"She was out all night in the rain—got lost, somehow. She said she was coming here, so I brought her on. She's down with a cold, Mrs Hawkins. Better take off them wet clothes and put hot blankets around her. And a poultice or something on her chest, I reckon." Lone turned to the door, stopped to roll a cigarette, and watched Mrs Hawkins hurrying to Lorraine with a whisky toddy the cook had mixed for her.
"A sweat's awful good for a cold like she's got," he volunteered practically. "She's out of her head—or she was when I found her. But I reckon that's mostly scare, from being lost all night. Give her a good sweat, why don't you?" He reached the doorstep and then turned back to add, "She left a grip back somewhere along the road. I'll go hunt it up, I reckon."
He mounted John Doe and rode down to the corral, where two or three riders were killing time on various pretexts while they waited for details of Lone's adventure. Delirious young women of the silk stocking class did not arrive at the Sawtooth every morning, and it was rumoured already amongst the men that she was some looker, which naturally whetted their interest in her.
"I'll bet it's one of Bob's girls, come trailin' him up. Mebby another of them heart-ballum cases of Bob's," hazarded Pop Bridgers, who read nothing unless it was printed on pink paper, and who refused to believe that any good could come out of a city. "Ain't that right, Loney? Hain't she a heart-ballum girl of Bob's?"
From the saddle Lone stared down impassively at Pop and Pop's companions. "I don't know a thing about her," he stated emphatically. "She said she was coming to the ranch, and she was scared of the thunder and lightning. That's every word of sense I could get outa her. She ain't altogether ignorant—she knows how to climb on a horse, anyway, and she kicked about having to ride sideways on account of her skirts. She was plumb out of her head, and talked wild, but she handled her reins like a rider. And she never mentioned Bob, nor anybody else excepting some fellow she called Charlie. She thought I was him, but she only talked to me friendly. She didn't pull any love talk at all."
"Charlie?" Pop ruminated over a fresh quid of tobacco. "Charlie! Mebby Bob, he stakes himself to a different name now and then. There ain't any Charlie, except Charlie Werner; she wouldn't mean him, do yuh s'pose?"
"Charlie Werner? Hunh! Say, Pop, she ain't no squaw—is she, Loney?" Sid Sterling remonstrated.
"If I can read brands," Lone testified, "she's no girl of Bob's. She's a good, honest girl when she ain't crazy."
"And no good, honest girl who is not crazy could possibly be a girl of mine! Is that the idea, Lone?"
Lone turned unhurriedly and looked at young Bob Warfield standing in the stable door with his hands in his trousers pockets and his pipe in his mouth.