“Letter for Mrs. Adams.”

“Uh-uh.  Lorry writes to his ma like he was her beau—­reg’lar and plenty.  Funny thing, you can’t get a word out of him about wimmin-folk, neither.  He ain’t that kind of a colt.  But I reckon when he sees the gal he wants he’ll saddle up and ride out and take her.”  And Bud chuckled.

Bondsman rapped the floor with his tail.  Bondsman never failed to express a sympathetic mood when his master chuckled.

“Now, look at that,” said Shoop, grinning.  “He knows I’m goin’ over to Stacey.  He heard me say it.  And he says I got to take him along, ’cause he knows I ain’t goin’ on a hoss.  That there dog bosses me around somethin’ scandalous.”

The stenographer smiled as Shoop waddled from the office with Bondsman at his heels.  There was something humorous, almost pathetic, in the gaunt and grizzled Airedale’s affection for his rotund master.  And Shoop’s broad back, with the shoulders stooped slightly and the set stride as he plodded here and there, often made the clerk smile.  Yet there was nothing humorous about Shoop’s face when he flashed to anger or studied some one who tried to mask a lie, or when he reprimanded his clerk for naming folk that it was hazardous to name.

The typewriter clicked; a fly buzzed on the screen door; a beam of sunlight flickered through the window.  The letter ran:—­

Yours of the 4th inst. received and contents noted.  In answer would state that Supervisor Shoop would be glad to have you call at your earliest convenience in regard to leasing a camp-site on the White Mountain Reserve.

Essentially a business letter of the correspondence-school type.

But the stenographer was not thinking of style.  He was wondering what the girl would be like.  There was to be a girl.  The writer had said that he wished to build a camp to which he could bring his daughter, who was not strong.  The clerk thought that a writer’s daughter might be an interesting sort of person.  Possibly she was like some of the heroines in the writer’s stories.  It would be interesting to meet her.  He had written a poem once himself.  It was about spring, and had been published in the local paper.  He wondered if the writer’s daughter liked poetry.

In the meantime, Lorry, with two pack-animals and Gray Leg, rode the hills and canons, attending to the many duties of a ranger.

And as he caught his stride in the work he began to feel that he was his own man.  Miles from headquarters, he was often called upon to make a quick decision that required instant and individual judgment.  He made mistakes, but never failed to report such mistakes to Shoop.  Lorry preferred to give his own version of an affair that he had mishandled rather than to have to explain some other version later.  He was no epitome of perfection.  He was inclined to be arbitrary when he knew he was in the right.  Argument irritated him.  He considered his “Yes” or “No” sufficient, without explanation.