Almost in the same movement his gun-arm dropped limply to his
side.

"Well, I'll be--"

He stared. And the face in the doorway stared back at him.

"Nada!" he gasped. "Good Lord, I thought--I thought--" He
swallowed as he tried to lie. "I thought--it might be a bear!"

He did not, at first, see that the slim, calico-dressed little
figure of Jed Hawkins' foster-girl was almost dripping wet. Her
blue eyes were shining at him, wide and startled. Her cheeks were
flushed. A strange look had frozen on her parted red lips, and her
hair was falling loose in a cloud of curling brown tresses about
her shoulders. Jolly Roger, dreaming of her in his insane
happiness of a few minutes ago, sensed nothing beyond the beauty
and the unexpectedness of her in this first moment. Then--swiftly
--he saw the other thing. The last glow of the sun glistened in her
wet hair, her dress was sodden and clinging, and little pools of
water were widening slowly about her ragged shoes. These things he
might have expected, for she had to cross the creek. But it was
the look in her eyes that startled him, as she stood there with
Peter, the mongrel pup, clasped tightly in her arms.

"Nada, what's happened?" he asked, laying his gun on the table.
"You fell in the creek--"

"It--it's Peter," she cried, with a sobbing break in her voice.
"We come on Jed Hawkins when he was diggin' up some of his