"Don't you worry about me, old chap; I'm not in love with Wah-na-gi, but——"
"You jess feel sorry fer her." Bill said this with the amiable sneer of a man who has nothing to learn about women and the world.
"Yes," said Hal simply; "don't you?"
The directness of this appeal caught the guileless Bill unprepared.
"Sure," he admitted. "Sure, I do. She's been to school. Couldn't anything worse happen to her. Edjjication? Why, it's worse'n whiskey fer the Injin."
"And don't you see," said the boy, following up his advantage, "she's alone and she needs friends, and while I'm here, while I'm chief of police, I can keep an eye on her, protect her in a way, but when I leave" (pause) "what will become of Wah-na-gi?"
While Bill was groping in his slow way for an easy and pleasant and convincing way of saying that one couldn't plunge headlong into the tangled affairs of all the misfit people in this crazy world, the figure of a woman appeared in the foot-path that crossed the low ridge on the opposite side of the narrow valley. Before Bill had arranged his arguments Hal, without a change of countenance, suddenly developed initiative.
"Well," he said, rising, "I thought I'd learn all the news from you, but, as usual, I'll have to find out all about it and tell it to you. And now I'm going over to see the amiable Ladd. Oh, by the by," he added casually, "how is 'Calico'—fit?"
"Never better."
"He hasn't been ridden to-day?"