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The stranger laughed again, waved his hand to Lanty, and galloped away.

Lanty was a little disappointed. The daylight had taken away some of her illusions. He was certainly very good-looking, but not quite as picturesque, mysterious, and thrilling as in the dark! And it was very queer–he certainly did look darker that night! Who was he? And why was he lingering near her? He was different from her neighbors–her admirers. He might be one of those locaters, from the big towns, who prospect the lands, with a view of settling government warrants on them,–they were always so secret until they had found what they wanted. She did not dare to seek information of her friends, for the same reason that she had concealed his existence from her mother,–it would provoke awkward questions; and it was evident that he was trusting to her secrecy, too. The thought thrilled her with a new pride, and was some compensation for the loss of her more intangible romance. It would be mighty fine, when he did call openly for his beautiful knife and declared himself, to have them all know that SHE knew about it all along.

When she reached home, to guard against another such surprise she determined to keep the weapon with her, and, distrusting her pocket, confided it to the cheap little country-made corset which only for the last year had confined her budding figure, and which now, perhaps, heaved with an additional pride. She was quite abstracted during the rest of the day, and paid but little attention to the gossip of the farm lads, who were full of a daring raid, two nights before, by the Mexican gang on the large stock farm of a neighbor. The Vigilant Committee had been baffled; it was even alleged that some of the smaller ranchmen and herders were in league with the gang. It was also believed to be a widespread conspiracy; to have a political complexion in its combination of an alien race with Southwestern filibusters. The legal authorities had been reinforced by special detectives from San Francisco. Lanty seldom troubled herself with these matters; she knew the exaggeration, she suspected the ignorance of her rural neighbors. She roughly referred it, in her own vocabulary, to “jaw,” a peculiarly masculine quality. But later in the evening, when the domestic circle in the sitting-room had been augmented by a neighbor, and Lanty had taken refuge behind her novel as an excuse for silence, Zob Hopper, the enamored swain of the previous evening, burst in with more astounding news. A posse of the sheriff had just passed along the ridge; they had “corraled” part of the gang, and rescued some of the stock. The leader of the gang had escaped, but his capture was inevitable, as the roads were stopped. “All the same, I’m glad to see ye took my advice, Miss Atalanty, and brought in your filly,” he concluded, with an insinuating glance at the young girl.

But “Miss Atalanty,” curling a quarter of an inch of scarlet lip above the edge of her novel, here “allowed” that if his advice or the filly had to be “took,” she didn’t know which was worse.

“I wonder ye kin talk to sech peartness, Mr. Hopper,” said Mrs. Foster severely; “she ain’t got eyes nor senses for anythin’ but that book.”

“Talkin’ o’ what’s to be ‘took,'” put in the diplomatic neighbor, “you bet it ain’t that Mexican leader! No, sir! he’s been ‘stopped’ before this–and then got clean away all the same! One o’ them detectives got him once and disarmed him–but he managed to give them the slip, after all. Why, he’s that full o’ shifts and disguises thar ain’t no spottin’ him. He walked right under the constable’s nose oncet, and took a drink with the sheriff that was arter him–and the blamed fool never knew it. He kin change even the color of his hair quick as winkin’.”