At the sound Cahill pulled his horse sharply toward the corral. "I
had a horse-deal on--with the chief," he answered over his shoulder.
"When I got to Lightfoot's tent you had gone."

After he had dismounted, and was coming toward her, she noted that
his right hand was bound in a handkerchief, and exclaimed with
apprehension.

"It is nothing," Cahill protested. "I was foolin' with one of the new
regulation revolvers, with my hand over the muzzle. Ball went through
the palm."

Miss Cahill gave a tremulous cry and caught the injured hand to her
lips.

Her father snatched it from her roughly.

"Let go!" he growled. "It serves me right."

A few minutes later Mary Cahill, bearing liniment for her father's
hand, knocked at his bedroom and found it empty. When she peered from
the top of the stairs into the shop-window below she saw him busily
engaged with his one hand buckling the stirrup-straps of his saddle.

When she called, he sprang upright with an oath. He had faced her so
suddenly that it sounded as though he had sworn, not in surprise, but
at her.

"You startled me," he murmured. His eyes glanced suspiciously from
her to the saddle. "These stirrup-straps--they're too short," he