losing my scalp to the Apaches to be scared by Miss Tuttle. Anyhow I gave her my scalp without a yelp the minute I laid eyes on her." 

 "Here! That's not fair!" cried John DeWitt.  "The rest of us had to work to get her to take ours!" 

 "Our what?" asked Cartwell, entering the room at the last word. He was looking very cool and well groomed in white flannels. 

 Billy Porter stared at the newcomer and dropped his soup-spoon with a splash.  "What in thunder!" Rhoda heard him mutter. 

 Jack Newman spoke hastily. 

 "This is Mr. Cartwell, our irrigation engineer, Mr. Porter." 

 Porter responded to the young Indian's courteous bow with a surly nod, and proceeded with his soup. 

 "I'd as soon eat with a nigger as an Injun," he said to Rhoda under cover of some laughing remark of Katherine's to Cartwell. 

 "He seems to be nice," said Rhoda vaguely.  "Maybe, though, Katherine is a little liberal, making him one of the family." 

 "Is there any hunting at all in this open desert country?" asked DeWitt. "I certainly hate to go back to New York with nothing but sunburn to show for my trip!" 

 "Coyotes, wildcats, rabbits and partridges," volunteered Cartwell.  "I know where there is a nest of wildcats up on the first mesa. And I know an Indian who will tan the pelts for you, like velvet. A jack-rabbit pelt well tanned is an exquisite thing too, by the way. I will go on a hunt with you whenever the ditch can be left." 

 "And while they are chasing round after jacks, Miss Tuttle," cut in Billy Porter neatly, "I will take you anywhere you want to go. I'll show you things these kids never dreamed of! I knew this country in the days of Apache raids and the pony express." 

 "That will be fine!" replied Rhoda.  "But I'd rather hear the stories than take any trips. Did you spend your boyhood in New Mexico? Did you see real Indian fights? Did you—?"  She paused with an involuntary glance at Cartwell. 

 Porter, too, looked at the dark young face across the table and something in its inscrutable calm seemed to madden him. 

 "My boyhood here? Yes, and a happy boyhood it was! 

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