Lidgerwood laughed, recognizing Miss Brewster’s romancing gift, or the results of it.

“We shall have to arrange a little round-up of the bad men from Bitter Creek for you, Mr. Van Lew.  I hope you brought your armament along—­the regulation 45’s, and all that.”

Miss Brewster laughed derisively.

“Don’t let him discourage you, Herbert,” she mocked.  “Bitter Creek is in Wyoming—­or is it in Montana?” this with a quick little eye-stab for Lidgerwood, “and the name of Mr. Lidgerwood’s refuge is Angels.  Also, papa says there is a hotel there called the ‘Celestial.’  Do you live at the Celestial, Howard?”

“No, I never properly lived there.  I existed there for a few weeks until Mrs. Dawson took pity on me.  Mrs. Dawson is from Massachusetts.”

“Hear him!” scoffed Miss Eleanor, still mocking.  “He says that as if to be ‘from Massachusetts’ were a patent of nobility.  He knows I had the cruel misfortune to be born in Colorado.  But tell me, Howard, is Mrs. Dawson a charming young widow?”

“Mrs. Dawson is a very charming middle-aged widow, with a grown son and a daughter,” said Lidgerwood, a little stiffly.  It seemed entirely unnecessary that she should ridicule him before the athlete.

“And the daughter—­is she charming, too?  But that says itself, since she must also date ‘from Massachusetts.’” Then to Van Lew:  “Every one out here in the Red Desert is ‘from’ somewhere, you know.”

“Miss Dawson is quite beneath your definition of charming, I imagine,” was Lidgerwood’s rather crisp rejoinder; and for the third time he made as if he would go on to join the president in the office state-room.

“You are staying to luncheon with us, aren’t you?” asked Miss Brewster.  “Or do you just drop in and out again, like the other kind of angels?”

“Your father commands me, and he says I am to stay.  And now, if you will excuse me——­”

This time he succeeded in getting away, and up to the luncheon hour talked copper and copper prospects to Mr. Brewster in the seclusion of the president’s office compartment.  The call for the midday meal had been given when Mr. Brewster switched suddenly from copper to silver.

“By the way, there were a few silver strikes over in the Timanyonis about the time of the Red Butte gold excitement,” he remarked.  “Some of them have grown to be shippers, haven’t they?”

“Only two, of any importance,” replied the superintendent:  “the Ruby, in Ruby Gulch, and Flemister’s Wire-Silver, at Little Butte.  You couldn’t call either of them a bonanza, but they are both shipping fair ore in good quantities.”

“Flemister,” said the president reflectively.  “He’s a character.  Know him personally, Howard?”

“A little,” the superintendent admitted.

“A little is a-plenty.  It wouldn’t pay you to know him very well,” laughed the big man good-naturedly.  “He has a somewhat paralyzing way of getting next to you financially.  I knew him in the old Leadville days; a born gentleman, and also a born buccaneer.  If the men he has held up and robbed were to stand in a row, they’d fill a Denver street.”