"Ahead of her!"
"And then what?"
"Then you will have to use your own judgment. But don't get excited and kill her, Hicks."
He accompanied the sharp warning with the alleviating roll of yellowbacks, which Hicks quickly deposited in an inside pocket.
The next morning they shook hands at the gate of the Pennsylvania station. Hicks looking a bit uncomfortable but much improved, in a suit of new clothes, and carrying a suitcase, hurried to catch the flyer for the West. A few hours later Owen was wishing a happy journey to Pauline at the same station rail.
Mary Haines stood in the low doorway of the Double Cross ranch house and gazed down the sun-baked road to where, in the far distance, a little wisp of dust was visible.
Laughing, she turned and called to someone inside the house. A towering, slow-moving, but quick-eyed man, in a flannel shirt, with corduroys tucked into the tops of spurred boots, appeared on the stoop. Hal Haines was so tall that his broad-brimmed hat grazed the porch roof of the house.
"Hal! Hal!" she cried eagerly. "What do you think? Pauline Marvin is coming to visit us—Pauline Marvin!"
"The little girl we met on the ship that I had to yarn to about the wild West?"
"Yes, of course. How you did lie to her! Goodness, I hope that's not why she's coming. She'll be awfully disappointed."