“Except when he casually stepped on Cowley’s toes. You remember he was laid up in bed for a month,” Dick reminded her, straightening out the Outlaw from a sidle and with a flicker of glance catching the strange look with which Paula was regarding him.

There was question in it, he could see, and love in it, and fear — yes, almost fear, or at least apprehension that bordered on dismay; but, most of all, a seeking, a searching, a questioning. Not entirely ungermane to her mood, was his thought, had been that remark of his thinking in statistics.

But he made that he had not seen, whipping out his pad, and, with an interested glance at a culvert they were passing, making a note.

“They missed it,” he said. “It should have been repaired a month ago.”