasons of his own he had
been for the past month a sojourner, reported that he had seen
the prettiest sight in the State climbing under a gasoline bronc
with a monkey-wrench in her hand. Where? Right over the hill on
the edge of town. The immediate stampede for the cow ponies was
averted by a warning chug-chug that sounded down the road,
followed by the appearance of a flashing whir that made the
ponies dance on their hind legs.

"The gasoline bronc lady sure makes a hit with me," announced
"Texas," gravely. "I allow I'll rustle a job with the Lazy D