out, and nigh most starved to death in thar. I had to drag him out and
start him on the mountain, for you couldn't get him back to the road.
He was the last one but _you_."
"Do you reckon it's the right thing for a girl like you to run about
with trash of this kind, and mix herself up with all sorts of roughs
and bad company?" said Lance.
Flip stopped short. "Look! if you're goin' to talk like Dad, I'll go
back."
The ridiculousness of such a resemblance struck him more keenly than a
consciousness of his own ingratitude. He hastened to assure Flip that
he was joking. When he had made his peace they fell into talk again,
Lance becoming unselfish enough to inquire into one or two facts
concerning her life which did not immediately affect him. Her mother
had died on the plains when she was a baby, and her brother had run
away from home at twelve. She fully expected to see him again, and
thought he might sometime stray into their canon. "That is why, then,
you take so much stock in tramps," said Lance.
You expect to recognize _him_?"
"Well," replied Flip, gravely, "there is suthing in _that_, and there's
suthing in _this_: some o' these chaps might run across brother and do
him a good turn for the sake of me."
"Like me, for instance?" suggested Lance.
"Like you. You'd do him a good turn, wouldn't you?"
"You bet!" said Lance, with a sudden emotion that quite startled him;
"only don't you go to throwing yourself round promiscuously." He was
half conscious of an irritating sense of jealousy, as he asked if any
of her _proteges_ had ever returned.
"No," said Flip, "no one ever did. It shows," she added with sublime
simplicity, "I had done 'em good, and they could get on alone. Don't
it?"
"It does," responded Lance grimly. "Have you any other friends that
come?"
"Only the Postmaster at the Crossing."
"The Postmaster?"
"Yes: he's reckonin' to marry me next year, if I'm big enough."
"And what do you reckon?" asked Lance earnestly.
Flip began a series of distortions with her shoulders, ran on ahead,
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