bare-back rider ever in the ring. Isobel Montmorenci. English, you know. I wasn't so shy myself, Queenie Madrew."

"Gee! Well, you were some. Shake." Hanson extended his hand, which Mrs. Gallito shook warmly. "And I do remember your mother. I should say so. First time I went to the circus, I was about ten years old—ran off you know. Knew well enough what I'd get when I turned up at home. Pop laying for me with a strap. Goodness! It takes me right back. It's all a kind of jumble, sawdust clowns and all; but what I do remember plain is Isobel Montmorenci, her and a big black horse she was riding."

"Cæsar!" cried Mrs. Gallito excitedly. "Lord! don't I remember! I learned to ride on him."

"Yes," mused the manager, "all I recall of that circus is her and my two nickels. I broke my bank to get 'em. They seemed a fortune to me; but even then I was a shrewd kid and meant to get my money's worth. Well—the first one I laid out in a great tall glass of lemonade. Say, that was the first time I came up against the disillusions of life. Nothing but a little sweetened water. The next nickel went for peanuts, and they were too stale for even a kid to chew."

"Ain't that just like a young one at the circus!" Mrs. Gallito laughed loudly.

"What's the joke, mom?" drawled a lazy, sliding, soft voice on the other side of her.

"A circus story, honey. Oh!" as the sudden formal silence recalled her to her duty. "I forget. You two ain't been introduced, have you? Pearl, make you acquainted with Mr. Hanson. He's in the show business."

Pearl bowed without lifting her eyes, giving Hanson ample opportunity to note the incredible length, as it seemed to him, of the upcurling lashes upon her smooth cheeks. But just as he bent forward to speak to her, she half-turned from him and said something to one of the men beside her.

The manager's quickness saved him. He was perfectly aware of all those jealous masculine eyes, flickering now with repressed and delighted laughter over his discomfiture. He recovered himself in a moment and slipped easily and with unabated geniality into a conversation with Mrs. Gallito.

"Funny you should marry out of the profession," deftly catching up his threads.

"She didn't," again that soft, sliding voice. "Pop was born in the sawdust, too."

Without a change of expression in his face, Hanson waited imperturbably for Mrs. Gallito's answer. Since his eyes were fixed on the red spark at the end of his cigarette, who could see the quick flash in them?

Mrs. Gallito took a hasty gulp of beer. "It's just like Pearl says," she murmured. "Her pop came of a long line of circus people, same as me, but he broke clean away from it, couldn't bear the life." There was unabated wonder in her tones. "I guess," resignedly, "it's the Spanish of him."

"Say," cried Hanson, and now his voice rang with a new note in it, something of gay, masterful, masculine dominance, "say, what you ladies drinking beer and lemonade for? It's got to be wine to-night. Hey, Jimmy. Wine for this table, and treat the house. Wine, understand? Got enough to float 'em?"

"Hold on a minute, Jimmy." Hanson heard Bob Flick's voice for the first time, soft as the Pearl's, liquidly southern, gentle, even apologetic. "I'm sorry, stranger"—he leaned forward courteously to Hanson—"we all would enjoy accepting your hospitality, but you see, it ain't etiquette."

A silence that could be felt had fallen upon the room. Mrs. Gallito, pale under her paint, was nervously biting her handkerchief and glancing from one man to the other, while the Pearl leaned back in her chair as lazily, languidly, scornfully indifferent as ever.

Then Hanson laughed, and a little thrill went over the room. The new man was game. "Ain't that just your ruling, stranger?" he asked pleasantly. "Since we've not been introduced, I can't call your name. But I hold that it is etiquette. Jimmy, get on your job. The occasion when I first set my eyes upon the Black Pearl has got to be honored."

"Hold on just a moment, Jimmy." It was Flick now. "You see," again to Hanson, his voice more apologetic than ever, "you being new here, naturally don't understand. It ain't etiquette on a Benefit night, when Miss Pearl Gallito, whose name you have, most unfortunately, just miscalled, condescends to dance. I'm afraid I got to ask you to take back your order and to apologize to Miss Gallito."

Hanson was on his feet in a minute. "I'm sure ready now and always to apologize my humblest to Miss Gallito, although I don't know what's the offense. But the order stands."

"Oh, Pearl," wailed her mother, "you raise mischief wherever you go. You know Bob wouldn't go on so if you'd ask him to stop. You just like to raise the devil."

Then, for the first time, the Pearl's face became animated. It broke into brilliance, her eyes gleamed, she showed her white teeth when she laughed.

"Quit your fooling, both of you," she said composedly, rising to her feet. "I ain't going to have tales flying all over the desert about the ructions stirred up the night I danced for the benefit of the flood sufferers. Shake hands, you two," imperiously. "Go on, do what I tell you. That's right," as the two men perfunctorily shook hands. "Bob don't mean a thing, Mr. Hanson. It's just his temper, and there ain't going to be any wine, because I'm going home, but—" and here she smiled into his eyes—"you can walk a piece of the way with me, if you want to. Come on, mother and Hughie. Good-night, Bob."

CHAPTER II

Hanson had decided that the best way to gain certain information he desired was to seek the bar-keeper, who, after his constitution,> gossiped as naturally and as volubly as a bird sings; so, quite early the next morning, he sauntered into Chickasaw Pete's place.

Jimmy, who was industriously polishing the bar and singing the while one of the more lugubrious and monotonous hymns, looked up with his customary little chuckle.

"Feeling fine, ain't you?" he said derisively. "Want to start right out and corral the whole desert, don't you? Think you can travel right over to San Bernardino yonder? Looks about three miles off, don't he?"

"Me?" said Hanson, expanding his chest. "I feel like I was about sixteen. Like I was home in Kaintucky, jumping a six-bar fence after a breakfast of about fifty buckwheat cakes and syrup."

"That's the way it takes them all; but you just wait until about noon, and you won't feel so gay," warned Jimmy. "What are you doin' to-day, anyway, hunting more trouble?"

"Not me," cried the other. "I came here to the desert pearl fishing."

"That's a good one." Jimmy's chuckle expanded into a series. "But you ain't the only one. There's Bob Flick, for instance, as you discovered last night."

The smile went out of Hanson's eyes, his face set. He ceased to lounge against the bar and involuntarily straightened himself:

"What about Bob Flick?" he asked.

"Lots about Bob." Jimmy's tone was equable, but he shot Hanson a quick glance. "He was our faro dealer for a while, but he's interested in mines now. He's dead sure. Come to think of it, he's a lot of dead things," he mused; "but don't ever confuse him with a dead one." Delight at his own wit expressed itself in mirthful chuckles. "He's dead game, and he's a dead shot, two important things for a man that's playing to win when in certain localities, and he's dead certain that he's the God-appointed guardeen of the Black Pearl."

"What's she got to say about it?" growled Hanson.

The bar-keeper shrugged his shoulders. "Ask me what the desert out there's thinking, and I'll tell you what's going on inside the Pearl's head. Say," animatedly, "I told you to ask me about those emeralds last night, didn't I?"

The manager laughed shortly. "I saw 'em close, son, after I left you. I know stones. Square cut emeralds. Lord! They sure cost some good man his pile, and he was no piker, either."

"Bob Flick," said Jimmy, with a glow of local pride. "Kind of thank