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12 VAL OF PARADISE

glance. She was clad in gay garments of scarlet and black, with a sash of striped silk that hung to her knee at the left, after it had most saucily bound her slender waist in a wide, tight girdle. These were her best clothes, daringly donned because they were strange men in town, and she went boldly to the store for a bagatelle of some sort or other.

At the sound of her light foot at the sill the players looked up—Brideman with a leer and a laugh and a pointed compliment, the cowboys with that lively interest which all their ilk feel in women-kind, but Paul Sanchez with a black scowl, for she was his daughter.

"Lolo," he said sharply, "go home—pronto."

But she only leaned more comfortably against the doorpost and smiled at the men.

"Lolo likes company," said Brideman, boisterously, "and why shouldn't she, shut in this forsaken town? Tell me that. Come watch us play, little one," he added, turning his great face toward the door.

But Sanchez was on his feet, his dark face flaming. He lifted an imperious finger and pointed north, and the girl, with a last sidewise glance and a pout, slipped gracefully off the step and disappeared.

Sanchez sat down again, picked up his cards and called for a draw coolly, but there was fire in his black eyes. That invitation of the big man to the girl to "come and watch the play" given directly