Me Smith

that knew what to do. We sent Meeteetse for a doctor, but he hasn’t come yet. He probably got drunk and forgot what he went for. It’s been a terrible night, pardner, and a terrible day!”
    McArthur looked at her with troubled eyes, and once more he stroked her hair with his gentle, timid touch.
    “Everything just looks awful to me, with Dad and mother both gone, and me here alone on this big ranch, with only Ling and grub-liners. And to think of it all the rest of my life like this—with nobody that I belong to, or that belongs to me!”
    Something was recalled to McArthur with a start by Susie’s words. He had forgotten!
    “Come, Susie, come with me.”
    She followed him outside, where he unbuckled his saddle-pocket and took a daguerreotype from a wooden box which had come in the mail. The gilt frame was tarnished, the purple velvet lining faded, and when he handed the case to Susie she had to hold it slanting in the light to see the picture.
    “Dad!”
    She looked at McArthur with eyes wide in wonder.
    “Donald MacDonald, my aunt Harriet’s brother, who went north to buy furs for the Hudson Bay Company!” McArthur’s eyes were smiling through the moisture in them.
    “We’ve got one just like it!” Susie cried, still half unable to believe her eyes and ears.
    “I was sure that day you mimicked your father when he said, ‘Never forget you are a MacDonald!’ for I have heard my aunt say that a thousand times, and in just that way. But I wanted to be surer before I said anything to you, so I sent for this.”
    “Oh, pardner!” and with a sudden impulse which was neither Scotch nor Indian, but entirely of herself, Susie threw her arms about his neck and all but choked him in the only hug which Peter McArthur, A.M., Ph.D., could remember ever having had.
----
    XXI
THE MURDERER OF WHITE ANTELOPE
    It was nearly dusk, and Ralston was only a few hundred yards from the Bar C gate, when he met Babe, highly perfumed and with his hair suspiciously slick, coming out. Babe’s look of disappointment upon seeing him was not flattering, but Ralston ignored it in his own delight at the meeting.
    “What was your rush? I was just goin’ over to see you,” was Babe’s glum greeting.
    “And I’m here to see you,” Ralston returned, “but I forgot to perfume myself and tallow my hair.”
    “Aw-w-w,” rumbled Babe, sheepishly. “What’d you want?”
    “You know what I’m in the country for?”
    Babe nodded.
    “I’ve located my man, and he’s going to drive off a big bunch to-night. There’s two of them in fact, and I’ll need help. Are you game for it?”
    “Oh, mamma!” Babe rolled his eyes in ecstasy.
    “He has a horror of doing time,” Ralston went on, “and if he has any show at all, he’s going to put up a hard fight. I’d like the satisfaction of bringing them both in, single-handed, but it isn’t fair to the Colonel to take any chances of their getting away.”
    “Who is it?”
    “Smith.”
    “That bastard with his teeth stickin’ out?”
    Ralston laughed assent.
    “Pickin’s!” cried Babe, with gusto. “I’d like to kill that feller every mornin’ before breakfast. Will I go? Will I? Will I?” Babe’s crescendo ended in a joyous whoop of exultation. “Wait till I ride back and tell the Colonel, and git my ca’tridge belt. I take it off of an evenin’ these tranquil times.”
    Ralston turned his horse and started back, so engrossed in thoughts of the work ahead of him that it was not until Babe overtook him that he remembered he had forgotten to ask Babe’s business with him.
    “Well, I guess the old Colonel was tickled when he heard you’d spotted the rustlers,” said Babe, as he reined in beside him. “He wanted to come along—did for a fact, and him nearly seventy. He’d push the lid off his coffin and climb out at his own funeral if somebody’d happen to mention that thieves was brandin’ his calves.”
    “You said you had started to the ranch to see me.”
    “Oh, yes—I forgot. Your father sent word to the Colonel that he was sellin’ off his cattle and goin’ into sheep, and wanted the Colonel to let you know.”
    “The poor old Governor! It’ll about break his heart, I know; and I should be there. At his time of life it’s a pretty hard and galling thing to quit cattle—to be forced out of the business into sheep. It’s like bein’ made to change your politics or religion against your will.”
    “’Fore I’d wrangle woolers,” declared