“No,” said Frances, her serious young face lighting with a smile, “it’s a little subscription list, or something, that somebody lost. Alan Macdonald heads it for five hundred dollars. Do you know Alan Macdonald, and what his charitable purpose may be?”
Nola tossed her head with a contemptuous sniff.
“They call him the ‘king of the rustlers’ up the river,” said she.
“Oh, he is a man of consequence, then?” said Frances, a quickening of humor in her brown eyes, seeing that Nola was up on her high horse about it.
“We’d better be going down to the slaughter-house if we want to see the fun,” bustled the colonel, wheeling his horse. “I see a movement setting in that way.”
“He’s just a common thief!” declared Nola, with 22 flushed cheek and resentful eye, as Frances fell in beside her for the march against the abattoir.
Frances still carried the paper twisted about her finger, reserving her judgment upon Alan Macdonald, for she knew something of the feuds of that hard-speaking land.
“Anyway, I suppose he’d like to have his paper back,” she suggested. “Will you hand it to him the next time you meet him?”
Frances was entirely grave about it, although it was only a piece of banter which she felt that Nola would appreciate. But Nola was not in an appreciative mood, for she was a full-blooded daughter of the baronial rule. She jerked her head like a vicious bronco and reined hurriedly away from Frances as she extended the paper.
“I’ll not touch the thing!” said Nola, fire in her eyes.