solemnly--he felt sure her eyes twinkled, if only he could have seen them--
"I'm Jessie Conroy. And if you're from over the line, maybe you know my
brother Harry. He was over there a year or two."

Rowdy hunched his shoulders--presumably at the wind. Harry Conroy's sister,
was she? And he swore. "I may have met him," he parried, in a tone you'd
never notice as being painstakingly careless. "I think I did, come to think
of it."

Miss Conroy seemed displeased, and presently the cause was forthcoming. "If
you'd ever met him," she said, "you'd hardly forget him." (Rowdy mentally
agreed profanely.) "He's the best rider in the whole country--and the
handsomest. He--he's splendid! And he's the only brother I've got. It's a
pity you never got acquainted with him."

"Yes," lied Rowdy, and thought a good deal in a very short time. Harry
Conroy's sister! Well, she wasn't to blame for that, of course; nor for
thinking her brother a white man. "I remember I did see him ride once," he
observed. "He was a whirlwind, all right--and he sure was handsome, too."

Miss Conroy turned her face toward him and smiled her pleasure, and Rowdy
hovered between heaven and--another place. He was glad she smiled, and he
was afraid of what that subject might discover for his straightforward
tongue in the way of pitfalls. It would not be nice to let her know what he
really thought of her brother.

"This looks to me like a lane," he said diplomatically. "We must be getting
somewhere; don't you recognize any landmarks?"

Miss Conroy leaned forward and peered through the clouds of snow dust.