ranch which featured in a broad sign its well-appointed bar. Night was drawing in when he rode into the fenced enclosure; the first big splashing drops of the shower were knocking up dust in the corral like spent bullets as he led Graball under the shed. Man and horse were both well content to call it a day and try the comforts of the wayside rest.
A man named Lineberger was running the place, assisted by his wife and daughter. Lineberger appeared to be a cattleman out of place. He was a scragged tall man, taciturn, gloomy of countenance, grudging and ungracious in his speech, for which deficiency his wife made ample amends. This was a stubby, quick woman, red, raucous, full of loud laughter which spilled over every time she tipped. Her eyes were alert, eager, and nothing so friendly as her words. Her husband called her Dell.
The daughter seemed indifferent, of herself as well as of those who came and went. She was a longbacked, flat, moping young woman with a scant wisp of dusty hair, looking rather lachrymose about the nose, keeping her eyes downcast as if she had been warned against the wickedness of horseback-going men. Her mother called her Nadine, with a lingering fondness for the name.
Lineberger's was an old ranch-house transformed into a wayside inn. Whether the present owner had degenerated with the house into that business, Rawlins only speculated; he did not have the courage, before the host's formidable countenance, to inquire. The house was built of hewn logs, long L-shaped, with diminishing additions upon the foot of it which ter-
