father was a white man. You’re on the reservation when you cross the crick.”

Recovering himself, the stranger said politely:

“Ah, MacDonald—that good Scotch name is a very familiar one to me. I had an uncle——”

“I go show dem where to turn de horses,” interrupted the Indian woman, to whom the conversation was uninteresting. So, without ceremony, she padded away in her moccasins, drawing her blanket squaw-fashion across her face as she waddled down the path.

At the mission the woman had obtained the rudiments of an education. There, too, she had learned to cut and make a dress, after a crude, laborious fashion, and had acquired the ways of the white people’s housekeeping. She was noted for the acumen which she displayed in disposing of the crop from her extensive hay-ranch to the neighboring white cattlemen; and MacDonald, the big, silent Scotch MacDonald who had come down from the north country and married her before the reservation priest, was given the credit for having instilled into her some of his own shrewdness and thrift.

In the corral the Indian woman came upon Smith. He turned his head slowly and looked at her. For a second, two, three seconds, or more, they looked into each other’s eyes. His gaze was confident, masterful, compelling; hers was wondering, until finally she dropped her eyes in the submissive, modest, half-shy way of Indian women.

Smith moistened his short upper lip with the tip of his tongue, while the shadow of a smile lurked at the corner of his mouth. He turned to his saddle, again, and without speaking, she watched him until he had gone into the barn. His saddle lay on the ground, half covering his blankets. Something in this heap caught the woman’s eyes and held them. Swooping forward, she caught a protruding corner between her thumb and finger and pulled a gay, striped blanket from the rest. Lifting it to her nose, she smelled it. Smith saw the act as he came out of the door, but there was neither consternation nor fear in his face. Smith knew Indian women.

Peter McArthur came into the big living-room of the ranch-house bearing tenderly in his arms a long brown sack. He set it upon a chair, and, as he patted it affectionately, he said to the Indian woman in explanation:

“These are some specimens which I have been fortunate enough to find in a limestone formation in the country through which we have just passed. No doubt you will be amused, madam, but the wealth of Crœsus could not buy from me the contents of this canvas sack.”

“I broke a horse for that son-of-a-gun onct. He owes me a dollar and six bits for the job yet,” remarked Tubbs.

The fire of enthusiasm died in McArthur’s eyes as they rested upon his man.

“What for a prospect do you aim to open up in a limestone formation?”

Smith, tipped on the rear legs of his chair, with his head resting comfortably against the unbleached muslin sheeting which lined the walls, winked at Tubbs as he asked the question.

“‘What for a prospect’?” repeated McArthur.

“Yes, ‘prospect’—that’s what I said. You say you’ve got your war-bag full of spec’mens.”

McArthur laughed heartily.

“Ah, my dear sir, I understand. You are referring to mines—to mineral specimens. These are the specimens of which I am speaking.”

Opening the sack, McArthur held up for inspection what looked to be a lump of dried mud.

“This is a magnificent specimen of the crustacean period,” he declared.

The Indian woman looked from the prized object to his animated face; then, with puzzled eyes, she looked at Smith, who touched his forehead with his finger, making a spiral, upward gesture which in the sign language says “crazy.”

The woman promptly gathered up the rag rug she was braiding and moved to a bench in the farthermost corner of the room.

“I can get you a wagon-load of chunks like that.”

“Oh, my dear sir——”

“Smith’s my name.”

“But, Mr. Smith——”

“I trusts no man that ’Misters’ me,” Smith scowled. “Every time I’ve ever been beat in a deal, it’s been by some feller that’s called me ’Mister.’ Jest Smith suits me better.”

“Certainly, if you prefer,” amicably replied McArthur, although unenlightened by the explanation.

He replaced his specimen and tied the sack, convinced that it would be useless to explain to this person that fossils like this were not found by the wagon-load; that perhaps in the entire world there was not one in which the branchiocardiac grooves were so clearly defined, in which the emostigite and the ambulatory legs were so perfectly preserved.

He seemed a singular person, this Smith. McArthur was not sure that he fancied him.

“Say, Guv’ner, what business do you follow, anyhow?” Tubbs asked the question in the tone of one who really wanted to get at the bottom of a matter which had troubled him. “Air you a bug-hunter by trade, or what? I’ve hauled you around fer more’n a month now, and ain’t figgered it out what you’re after. We’ve dug up ant-hills and busted open most of the rocks between here and the North Fork of Powder River, but I’ve never seen you git anything yet that anybuddy’d want.”

In the beginning of their tour, Tubbs’s questions and caustic comment would have given McArthur offense, but a longer acquaintance had taught him that none was intended; that his words were merely those of a man entirely without knowledge upon any subject save those which had come under his direct observation. While Tubbs frequently exasperated him beyond expression, he found at the same time a certain fascination in the man’s incredible ignorance. In many respects his mind was like that of a child, and his horizon as narrow as McArthur’s own, though his companion did not suspect it. The little scientist saw life from the viewpoint of a small college and a New England village; Tubbs knew only the sage-brush plains.

McArthur now replied dryly, but without irritation:

“My real trade—‘job,’ if you prefer—is anthropology. Strictly speaking, I might, I think, be called an anthropologist.”

“Gawd, feller!” ejaculated Smith in mock dismay. “Don’t tip your hand like that. I’m a killer myself, but I plays a lone game. I opens up to no man or woman livin’.”

Tubbs looked slightly ashamed of his employer.

“Pardon me?”

“I say, never give nobody the cinch on you. Many a good man’s tongue has hung him.”

McArthur studied Smith’s unsmiling face in perplexity, not at all sure that he was not in earnest.

They sat in silence after this, even Tubbs being too hungry to indulge in reminiscence.

The odor of frying steak filled the room, and the warmth from the round sheet-iron stove gave Smith, in particular, a delicious sense of comfort. He felt as a cat on a comfortable cushion must feel after days and nights of prowling for food and shelter. The other two men, occupied with their own thoughts, closed their eyes; but not so Smith. Nothing, to the smallest detail, escaped him. He appraised everything with as perfect an appreciation of its value as an auctioneer.

Through the dining-room door which opened into the kitchen, he could see the kitchen range—a big one—the largest made for private houses. Smith liked that. He liked things on a big scale. Besides, it denoted generosity, and he had come to regard a woman’s kitchen as an index to her character. He distinctly approved of the big meat-platter upon which the Chinese cook was piling steak. He eyed the mongrel dog lying at the Indian woman’s feet, and noted that its sides were distended with food. He was prejudiced against, suspicious of, a woman who kept lean dogs.

In the same impersonal way in which he eyed her belongings, he looked at the