The girl did have some real ideas, sometimes! And Robert Grant Burns was not the one to refuse a real idea because it did not come from his own brain.
"Well," Jean flushed with an adorable shyness at the apparent egotism of her idea, "since you seem to want me for the central figure in everything, suppose we start a story like this: Suppose I am left here at the Lazy A with my mother to take care of and a ranch and a lot of cattle; and suppose it's a hard proposition, because there's really a gang of rustlers that have been running off stock and never getting caught, and they have a grudge against my family and grab our cattle every chance they get.

Suppose--suppose they killed my brother when he was about to round them up, and they want to drive me and my mother out of the country.

Scare us out, you know.

Well,--" she hesitated and glanced diffidently at the boys who had edged up to listen,--"that would leave room for all kinds of feature stuff.

Say that I have just one or two boys that I can depend on, boys that I know are loyal.