uncomfortable himself, and for that reason he was the more anxious that the
girl should be warm. It came to him that she was a cute little schoolma'am,
all right; he was glad she belonged close around the Cross L. He also wished
he knew her name--and so he set about finding it out, with much guile.

"How's that?" he wanted to know, when he had made sure that her feet--such
tiny feet--were well covered. He thought it lucky that she did not ride
astride, after the manner of the latter-day young woman, because then he
could not have covered her so completely. "Hold on! That windy side's going
to make trouble." He unbuckled the strap he wore to hold his own coat snug
about him, and put it around the girl's slim waist, feeling idiotically
happy and guilty the while. "It don't come within a mile of you," he
complained; "but it'll help some."

Sheltered in the thick folds of the Navajo, she laughed, and the sound of it
sent the blood galloping through Rowdy Vaughan's body so that he was almost
warm. He went and scraped the snow out of his saddle, and swung up, feeling
that, after all, there are worse things in the world than being lost and
hungry in a blizzard, with a sweet-voiced, bright-eyed little schoolma'am
who can laugh like that.

"I don't want to have you think I may be a bold, bad robber-man," he said,
when they got going again. "My name's Rowdy Vaughan--for which I beg your
pardon. Mother named me Rowland, never knowing I'd get out here and have her
nice, pretty name mutilated that way. I won't say that my behavior never
suggested the change, though. I'm from the Horseshoe Bar, over the line, and
if I have my way, I'll be a Cross L man before another day." Then he waited
expectantly.

"For fear you may think I'm a--a robber-woman," she answered him