"Thank you, Yuki. I see you did not keep our hungry hunters waiting.—Mr. Ashton, I have told Daddy about that shooting."

"It's a mighty strange happening. You might tell us the full particulars," said Knowles.

Ashton at once gave a fairly accurate account of the affair. He could hardly exaggerate the peril he had incurred, and the touch of exultance with which he described his defeat of the murderer was quite pardonable in a tenderfoot.

"Strange—mighty strange. Can't understand it," commented the cowman when Ashton had finished his account.

"It shore is, Mr. Knowles," added Gowan. "The only thirty-eight on the ranch is mine. That seems to clear our people."

"Of course! It could not possibly be any of our people!" exclaimed the girl.

"Mr. Ashton thinks it might have been his guide," went on Gowan.

"His guide? What caliber was his rifle?" shrewdly queried the cowman.

"Why, I—really I cannot remember," answered Ashton. "I know it was of a larger bore than mine, but that is all."

"Um-m," considered Knowles. "Looks rather like he's the man. Can't think of anyone else. Trouble is, if he was laying in wait for you, his horse would be fresh. Must have covered a right smart bit of territory by now."

"I'll go out and take a look at his tracks," said Gowan, rising with a readiness that brought a nod of approval from his employer.

"You'll be careful, Kid," cautioned the girl, with a shade of concern in her tone.

"He'll keep his eye open, Chuckie," reassured her father. "It's the other fellow wants to be careful, if he hasn't already vamoosed. Hey, Kid?"

"I'll get him, if I get the chance," laconically replied Gowan, looking from the girl to Ashton with the characteristic straightening of his lips that marked the tensing of his emotions.

As he left the room Miss Isobel smiled and nodded to Ashton. "You see how friendly he is, in spite of his cold manner to strangers. I thought he had taken a dislike to you, yet you saw how readily he offered to go out after your assailant."

"More likely it's because he thinks it would discredit us to let such a scoundrel get away," differed her father. "However, he'll leave you alone, Mr. Ashton, if you stay with us as a guest, and will only haze you a bit, if you insist upon joining our force."

"You mean, working for you? I must insist on that," said Ashton, with an eager look at the girl. "If only I can do well enough to be employed right along!"

The cowman grunted, and winked solemnly at his daughter. "Yes, I can understand your feeling that way. How about the winter, though? You mayn't like it over here so well then."

Ashton flushed and laughed at the older man's shrewdness; hesitated, and confessed candidly: "No, I should prefer Denver in winter."

Miss Isobel blushed in adorable payment of his compliment, but thrust back at him: "We bar cowboys in the Sacred Thirty-six."

He winced. Her stroke had pierced into his raw wound.

"Oh!—oh!" she breathlessly exclaimed. "I didn't mean to—Oh, I'm so sorry!"

He dashed the tears from his eyes. "No, you—don't apologize! It's only that I'm—Please don't fancy I'm a baby! You see, when a fellow has always lived high—on top, you know—and then to have everything go out from under him without warning!"

"Keep a stiff upper lip, son," advised Knowles. "You'll pull through all right. It isn't everyone in your fix that would be asking for work."

Ashton laughed a trifle unsteadily. "It's very kind of you to say that, Mr. Knowles. I—I wish a steady position, winter as well as summer."

"How about Denver?" asked Knowles.

"That can wait," replied Ashton. He met the girl's smile of approval, and rallied fully. "Yes, that can wait—and so can I."

Again the girl blushed, but she found a bantering rejoinder: "With you and Kid and Daddy all waiting for me to come home, I suppose I'll have to cut the season short."

"The winters here are like those you read about up at the North Pole," the cowman informed Ashton. "But we get our sunshine back along in the spring."

"Oh, Daddy! you're a poet!" cried his daughter, flinging her arm around his sunburnt neck.

"Wish I were one!" enviously sighed Ashton. The cowman gave him a look that brought him to his feet. "Mr. Knowles," he hastened to ask, "if you'll kindly tell me what my work is to be this afternoon."

The older man's frown relaxed. "Did you come out here from Stockchute?"

"Yes."

"Think you could find your way back?"

"Why, yes; though we wandered all around—But surely, Mr. Knowles, you'll not require me—"

"I want a man to ride over with some letters and fetch the mail. I'll need Gowan for work you can't do. Chuckie was to have gone; but I can't let her now, until we're more sure about that man who shot at you."

"I see."

"Well, have you got the nerve, in case the man is loose over that way?"

Ashton's eyes flashed. "I'll go! Perhaps I'll get another crack at the scoundrel."

"Keep cool. It's ninety-nine chances in the hundred he's on the run and'll keep going all week."

"Shall I start now? As we came by a very roundabout way—We went first in the opposite direction, and then skirted High Mesa down from the mountains. So, you see, I may have a little difficulty—"

"No you won't. There's our wagon trail. Even if you got off that, all you'd have to do would be to keep headed for Split Peak. That's right in line with Stockchute. But you'll not start till morning. I haven't got all my letters written. That'll give you all day to go and come. It's only twenty-five miles over there. Chuckie, you show this new puncher of ours over the place, while I write those letters."

"I'll start teaching him how to throw a rope," volunteered the girl.

She led the way out through a daintily furnished front room, in which Ashton observed an upright piano and other articles of culture that he would never have expected to come upon in this remote section. In passing, the girl picked up a wide-brimmed lacy hat.

Once outside, she first took Ashton for a walk up Plum Creek to where half a dozen men were at work with a mowing machine and horse rakes making hay of the rich bunch-grass.

"Daddy feeds all he can in winter," she explained. "The spring when I first came back from Denver I cried so over the starving cattle that he promised to always afterwards cut and stack all the hay he could. And he has found it pays to feed well. We would put a lot of land into oats, but, as you see, there's not enough water in the creek."

"That's where an irrigation system would come in," remarked Ashton.

"Oh, I hope you don't think it possible to water our mesa!" she cried. "I told you how it would break up our range."

"I assure you, I don't think at all," he replied. "I'm not a reclamation engineer—never specialized on hydraulics."

She flashed an odd look at him. "You never? But Mr. Blake—that wonderful engineer of the Zariba Dam—he would know, wouldn't he?"

"I—suppose he would—that is, if he—" Ashton hesitated, and exclaimed, "But that's just it!"

"What?" she asked.

"Why, to—to have him come here. He's the luckiest for blundering on ways to do things," muttered Ashton. He added with growing bitterness: "Yes, if there's any way at all to do it, you'd have him flooding your whole range—deluging it. He's got all those millions to back him."

"You do not like him," said the girl. She looked off towards High Mesa, her face glowing with suppressed excitement. "No doubt you are right—as to his ability. But—don't you see?—if it can be done, it is bound to be done sooner or later. All the time Daddy and I—and Kid, too—are living under this constant dread that it may be possible. But if such an engineer as—as Mr. Blake came and looked over the situation and told us we needn't fear—don't you see how—?"

"You don't mean that you—?" Ashton, in turn, left his question unfinished and averted his face.

"Yes," she answered. "I'm sure it will be best to put an end to this uncertainty. So I believe I shall send for—for Mr. Blake."

"But—why for—for him—in particular?" he stammered.

"I am sorry you dislike him," she said, regaining her composure when she saw that he too was agitated.

He did not reply. She tactfully changed the subject. By the time they had circled around, back to the half open feed-sheds, he was gayly chatting with her on music and the drama. When they came down to the horse corral she proceeded to lecture him on the duties of a cowboy and showed him how to hold and throw a rope. Under her skillful tuition, he at last learned the knack of casting an open noose.

Evening was near when they returned to the house. As before, they caught Knowles in the front porch contentedly puffing at his pipe. He dropped it down out of sight. The girl shook her finger at him, nodded to Ashton, and went indoors. Immediately the cowman put his pipe back into his mouth and drew another from his pocket, together with an unopened sack of tobacco.

"Smoke?" he asked.

Ashton's eyes gleamed. In the girl's presence he had been able to restrain the fierce craving that had tortured him since dinner. Now it so overmastered him that he almost snatched the pipe and tobacco out of the cowman's hand. The latter gravely shook his head.

"Got it that bad, have you?" he deplored.

Ashton could not answer until his pipe was well under way.

"I'm—I'm breaking off," he replied. "Haven't had a cigarette all day—nor anything else. A-ah!"

"Glad you like it," said Knowles. "A pipe is all right with this kind of tobacco. You can't inhale it like you can cigarettes, unless you want to strangle."

"I shall break off entirely as soon as I can," asserted Ashton.

"Well," considered Knowles, "I'm not saying you can't or won't. It's mighty curious what a young fellow can do to please a pretty girl. Just the same, I'd say from the color of Kid's fingers that he hasn't forgotten how to roll a fat Mexican cigaretto.—Hello! 'Talk of the devil—' Here he comes now."

Gowan came around the corner of the house, his spurs jingling. His eyes were as cold and his face as emotionless as usual.

"Well?" asked Knowles. "Have a seat."

"Didn't get him," reported Gowan, dropping into a chair. "Near as I could make out, he cut straight across for the railroad, on the jump."

"Then it must have been that guide!" exclaimed Ashton.

"Looks that way," added Knowles. "Glad of it. We won't see him again, unless you want to notify the sheriff, when you ride over tomorrow."

"No, oh, no. I am satisfied to be rid of him."

"If he don't come back," remarked Gowan.

"He won't," predicted Knowles.

"Well, not for a time maybe," agreed Gowan.



CHAPTER VIII

A MAN'S SIZE HORSE

At dusk the sonorous boom of a Japanese gong gave warning of the approach of the supper hour. A few minutes later a second booming summoned all in to the meal. Miss Isobel sat at one end of the table; her father at the other. Along the sides were the employes, Ashton and Gowan at the corners nearest the girl. A large coal oil lamp with an artistic shade cast a pink light on the clean white oilcloth of the table and the simple tasteful table service.

Yuki, the silent Jap, served all with strict impartiality, starting with the mistress of the house and going around the table in regular succession, either one way or the other. The six rough-appearing haymakers used their knives with a freedom to which Ashton was unaccustomed, but their faces were clean, their behavior quiet, and their occasional remarks by no means inapt.

After the meal they wished Miss Knowles a pleasant "Good-night," and left for the bunkhouse. But Ashton and Gowan, at the smiling invitation of the girl, followed her into the front room. Knowles came in a few minutes later and, with scarcely a glance at the young people, settled down beside a tableful of periodicals and magazines to study the latest Government report on the reclamation service.

Ashton had entered the "parlor" under the impression that here he would have Gowan at a disadvantage. To his surprise, the puncher proved to be quite at ease; his manners were correct and his conversation by no means provincial. A moment's reflection showed Ashton that this could not well be otherwise, in view of the young fellow's intimacy with Miss Chuckie Isobel.

Another surprise was the discovery that Gowan had a remarkably good ear for music and knew even more than the girl about the masters and their works. There was a player attachment to the piano, and the girl and Gowan had a contest, playing the same selections in turn, to see which could get the most expression by means of the mechanical apparatus. If anything, the girl came out second best. At least she said so; but Ashton would not admit it.

Between times the three chatted on a thousand and one topics, the girl always ready to bubble over with animation and merriment. She bestowed her dimpled smiles on both her admirers with strict impartiality and as impartially stimulated each to his best with her tact and gay wit.

At nine o'clock sharp Knowles closed his report and rose from his comfortable seat.

"Time to turn in, boys. Coal oil costs more than sunlight," he announced, in the flat tone of a standing joke. "We'll take a jog down creek to the Bar-Lazy-J ranch, first thing tomorrow, Kid.—Ashton, you'd better start off in the cool, before sunup. Here's my bunch of letters, case I might forget them."

He handed over half a dozen thinly padded envelopes. Gowan was already at the door, hat in hand.

"Good night, Mr. Knowles. Good night, Miss Chuckie. Pleasant dreams!" he said.

"Same to you, Kid!" replied the girl.

"May I give and receive the same?" asked Ashton.

"Of course," she answered. "But wait a moment, please. I've some letters to go, myself, if you'll kindly take them with Daddy's."

As she darted into a side room, Knowles stepped out after Gowan. When the girl returned, Ashton took the letters that she held out to him and deliberately started to tie them in a packet with those of her father. His sole purpose was to prolong his stay to the last possible moment. But inadvertently his eye caught the name "Blake" on one of the envelopes. His smile vanished; his jaw dropped.

"Why, Mr. Ashton, what is the matter?" said the girl.

"I—I beg your pardon," he replied. "I did not realize that—But it's too absurd—it can't be! You did not mean what you said this afternoon. It can't be you're writing to that man to come here."

"I am," she replied.

"But you can't—you must not. He's the very devil for doing impossible things. He'll be sure to turn loose a flood on you—drown you out—destroy your range!"

"If it can be done, the sooner we know it the better," she argued. "Daddy says little, but it is becoming a monomania with him—the dread. I wish to put an end to his suspense. Besides, if—if this Mr. Blake is as remarkable as you and the reports say he is, it will be interesting to meet him. My only fear is that so great an engineer will not think it worth while to come to this out-of-the-way section."

"The big four-flusher!" muttered Ashton.

"How you must dislike him! It makes me all the more curious to see him."

"Does your father know about this letter?" queried Ashton.

"You forget yourself, sir," she said.

Meeting her level gaze, he flushed crimson with mortification. He stood biting his lip, unable to speak.

She went on coldly: "I do not ask you to tell me the cause of your hatred for Mr. Blake. I assume that you are a gentleman and will not destroy my letter. But even if you should do so, it would mean only a short delay. I shall write him again if I receive no reply to this."

Ashton's flush deepened. "I did not think you could be so hard. But—I presume I deserved it."

"Yes, you did," she agreed, with no lessening of her coldness.

"I see you will not accept an apology, Miss Knowles. However, I give you my word that I will deliver your letter to the postmaster at Stockchute."

He started out, very stiff and erect. As he passed through the doorway she suddenly relented and called after him: "Good night, Mr. Ashton! Pleasant dreams!"

He wheeled and would have stepped back to reply had not Knowles spoken to him from the darkness at the end of the porch: "This way, Ashton. Kid is waiting to show you to the bunkhouse. You'll find a clean bunk and new blankets. I've also issued you corduroy pants and a pair of leather chaps from the commissary. Those city riding togs aren't hardly the thing on the range. There's a spare saddle, if you want to change off from yours."

"Thank you for the other things; but I prefer my own saddle," replied Ashton.

He now perceived the dim form of Gowan starting off in the starlight, and followed him to the bunkhouse. The other men were already in their beds, fast asleep and half of them snoring. Gowan silently lit a lantern and showed the tenderfoot to an unoccupied bunk in the far corner of the rough but clean building. After a curt request for Ashton to blow out the lantern when through with the light, he withdrew, to tumble into a bunk near the door.

Ashton removed twice as many garments as had the puncher, and slipped in between his fresh new blankets, after several minutes spent in finding out how to extinguish the lantern. For some time he lay listening. He had often read of the practical jokes that cowboys are supposed always to play on tenderfeet. But the steady concert of the snoring sleepers was unbroken by any horseplay. Presently he, too, fell asleep.

He was wakened by a general stir in the bunkhouse. Day had not yet come, but by the light of a lantern near the door he could see his fellow employes passing out. He dressed as hastily as he could in his gloomy corner, putting on his new trousers and the stiff leather chapareras in place of his breeches and leggings. Gowan came in, glanced at him with a trace of surprise, and went out with the lantern.

Ashton followed to the house and around into the side porch. The other men were making their morning toilets by lantern light, each drying face and hands on his own towel. Ashton and Gowan waited their turn at the basins, and together went into the lamplit dining-room, where the Jap cook was serving bacon, coffee, and hot bread. Ashton lingered over his meal, hoping to see Miss Isobel. But neither she nor her father appeared.

Gowan had gone out with the other men. Presently he came back to the side door and remarked in almost a friendly tone: "Your hawss is ready whenever you are, Ashton."

"Thanks," said Ashton, rising. "The poor old brute must be rather stiff after the spurring I gave him yesterday."

Gowan did not reply. He had gone out again. Somewhat nettled, Ashton hastened after him. Dawn had come. The gray light in the east was brightening to an exquisite pink. The clear twilight showed the puncher waiting at the front of the house beside a saddled horse. A glance showed Ashton that the saddle and bridle were his own, but that the horse was a big, rawboned beast.

"That's not my pony," he said.

"This here Rocket hawss ain't any pony," agreed Gowan. "He's a man's size hawss. Ain't afraid you'll drop too far when you fall off, are you?"

"You're trying to get me on a bucking bronco!" said Ashton, suspiciously eying the bony, wild-eyed brute.

"He's no outlaw," reassured Gowan. "Most all our hawsses are liable to prance some when they've et too many rattlers. But Miss Chuckie said you can ride."

"I can," said Ashton, tightening the thong of his sombrero down across the back of his head and buttoning his coat.

"Roped this Rocket hawss for you because Mr. Knowles wants his mail by sundown," remarked Gowan. "He shore can travel some when he feels like it. Don't know as you'll need your spurs. Here's a five-spot Mr. Knowles said to hand you by way of advance. Thought you might want to refresh yourself over at Stockchute. Wouldn't rather have another saddle and bridle, would you?"

"Kindly thank Mr. Knowles for me," said Ashton, pocketing the five dollar bill. "No—the horse is hard-mouthed, but I prefer my own saddle and bridle."

He drew his rifle from its sheath, wiped the dew from the butt, and tested the mechanism. The horse cocked his ears, but stood motionless while the rifle was taken out and replaced. Ashton picked up the reins from the ground and threw them over the horse's head. The beast did not swing around, but his ewe neck straightened and his entire body stiffened to a peculiar rigidity.

Ashton tested the tightness of his saddle girth, and paused to gaze at the closed front door of the house. Aside from his saddle and burlesque sombrero, he looked every inch a puncher, both in dress and in bearing. But Miss Isobel missed the effect of his new ensemble. She missed also the interesting spectacle of his mounting.

If he had never ridden a cow pony he would have been thrown and dragged the instant he put his foot in the narrow metal stirrup. The horse was watching him alertly, every muscle tense. Ashton smiled confidently, spoke to the beast in a quiet tone, and pulled on the off rein. The horse bent his head to the pull, for the moment off his guard. In a twinkling Ashton had his foot in the stirrup and was up in the saddle. His toe slipped into the other stirrup as the horse jumped sideways.

The leap was tremendous, but it failed to unseat Ashton. It was instantly followed by other wild jumps—whirling forward and sidelong leaps, interspersed with frantic plunging and rearing. Gowan looked on, agape with amazement. The tenderfoot stuck fast on his flat little saddle and only once pulled leather. Rocket was not a star bucker, but he had thrown more than one half-baked cowboy.

Finding that he could not unseat his rider, the beast suddenly gave over his plunging, and bolted at furious speed down the smooth slope towards Plum Creek. Before they had gone half a furlong Ashton realized that he was on a blooded horse of unusual speed and a runaway. He could not hope to pull down so tough-mouthed a beast with his ordinary curb. The best he could do was to throw all his weight on the right rein. Unable altogether to resist the steady tug at his head, the racing horse gradually swerved until he was headed across the mesa towards the jagged, snow-streaked twin crests of Split Peak.

Horse and rider were still in the curve of their swift flight when Isobel Knowles came out into the porch, yawning behind her plump, sunbrowned hand. A glance at Gowan cut the yawn short. She looked alertly afield and at once caught sight of the runaway.

"Kid!—O-oh!" she cried. "Mr. Ashton!—on Rocket!"

Gowan spun about to her with a guilty start, but answered almost glibly: "You said he could ride, Miss Chuckie."

"He'll—he'll be killed!—Daddy!"

Knowles stepped out through the doorway, cocking his big blue-barreled Colt's. Gowan hastily pointed towards the runaway. Knowles looked, and dropped the revolver to his side. "What's up?" he growled.

"Kid—he—he put Mr. Ashton on Rocket!" breathlessly answered his daughter.

"Sorry to contradict you, Miss Chuckie," said Gowan. "He put himself on."

"He's on yet," dryly commented the cowman. "May be something to that boy, after all."

"But, Daddy!—"

"Now, just stop fussing yourself, honey. He and Rocket are going smooth as axlegrease and bee-lining for Stockchute. How did the hawss start off?—skittish?"

"Enough to make the tenderfoot pull leather," said Gowan.

"If he stuck at all, with that fool saddle—!" rejoined Knowles. "Don't you worry, honey. He sure can fork a hawss—that tenderfoot."

"Oh, yes," the girl sighed with relief. "If Rocket started off bucking, and he kept his seat, of course it's all right. See him take that gully!"

"You sure gave me a start, honey, calling out that way.—Well, Kid, it's about time we were off. I'll get my hat."

Gowan stepped nearer the girl as her father went inside. "I'll leave it to the tenderfoot to tell you, Miss Chuckie. He'll have to own up I gave him fair warning. Told him he wouldn't need his spurs, and asked if he'd have another bit and saddle; but it wasn't any use. He's the kind that won't take advice."

"I know you meant it as a joke, Kid. You did not realize the danger of his narrow stirrups. Had he been caught in mounting or had he been thrown, he would almost certainly have been dragged. And for you to give him our one ugly hawss!"

"You said he could ride," the puncher defended himself.

"I'll forgive you for your joke—if he comes back safe," she qualified, without turning her gaze from the now distant horse and rider.

Gowan started for the corral, the slight waddle of his bowlegged gait rather more pronounced than usual. When Knowles came out with his hat, the runaway was well up on the divide towards Dry Fork. Rocket was justifying his name.

In a few seconds the flying horse and rider had disappeared down the far slope. The girl followed her father and Gowan to the corral, and after they had ridden off, she roped and saddled one of the three horses in the corral. She mounted and was off on the jump, riding straight for the nearest point on the summit of the divide.

As, presently, she came up towards the top of the rise, she gazed anxiously ahead towards Dry Fork. Before she could see over the bend down to the creek channel, she caught sight of a cloud of dust far out on the mesa beyond the stream. She smiled with relief and wheeled about to return. The tenderfoot had safely crossed the stream bed. He would have Rocket well in hand before they came to rough country.



CHAPTER IX

THE SNAKE

Early in the afternoon, having nothing else to do, Isobel again saddled up and started off towards Dry Fork. Her intention was to ride out on the road to Stockchute and meet Ashton, if he was not too late.

As she rode up one side of the divide, a hat appeared over the bend of the other side. She could not mistake the high peak of that comic opera sombrero. Ashton was almost back to the ranch. Her first thought was that he had gone part way, and given up the trip. The big sombrero bobbed up and down in an odd manner. She guessed the cause even before Ashton's head and body appeared, rising and falling rhythmically. She stared as Rocket swept up into view, covering the ground with a long-strided trot.

Ashton waved to her. She waved back. A few moments later they were close together. As she spun her pony around, he pulled in his horse to a walk, patting the beast's neck and speaking to him caressingly.

"Back already?" she asked. "Surely, you've not been to Stockchute—Yes, you have!" Her experienced eye was taking in every indication of his horse's condition. "He's been traveling; but you've handled him well."

"He's grand!" said Ashton. "Been putting him through his paces. I suppose he is your father's best mount."

"Daddy and Kid ride him when they're in a hurry or there's no other horse handy."

"You can't mean—? Then perhaps I can have him again occasionally."

"You like him, really?"

"All he needs is a little management," replied Ashton, again patting the horse's lean neck.

"If you wish to take him in hand, I'll assign him to you. No one else wants him."

"As your rural deliveryman's mount—" began Ashton. He stopped to show the bulging bag slung under his arm. "Here's the mail. Do you wish your letters now?"

"Thank you, no."

"Here is this, however," he said, handing her a folded slip of paper.

She opened it and looked at the writing inside. It was a receipt from the postmaster at Stockchute to Lafayette Ashton for certain letters delivered for mailing. The address of the letter to Thomas Blake was given in full. The girl colored, bit her lip, and murmured contritely: "You have turned the tables on me. I deserved it!"

"Please don't take it that way!" he begged. "My purpose was merely to assure you the letter was mailed. After all, I am a stranger, Miss Knowles."

"No, not now," she differed.

"It's very kind of you to say it! Yet it's just as well for me to start off with no doubts in your mind, in view of the fact that in two or three weeks—"

"Yes?" she asked, as he hesitated.

"I—Your father will hardly keep me more than two weeks, unless—unless I make good," he answered.

"I guess you needn't worry about that," she replied, somewhat ambiguously.

He shrugged. "It is very good of you to say it, Miss Knowles. I know I shall fail. Can you expect anyone who has always lived within touch of millions, one who has spent more in four years at college than all this range is worth—He cut my allowance repeatedly, until it was only a beggarly twenty-five thousand."

"Twenty-five thousand dollars!" exclaimed Isobel. "You had all that to—to throw away in a single year?"

"He cut me down to it the last year—a mere bagatelle to what I had all the time I was at college and Tech.," replied Ashton, his eyes sparkling at the recollection. "He wished me to get in thick with the New Yorkers, the sons of the Wall Street leaders. He gave me leave to draw on him without limit. I did what he wished me to do,—I got in with the most exclusive set. Ah-h!—the way I made the dollars fly! Before I graduated I was the acknowledged leader. What's more, I led my class, too—when I chose."

"When you chose!" she echoed. "And now what are you going to do?"

The question punctured his reminiscent elation. He sagged down in his saddle. "I don't know," he answered despondently. "Mon Dieu! To come down to this—a common laborer for wages—after that! When I think of it—when I think of it!"

"You are not to think of it again!" she commanded with kindly severity. "What you are to remember all the time is that you are now a man and honestly earning your own living, and no longer a—a leech battening on the sustenance produced by others."

He winced. "Was that my fault?"

"No, it was your father's. I marvel that he did not utterly ruin you."

"He has! In his last will he cuts me off with only a dollar."

"So that was it?—And you think that ruined you? I say it saved you!" she went on with the same kindly severity. "You were a parasite. Now the chance is yours to prove that you have the makings of a man. You have started to prove it. You shall not stop proving it. You are not going to be a quitter."

"No!" he declared, straightening under her bright gaze. "I will not quit. I will try my best to make good as long as the chance is given me."

"Now you're talking!" she commended him breezily.

"How could I do otherwise when you asked me?" he replied with a grave sincerity far more complimentary than mere gallantry.

She colored with pleasure and began to tell him of the cattle and their ways.

When they reached the corral she complimented him in turn by allowing him to offsaddle her horse. They walked on down to the house and seated themselves in the porch. As he opened the bag of mail for her she noticed that her hand was empty and turned to look back towards the corral.

"Your receipt from the postmaster," she remarked; "I must have dropped it."

He sprang up. "If you wish to keep it, I shall go back and find it for you."

"No, oh, no; unless you want it yourself," she replied.

"Not I. The matter is closed, thanks to your kindness," he declared, again seating himself.

He was right, in so far as they were concerned. Yet the matter was not closed. That evening, when Knowles and Gowan returned from their day of range riding, the younger man noticed a crumpled slip of paper lying against the foot of the corral post below the place where he tossed up his saddle. He picked it up and looked to see if it was of any value. An oath burst from his thin-drawn lips.

"Shut up, Kid!" remonstrated Knowles. "I'm no more squeamish than most, but you know I don't like any cussing so near Chuckie."

"Look at this!" cried Gowan—"Enough to make anybody cuss!"

He thrust out the slip of paper close before his employer's eyes. Knowles took it and read it through with deliberate care.

"Well?" he said. "It's a receipt from the postmaster to Ashton for those letters I sent over by him. What of it?"

"Your letters?" asked Gowan, taken aback. "Did you write that one what is most particularly mentioned, the one to that big engineer Blake?"

"No. What would I be doing, writing to him or any engineer? They're just the people I don't want to have any doings with."

"Then if you didn't write him, who did?" questioned Gowan, his mouth again tightening.

"Why, I reckon you'll have to do your own guessing, Kid—unless it might be Ashton did it."

"That's one leg roped," said Gowan. "Can you guess why he'd be writing to that engineer?"

"Lord, no. He may have the luck to know him. Mr. Blake is a mighty big man, judging from all accounts; but money stands for a lot in the cities and back East, and Ashton's father is one of the richest men in Chicago. I looked it up in the magazine that told about his helping to back the Zariba Dam project."

"That's another leg noosed—on the second throw," said Gowan. "Another try or two, and we'll have the skunk ready for hog-tying."

"How's that?" exclaimed the cowman. "You've got something up your sleeve."

"No, it's that striped skunk that's doing the crooked playing," snapped Gowan. "Can't you savvy his game? It's all a frame-up—his sending off his guide and outfit, so's to let on to you he'd been busted up and kicked out by his dad. You take him in to keep his pretty carcass from the coyotes—which has saved them from being poisoned."

"Now, look here, Kid, only trouble about you you're too apt to go off at half-cock. This young fellow may not be—"

"He shore is a snake, Mr. Knowles, and this receipt proves it on him," broke in the puncher. "Ain't you taken him into your employ?—ain't you treated him like he was a man?"

"Well, 'tisn't every busted millionaire would have asked for work, and he seems to mean it."

"Just a bluff! You don't savvy the game yet. Busted millionaire—bah! He's the coyote of that bunch of reclamation wolves. He comes out here to sneak around and get the lay of things. We happen to catch him rustling. To save his cussed carcass, he lets out about who his dad is. Course he couldn't know we'd got all the reports on that Zariba Dam and who backed the engineer, nor that we'd know all about Blake."

"Well?" asked Knowles, frowning.

"So he works us for suckers,—worms in here with us where he can learn all about you and your holdings; ropes a job with you, and gets off his report to that engineer Blake, first time he rides over to town."

"Is that all your argument?" asked Knowles.

"Ain't it enough?" rejoined Gowan. "Ain't he and that bunch all in cahoots together? Ain't this sneaking cuss's dad either the partner or the boss of Blake? Ain't Blake engaged in reclamation projects? You shore see all that. What follows?—It's all a frame-up, I tell you. Young Ashton comes out here as a sort of forerider for his concern; finds out what his people want to know, and now he's sent in his report to Blake. Next thing happens, Blake'll be turning up with a surveying outfit."

Knowles scratched his head. "Hum-m-m—You sure put up a mighty stiff argument, Kid. I'm not so sure, though.... Um-m-m—Strikes me some of your knots might be tighter. First place, there wasn't any play-acting about the way the boy went plumb to pieces there at the waterhole. Next place, a man like his father, that's piled up a mint of money, isn't going to send out his son as forerider in a hostile country. Lastly, I've read a lot more about that engineer Blake than you have, and I've sized him up as a man who won't do anything that isn't square and open."

"Maybe he ain't in on the dirty side of the deal," admitted Gowan. "How about this letter, though?"

"Just a friendly writing, like as not," answered the cowman. "No, Kid—only trouble with you is you're too anxious over the interests of Dry Mesa range. I appreciate it, boy, and so does Chuckie. But that's no reason for you to take every newcomer for a wolf 'til he proves he's only a dog."

"You won't do anything?" asked the puncher.

"What d'you want me to do?"

"Fire him—run him off Dry Mesa," snapped Gowan.

"Sorry I can't oblige you, Kid," replied Knowles. "You mean well, but you'll have to make a better showing before I'll turn adrift any man that seems to be trying to make good."

Gowan looked down. After a brief pause he replied with unexpected submissiveness: "All right, Mr. Knowles. You're the boss. Reckon you know best. I don't savvy these city folks."

"Glad you admit it," said Knowles. "You're all wrong in sizing him up that way. I've a notion he's got a lot of good in him, spite of his city rearing. I wouldn't object, though, if you wanted to test him out with a little harmless hazing, long as you didn't go too far."

"No," declined Gowan. "I've got my own notion of what he is. There's just one way to deal with skunks, and that is, don't fool with them."

The cowman accepted this as conclusive. But when, a little later, Ashton met Gowan at the supper table he was rendered uneasy by the cold glint in the puncher's gray eyes. As nothing was said about the postmaster's receipt, he could conjecture no reason for the look other than that Gowan was planning to render him ridiculous with some cowboy trick.

Isobel had assured him with utmost confidence that the testing of his horsemanship by means of Rocket had been intended only as a practical joke, and that Gowan would never have permitted him to mount the horse had he considered it at all dangerous. Yet the fellow might next undertake jokes containing no element of physical peril and consequently all the more humiliating unless evaded.

In apprehension of this, the tenderfoot lay awake most of that night and fully half of the next. His watch was fruitless. Each night Gowan and the other men left him strictly alone in his far dark corner of the bunkhouse. In the daytime the puncher was studiously polite to him during the few hours that he was not off on the range.

The third evening, after supper, Gowan handed Isobel the horny, half-flattened rattles of an unusually large rattlesnake.

"What is it? Do you wish me to guess his length?" she asked, evidently surprised that he should fetch her so commonplace an object. "I make it four feet."

"You're three inches short," he replied.

"Well, what about it?" she inquired.

"Nothing—only I just happened to get him up near the bunkhouse, Miss Chuckie. Thought I'd tell you, in case he has a mate around."

"We must all look sharp. You, too, Mr. Ashton. They are more apt to strike without warning, this time of year."

"I know," remarked Ashton. "It's before they cast their old skin, and it makes them blind."

"Too early for that," corrected Knowles. "I figure it's the long spell of the summer's heat. Gets on their nerves, same as with us."

"They shore are mighty like some humans," observed Gowan. "Look at the way they like to snuggle up in your blankets on a cool night. Remember how I used to carry a hair rope on spring round-up?"

"I remember that they used to crawl into the bunkhouse before the floor was laid," said Isobel. She smiled at Ashton. "That was the Dry Mesa reptilian age. I first learned to handle a 'gun' shooting at rattlers. There were so many we had to make it a rule to kill everyone we could. But there hasn't been one killed so near the house for years."

"They often go in pairs. This one, though, may have been a lone stray," added Gowan. He looked at his employer. "Talking about strays, guess I'd best go out in the morning and head back that Bar-Lazy-J bunch. I can take an iron along and brand those two calves, same trip."

Knowles nodded and returned to his Government report. The two young men and Isobel began an evening's entertainment at the piano. Ashton enjoyed himself immensely. Though so frank and unconstrained in manner, the girl was as truly refined as the most fastidiously reared ladies of the East.

At the end of the delightful evening he withdrew with Gowan to the bunkhouse, reluctant to leave, yet aglow with pleasure. Isobel had so charmed him that he lay in his bunk forgetful of all else than her limpid blue eyes and dimpled cheeks. But after his two nights of broken rest he could not long resist the heaviness that pressed together his eyelids. He fell asleep, smiling at the recollection of the girl's gracious, "Good-night and pleasant dreams!"

With such a kindly wish from her, his dreams certainly should have been heavenly. Yet he began the night by sinking into so profound a sleep that he had no dreams whatever. When at last he did rouse to the dream-state of consciousness, it was not to enjoy any pleasant fantasy of music and flowers.

He was lying in Deep Canyon, down at the very bottom of those gloomy depths. About him was an awful stillness. The river of the abyss was no longer roaring. It had risen up, up, up to the very rim of the precipices—and all the tremendous weight of its waters was above him, bearing down upon him, smothering him, crushing in his chest! He sought to shriek, and found himself dumb.

Suddenly an Indian stood over him, a gigantic Indian with feet set upon his breast. The red giant was a medicine man, for he clashed and rattled an enormous gourd full of bowlders.

The rattle sounded sharper, shriller, more vibrant in the ears of the rousing sleeper. His eyelids fluttered, rose a little way, and snapped wide apart. His eyes, bared of their covers, glared in utter horror of that which they saw. Their pupils dilated, their balls bulged as if about to burst from the sockets.

The weight was still on his chest,—a weight far more to be dreaded than a canyon full of water or the foot of an Indian Titan. It was a weight of living, quivering coils. Above those coils, clearly illuminated in the full daylight that streamed through the open door of the bunkhouse, there upreared a hideous gaping maw, set with four slender curved fangs of dazzling whiteness.

The snake's eyes, green as emeralds, glared down into the face of the man with such intense malignancy that they seemed to stream forth a cold evil light. Fortunately he was paralyzed with fright. The slightest movement would have caused that fanged maw to lash down into his face.

Something partly obscured the light in the doorway. Ashton was too terrified to heed. But the snake was more sensitive to the change in the light. Without altering the deadly poise of its head, it again sounded its shrill, menacing rattle. The shadow passed and the light streamed in as before. The rattling ceased. There followed a pause of a few seconds' duration—To the man every second was an age-long period of horror.

A faint metallic click came from across the room. Slight as was the sound, the irritated snake again set its rattle to quivering. The triangular head flattened back for the delayed stroke at the ashen face of the man. The billowing coils stiffened—the stroke started. In the same instant came a report that to the strained ears of the man sounded like the crashing roar of a cannon.



The head and forepart of the snake's body shot alongside his face, writhing in swift convulsions. The first touch of its cold scales against his cheek broke the spell of horror that had bound him. He jerked his head aside, and flung out his left hand to push the hideous thing from him. As his fingers thrust away the nearest coil, the head flipped around on its half-severed neck, and the deadly jaws automatically gaped and snapped together. Two of the dripping poison fangs struck in the cushion of flesh on the outer edge of Ashton's hand. With a shriek, he flung the dying snake on the floor and put the wounded hand to his mouth.

"He struck you!" cried the voice of Isobel, "but only on the hand, thank goodness! Wait, I'll fix it. Lie still."

She came swiftly across the room, thrusting a long-barreled automatic pistol into its holster under a fold of her skirt. Her other hand drew out a locket that was suspended in her bosom.

"Whiskey! I'm bitten!" panted Ashton, sucking frantically at his wounds. "Quick! I'm bitten. Give me whiskey!"

"Steady, steady," she reassured. "It's not bad—only on your hand. Give it to me. Here's something a thousand times better than whiskey—permanganate."

While speaking, she caught up his neckerchief from the head of the bunk and knotted it about the wrist of the wounded hand tightly enough to check the circulation.

"Now hold it steady," she directed. "Won't have to use a knife. You tore open the holes when you jerked off the horrid thing."

Obedient but still sweating with fear, he held up the bleeding hand. She had opened her locket, in which were a number of small, dark-purple crystals. Two of the larger ones she thrust lengthwise as deeply as she could into the little slits gashed by the fangs. Another large and two small crystals were all that she could force into the openings.

"There!" she cheerily exclaimed. "That will kill the poison in short order, and will not hurt you a particle. It's the best thing there is to cheat rattlers,—just cheap, ordinary permanganate of potash. If people only had sense enough always to carry a few crystals, no one would ever die of rattlesnake bites."

"I've—I've heard that whiskey—" began Ashton.

"Yes, and far more victims die from the whiskey than from the bites," rejoined Isobel.

"But a stimulant—"

"Stimulant, then heart depressant—first up, then down—that's alcohol. No, you'll get only one poison, the snake's, this time. So don't worry. You'll soon be all right. Even had you been struck in the face, quick action with permanganate would have saved you."

He shuddered. "Ah!... But if you had not come!"

"It was fortunate, wasn't it?" she remarked. "I did not know you were in here. I was going up to the corral and heard the rattle as I came past. It was so faint that I might not have noticed it, had not Kid told of killing the rattler yesterday."

Ashton stared fearfully at his blackening hand. Isobel smiled and began to unknot the neckerchief.

"There is nothing to fear," she insisted. "That is due only to lack of circulation. You'll soon be all right. Come up to the house as soon as you can and get two or three cups of coffee. I'll tell Yuki."

She hastened out. When he had made sure that the still writhing snake was far over on the floor, he slipped from his bunk and dressed as quickly as was possible without the use of his numbed hand. Shirt, trousers, boots—he stopped for no more, but hurried after Isobel. Whether because of the effects of the poison or merely as the reaction of the shock, he felt faint and dizzy. Several cups of hot strong coffee, however, went far towards restoring him.



CHAPTER X

COMING EVENTS

Knowles had gone with Gowan to cut out and drive back the stray cattle belonging to the adjoining range. They returned during the regular supper hour. The cowman washed quickly and hastened in to the table. Gowan, however, loitered just outside the door, fastening and refastening his neckerchief. He entered the dining-room while Isobel was in the midst of telling her father about the snake.

"Did you hear, Kid?" she asked, when she finished her vivid account.

"Yes, Miss Chuckie. I was slicking-up close 'longside the door. I heard all you told," he replied as he took his seat at the corner next to the animated girl. "We shore have got one mighty lucky tenderfoot on this range."

"Indeed, yes!" exclaimed Ashton. "Had not Miss Chuckie chanced to be passing as the monster rattled—You know, she says that she might not have heeded it but for your killing the other snake yesterday. That put her on the alert."

The puncher stared across the table at the city man with a coldly speculative gaze. "You shore are a lucky tenderfoot," he repeated. "'Tain't every fellow gets that close to a rattler this time of year and comes out of it as easy as you have. All I can see is you're kind of pale yet around the gills."

Ashton held up his bandaged left hand. "Ah, but I have also this memento of the occasion. It is far from a pleasant one, I assure you."

"Feels 'most as bad as a bee sting, don't it?" ironically condoled the puncher.

"What I can't make out," interposed Knowles, "is how that rattler got up into Mr. Ashton's bunk."

Gowan again stared across at the tenderfoot, this time with unblinking solemnity. "Can't say, Mr. Knowles," he replied. "Except it might be that desperado guide of his came around in the night and brought him Mr. Rattler for bedfellow."

"Oh, Kid!" remonstrated Isobel. "It's not a joking matter!"

"No, you're dead right, Miss Chuckie," he agreed. "There shore ain't any joke about it."

"Ah, but perhaps I can make one," gayly dissented Ashton. "Had you not interfered, Miss Chuckie, the poor snake would have taken one bite, and then curled up and died. I'm so charged with nicotine, you know."

Neither Isobel nor the puncher smiled at this ancient witticism. But Knowles burst into a hearty laugh, which was caught up and reenforced by the hitherto silent haymakers.

"By—James! Ashton, you'll do!" declared the cowman, wiping his eyes. "When a tenderfoot can let off a joke like that on himself it's a sure sign he's getting acclimated. Yes, you'll make a puncher, some day."

Ashton smiled with gratification, and looked at Isobel in eager-eyed appeal for the confirmation of the statement. She smiled and nodded.

Upon his return from his remarkable ride to town she had assured him that he need not worry. Her present kindly look and the words of her father might have been expected to remove his last doubts. Such in fact was the result for the remainder of the evening.

But that night the new employe must have given much anxious thought to the question of his future and his great need to "make good." The liveliness of his concern was shown by his behavior during the next two weeks. His zeal for work astonished Knowles quite as much as his efforts to be agreeable to his fellow employes gratified Miss Isobel. He charmed the Japanese cook with his praise of the cooking, he flattered the haymakers with his interest in their opinions. Towards the girl and her father he was impeccably respectful.

Within ten days he was "Lafe" to everybody except Gowan and the Jap. The latter addressed him as "Mistah Lafe"; Gowan kept to the noncommittal "Ashton." The puncher had become more taciturn than ever, but missed none of the home evenings in the parlor. He watched Ashton with catlike closeness when Isobel was present, and seemed puzzled that the interloper refrained from courting her.

"Don't savvy that tenderfoot," he remarked one day to Knowles. "All his talk about his dad being a multimillionaire—Acted like it at the start-off. Came down to this candidate-for-office way of comporting himself. It ain't natural."

"Not when he's on the same range with Chuckie?" queried the cowman, his eyes twinkling. "Why don't you ever go into Stockchute and paint the town red?"

"That's another thing," insisted Gowan. "He started in with Miss Chuckie brash as all hell. Now he acts towards her like I feel."

"That's natural. He soon found out she's a lady."

"No, it ain't natural, Mr. Knowles—not in him, it ain't. Nor it ain't natural for him to be so all-fired polite to everybody, nor his pestering you to find work for him."

"And it's not natural for a tenderfoot to gentle a hawss like Rocket the way he's done already," rallied Knowles. "That crazy hawss follows him about like a dog."

"Yes; Ashton feeds him sugar, like he does the rest of you," rejoined the puncher. "It ain't natural in his brand of tenderfoot—Bound to ride out, if there's any riding to do; bound to fuss and stew around the corral; bound to help with the haying; bound to help haul the water; bound to practice with his rope every moment he ain't doing something else. Can't tell me there ain't a nigger in that woodpile."

"Now, don't go to hunting out any more mares' nests, Kid," admonished Knowles. "He's just a busted millionaire, that's all; and he's proving he realizes it. Guess the smash scared him. He's afraid he can't make good. Chuckie says he thinks I'll turn him adrift if he doesn't hustle enough to earn his salt."

"Why not fire him anyway? You don't need him, and you won't need him," argued the puncher.

"Well, he helps keep Chuckie entertained. With you and him both on the place, she might conclude to stay over the winter, this year."

Gowan's mouth straightened to a thin slit. "Better send her to Denver right off."

"Look here, Kid," reproved the cowman. "You've had your chance, and you've got it yet. I've never interfered with you, and I'm not going to with him. It's for Chuckie to pick the winner. Like as not it'll be some man in town, for all I know. She has the say. Whether he wears a derby or a sombrero, she's to have her own choice. I don't care if he's a millionaire or a busted millionaire or a bronco buster, provided he's a man, and provided I'm sure he'll treat her right."

Gowan lapsed into a sullen silence.

Mounted as before on Rocket, Ashton had already made a second trip to Stockchute for mail, returning almost as quickly as on his wild first ride. Monday of his third week at the ranch he was sent on his third trip. As before, he started at dawn. But this time he did not come racing back early enough for a belated noon meal as he had on each of the previous occasions.

By mid-afternoon Isobel began to grow uneasy. Remarkable as had been the efforts of his new rider's training, there was the not improbable chance that Rocket had reverted to his ugly tricks. She shuddered as she pictured the battered corpse of the city man dragging over the rocks and through the brush, with a foot twisted fast in one of the narrow iron stirrups.

Her father and Gowan were off on their usual work of inspecting the bunches of cattle scattered about the range. The other men were as busy as ever mowing more hay and hauling in that which was cured. She was alone at the ranch with the Jap. At four o'clock she saddled her best horse and rode out towards Dry Fork. She hoped to sight Ashton from the divide. But there was no sign of any horseman out on the wide stretch of sagebrush flats.

She rode down to Dry Fork, crossed over the sandy channel, and started on at a gallop along the half-beaten road that wound away through the sagebrush towards the distant Split Peak. An hour found her nearing the pinyon clad hills on the far side of Dry Mesa, with still no sign of Ashton.

By this time she had worked herself into a fever of excitement and dread. Her relief was correspondingly great when at last she saw him coming towards her around the bend of the nearest hill. But his horse was walking and he was bent over in the saddle as if injured or greatly fatigued. Puzzled and again apprehensive, she urged her pony to sprinting speed.

When he heard the approaching hoofs Ashton looked up as if startled. But he did not wave to her or raise his sombrero. As she came racing up she scrutinized his dejected figure for wounds or bruises. There was nothing to indicate that he had been either shot or thrown. His sullen look when she drew up beside him not unnaturally changed her anxiety to vexation.

"What made you so slow?" she queried. "You know how eager I am for the mail each time. You might as well have ridden your own hawss."

"It—has come," he muttered.

"What?" she demanded.

"The letter from him."

"Him?" echoed the girl, trying hard to cover her confusion with a look of surprise.

His dejection deepened as he observed her heightened color and the light in her eyes. "Yes, from him," he mumbled.

"Oh, you mean Mr. Blake, I suppose," she replied. Lightly as she spoke, she could not suppress the quiver of eagerness in her voice. "If you will kindly give it to me now."

He drew out a letter, not from among the other mail in his pouch, but from his pocket. Her look of surprise showed that she was struck with the oddness of this. She was too excited, however, to consider what might be its meaning. She tore open the letter and read it swiftly. Her sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks when she looked up served only to increase Ashton's gloom.

"So the fellow is coming," he groaned. "What else could I have expected?"

The girl held out the open letter to him. It was in typewriting, addressed from Chicago, and read:—

Dear Madam:

In reply to your letter of inquiry regarding an inspection to determine the feasibility of irrigating certain lands in your vicinity—my fee for personal inspection and opinion would be $50. per day and expenses, if I came as consulting engineer. However, I am about to make a trip to Colorado. If you can furnish good ranch fare for my wife, son, and self as guests, will look over your situation without charge. Wife wishes to rough-it, but must have milk and eggs. Will leave servants in car at Stockchute, where we shall expect a conveyance to meet us Thursday, the 25th inst., if terms agreeable.

Respectfully yours, THOMAS BLAKE.

Ashton crumpled the letter in his clenched hand as he had crumpled the letter from his father's lawyers.

"He is coming! he really is coming!" he gasped. "Thursday—only three days! Genevieve too!"

"And his son!" cried Isobel, too excited to heed the dismay in her companion's look and tone. "He and his family, too, as my guests!"

"Yes," said Ashton bitterly. "And what of it when he floods you off your cattle range? By another year or two, the irrigation farmers will be settling all over this mesa, thick as flies."

"Oh, no; it is probable that Mr. Blake will find there is no chance to water Dry Mesa," she replied, in a tone strangely nonchalant considering her former expressions of apprehension. She drew the crumpled letter from his relaxing fingers, and smoothed it out for a second reading.

"'Wife, son, and self,'" she quoted. "Son? How old is he?"

"I don't know. They've been married nearly two years," muttered Ashton.

"Then it's a baby!—oh! oh! how lovely!" shrieked the girl. "And its mamma wants to rough it! She shall have every egg and chicken on the place—and gallons of cream! We shall take the skim milk."

Still Ashton failed to enthuse. "To them that have, shall be given, and from him who has lost millions shall be taken all that's left!" he gibed.

"No, we'll still have the skim milk," she bantered, refusing to notice his cynical bitterness.

"I'm a day laborer!" he went on, still more bitterly. "I'm afraid of losing even my skim milk—And two weeks ago I thought myself certain of three times the millions that he will get when her father dies!"

"No use crying over spilt milk, or spilt cream, either!" she replied.

The note of sympathetic concern under her raillery brought a glimmer of hopefulness into his moody eyes.

"If I did not think your father will drive me away!" he murmured.

"Why should he?" she asked.

"Because when Blake comes—" Ashton paused and shifted to a question. "Will you tell your father about their coming?"

"Of course. I did not tell him about writing, because it would only have increased his suspense. But now—Let's hurry back!"

A cut of her quirt set her pony into a lope. Rocket needed no urging. He followed and maintained a position close behind the galloping pony without breaking out of his rangy trot. Occasionally Isobel flung back a gay remark over her shoulder. Ashton did not respond. He rode after her, silent and depressed, his eyes fixed longingly on her graceful form, ever fleeing forward before him as he advanced.

Once clear of the sagebrush, she drew rein for him to come up. They rode side by side across Dry Fork and over the divide. When they stopped at the corral she would have unsaddled her pony had he not begged leave to do her the service. As reward, she waited until he could accompany her to the house.

They found her father and Gowan resting in the cool porch after a particularly hard day's ride. The puncher was strumming soft melodies on a guitar. Knowles was peering at his report of the Reclamation Service, held to windward of a belching cloud of pipe smoke. His daughter darted to him regardless of the offending incense.

"Oh, Daddy!" she cried. "What do you think! Mr. Blake is coming to visit us!"

"Blake?" repeated the cowman, staring blankly over his pipe.

"Yes, Mr. Blake, the engineer—the great Thomas Blake of the Zariba Dam."

"By—James!" swore Gowan, dropping his guitar and springing up to confront Ashton with deadly menace in his cold eyes. "This is what comes of nursing scotched rattlers! This here tenderfoot skunk has been foreriding for that engineer! I warned you, Mr. Knowles! I told you he had sent for him to come out here and cut up our range with his damned irrigation schemes!"

"I send for Blake—I?" protested Ashton. He burst into a discordant laugh.

"Laugh, will you?" said Gowan, dropping his hand to his hip.

The girl flung herself before him. "Stop! stop, Kid! Are you locoed? He had nothing to do with it. I myself sent for Mr. Blake."

"You!" cried Gowan.

The cowman slowly stood up, his eyes fixed on the girl in an incredulous stare. "Chuckie," he half whispered, "you couldn't ha' done it. You're—you're dreaming, honey!"

"No. Listen, Daddy! It's been growing on you so—your fear that we'll lose our range. I thought if Mr. Blake came and told you it can't be done—Don't you see?"

"What if he finds it can?" huskily demanded Knowles.

"He can't. I'm sure he can't. If he builds a reservoir, where could he get enough water to fill it? The watershed above us is too small. He couldn't impound more than three thousand acre feet of flood waters at the utmost."

"How about the whole river going to waste, down in Deep Canyon?" queried her father.

"Heavens, Mr. Knowles! How would he ever get a drop of water out of that awful chasm?" exclaimed Ashton. "I looked down into it. The river is thousands of feet down. It must be way below the level of Dry Mesa."

"I'm not so sure about that," replied the cowman. "Holes are mighty deceiving."

"Well, what if it ain't so deep as the mesa?" argued Gowan, for once half in accord with Ashton. "It shore is deep enough, ain't it? Even allowing that this man Blake is the biggest engineer in the U.S., how's he going to pump that water up over the rim of the canyon? The devil himself couldn't do it."

"If I am mistaken regarding the depth, that is, if the river really is higher than the mesa," remarked Ashton, "there is the possibility that it might be tapped by a tunnel through the side of High Mesa. But even if it is possible, it still is quite out of the question. The cost would be prohibitive."

"You see, Daddy!" exclaimed Isobel. "Lafe knows. He's an engineer himself."

"How's that?" growled her father, frowning heavily at Ashton. "You never told me you're an engineer."

"I told Miss Chuckie the first day I met her," explained Ashton. "Ever since then I've been so busy trying to be something else—"

"Shore you have!" jeered Gowan.

"But about Mr. Blake, Daddy?" interposed Isobel. "I'm certain he'll find that no irrigation project is possible; and if he says so, you will be able to give up worrying about it."

"So that's your idea," he replied. "Of course, honey, you meant well. But he's a pretty big man, according to all the reports. What if he—" The cowman stopped, unable to state the calamity he dreaded.

"Yes, what if?" bravely declared his daughter. "Isn't it best to know the worst, and have it over?"

"Well—I don't know but what you're right, honey."

"It's your say, Mr. Knowles," put in Gowan. "If you want the tenderfeet on your range, all right. If you don't, I'll engage to head back any bunch of engineers agoing, and I don't care whether they're dogies or longhorns."

"There is to be no surveying party," explained Isobel. "Mr. Blake is coming to visit us with his wife and baby. Here is his letter."

"Hey?" ejaculated Knowles. He read the letter with frowning deliberation, and passed it on to Gowan. "Well, he seems to be square enough. Guess we'll have to send over for him, honey, long as you asked him to come."

"Oh, you will, Daddy!" she cried. She gave him a delicious kiss and cuddled against his shoulder coaxingly. "You'll let me go over in the buckboard for them, won't you?"

"Kind of early in the season for you to begin hankering after city folks," he sought to tease her.

"But think of the baby!" she exclaimed as excitedly as a little girl over the prospect of a doll. "A baby on our ranch! I simply must see it at the earliest possible moment! Besides, it will look better for our hospitality for me to meet Mrs. Blake at the train, since she—That's something I meant to ask you, Lafe. What does Mr. Blake mean by saying they will leave the servants in the car?"

"I presume they are traveling in Mr. Leslie's private car, and will have it sidetracked at Stockchute," answered Ashton.

"Whee-ew!" ejaculated Knowles. "Private car! And we're supposed to feed them!"

"It is just because of the change we will give them that they are coming out here," surmised Isobel. "Look at the letter again. Mr. Blake expressly writes that his wife wishes to rough-it. Of course she cannot know what real roughing-it means. But if she is coming to us without a maid, we shall like her as much as—as Mr. Blake."



CHAPTER XI

SELF-DEFENSE

Nothing more was said about the trip to town until late Wednesday evening. As Knowles slammed shut his book and the young men rose to withdraw to the bunkhouse, he asked Gowan casually: "Got those harness hawsses in the corral?"

"Brought 'em in this afternoon. Greased the buckboard and overhauled the harness. Everything's in shape," answered the puncher.

Knowles merely nodded. Yet in the morning, immediately after the usual early breakfast, Gowan went up to the corral and returned driving a lively pair of broncos to the old buckboard. Ashton happened to come around the house as Knowles stepped from the front door. The cowman was followed by his daughter, attired in a new riding habit and a fashionable hat with a veil.

"You're just in time, Lafe," said Knowles. "Saddle a couple of hawsses and follow Chuckie to town. I misdoubt that seat is cramped for three, and a baby to boot."

"But I—it looks quite wide to me," said Ashton, flushing and drawing back.

"You know the size of Blake and his lady—I don't," replied the cowman. "Just the same, I want you to go along with Chuckie. There's not a puncher in this section would harm her, drunk or sober; but the fellows that come in and go out on the railroad are sometimes another sort."

"Of course I—if necessary," stammered Ashton. "Yet may I ask you to excuse me? In the event of trouble, Mr. Gowan, you know—"

"Great snakes!" called Gowan from the buckboard. "Needn't ask me to go, twice!"

"Can't spare you today," said Knowles, his keen eyes fixed on Ashton in unconcealed amazement.

It was inconceivable. For the first time in his career as an employe, the tenderfoot was attempting to evade a duty,—a duty that comprised a fifty-mile ride in company with Miss Isobel Knowles!

The girl looked at Ashton with a perfect composure that betrayed no trace of her feelings.

"I'm sure there's no reason whatever why Lafe should go, if he does not wish to," she remarked. "Any of my hawsses will lead to the buckboard."

"He's going to town with you," said Knowles, his jaw setting hard with stubborn determination.

"Why, of course, Mr. Knowles, if you really think it necessary," reluctantly acquiesced Ashton. He put his hand into his pocket, shrugged, and asked in a hesitating manner: "May I request—I have only a small amount left from that five dollars. If you consider there are any wages owing me—Going to town, you know."

"Lord!" said the cowman. "So that's what you stuck on. 'Fraid of running out of change with a lady along. Here's the balance of your first month's wages, and more, if you want it."

He drew out a fat wallet and began counting out banknotes.

"Oh, no, not so many," said Ashton. "I wish only what you consider as owing to me now."

"You'll take an even hundred," ordered Knowles, forcing the money on him. "A man doesn't feel just right in town unless he's well heeled. Only don't show more than a ten at a time in the saloon."

"You have chosen me to act as your daughter's escort," replied Ashton.

Quick to catch the inference of his remark, Isobel flashed him a look of approval, but called banteringly as she darted out to the buckboard: "Better move, if you expect to get near enough to escort me, this side of Stockchute."

Gowan sprang down to hand her into the buckboard. She took the reins from him and spoke to the fidgetting broncos. They plunged forward and started off on a lope. Ashton perceived that she did not intend to wait for him. He caught Gowan's look of mingled exultance and envy, and dashed for the corral. Rocket was outside, but at his call trotted to meet him, whinnying for his morning's lump of sugar. Ashton flung on saddle and bridle, and slipped inside the corral to rope his own pony. Haste made him miss the two first throws. At last he noosed the pony, and slapped on the girl's saddle and bridle.

As he raced off, pounding the pony with his rope to keep him alongside Rocket, Knowles waved to him from the house. He had saddled up in less than twice the time that Gowan could have done it,—which was a record for a tenderfoot. He waved back, but his look was heavy despite the excitement of the pursuit.

He expected to overtake Isobel in a few minutes. This he could have done had he been able to give Rocket free rein. But he had to hold back for the slower-gaited pony. Also, the girl had more of a start than he had at first realized, and she did her best to hold the handicap. Hitched to the light buckboard, her young broncos could have run a good part of the way to Stockchute. She was far out on the flat before she at last tired of the wild bumping over ruts and sagebrush roots, and pulled her horses down to a walk.

"I could have kept ahead clear across to the hills," she flung back at him as he galloped up.

"You shouldn't have been so reckless!" he reproached. "Every moment I've been dreading to see you bounced out."

"That's the fun of it," she declared, her cheeks aglow and eyes sparkling with delight.

"But the road is so rough!" he protested. "Wouldn't it be easier for you to ride my pony? He's like a rocking-chair."

"No," she refused. But she smiled, by no means ill pleased at his solicitude for her comfort. She halted the broncos, and said cordially: "Tie the saddle hawsses to the back rail, and pile in. We may as well be sociable."

He hastened to accept the invitation. She moved over to the left side of the seat and relinquished the lines to him. With most young ladies this would have been a matter-of-course proceeding; from so accomplished a horsewoman it was a tactful compliment. He appreciated it at its full value, and his mood lightened. They rattled gayly along, on across the flats, up and down among the pinyon clad hills, and through the sage and greasewood of the valleys.

He had thought the country a desolate wilderness; but now it seemed a Garden of Eden. Never had the girl's loveliness been more intoxicating, never had her manner to him been more charming and gracious. He could not resist the infection of her high spirits. For the greater part of the trip he gave himself over to the delight of her merry eyes and dimpling, rosy cheeks, her adorable blushes and gay repartee.

All earthly journeys and joys have an ending. The buckboard creaked up over the round of the last and highest hill, and they came in sight of the little shack town down across the broad valley. Though five miles away, every house, every telegraph pole, even the thin lines of the railroad rails appeared through the dry clear air as distinct as a miniature painting. Miles beyond, on the far side of the valley, uprose the huge bulk of Split Peak, with its white-mantled shoulders and craggy twin peaks.

But neither Ashton nor Isobel exclaimed on this magnificent view of valley and peak. Each fell silent and gazed soberly down at the dozen scattered shacks that marked the end of their outward trip. Rapidly the gravity of Ashton's face deepened to gloom and from gloom to dejection. The horses would have broken into a lope on the down grade. He held them to a walk.

Chancing to gaze about and see his face, the girl started from her bright-eyed daydream. "Why, Lafe! what is it?" she inquired. "You look as you did the other day, when you brought the mail."

"It's—everything!" he muttered.

"As what?" she queried.

He shrugged hopelessly, hesitated, and drew out the roll of bills forced on him by Knowles. "Tell me, please, just how much of this is mine, at your father's usual rate of wages, and deducting the real value of that calf."

"Why, I can't just say, offhand," she replied. "But why should you—"

"I shall tell you as soon as—but first—" He drew out his watch. "This cost me two hundred and fifty dollars. It is the only thing I have worth trading. Would you take it in exchange for Rocket and the balance of this hundred dollars over and above what is due me?"

"Why—no, of course, I wouldn't think of such a thing. It would be absurd, cheating yourself that way. Anyhow, Rocket is your horse to ride, as long as you wish to."

"But I would like him for my own. How about trading him for my pony and the wages due me?"

"Well, that wouldn't be an unfair bargain. Your hawss is the best cow pony of the two."

"It is very kind of you to agree, Miss Chuckie! Here is all the money; and here is the watch. I wish you to accept it from me as a—memento."

"Mr. Ashton!" she exclaimed, indignantly widening the space between them as much as the seat would permit.

"Please!" he begged. "Don't you understand? I am going away."

"Going away?" she echoed.

"Yes."

"But—why?"

"Because he is coming."

"Mr. Blake?"

"Yes. I cannot stay after he—"

"But why not? Has he injured you? Are you afraid of him?"

"No. I'm afraid that you—" Ashton's voice sank to a whisper—"that you will believe what he—what they will say against me."

"Oh!" she commented, her expression shifting swiftly from sympathetic concern to doubt.

He caught the change in her look and tone, and flushed darkly.

"There are sometimes two sides to a story," he muttered.

"Tell me your side now," she suggested, with her usual directness.

His eyes fell before her clear honest gaze. His flush deepened. He hung his head, biting his twisted lip. After several moments he began to speak in a hesitating broken murmur:

"I've always been—wild. But I graduated from Tech.—not at the foot of my class. My father—always busy piling up millions—never a word or thought for me, except when I overspent my allowance. I was in a—fast set. My father—threatened me. I had to make good. I took a position in old Leslie's office—Genevieve's father. I—"

He paused, licked his lips, hesitated, and abruptly went on again, this time speaking with almost glib facility: "There was an engineers' contest for a projected bridge over Michamac Strait. I started to draw plans, that I might enter the contest, but I did not finish in time. The plans of the other engineers were all rejected. I continued to work on mine. After the contest I happened to pick up a piece of torn plan out of the office wastebasket, and it gave me a suggestion how to improve the central span of my bridge."

"Yes?" asked the girl, her interest deepening.

He again licked his lips, hesitated, and continued: "There was no name on that torn plan—nothing to indicate to whom it had belonged. So I used it—that is, the suggestion I got from it, and was awarded the bridge on my plans. This made me the Resident Engineer of the bridge, and I had it almost completed when this man Blake came back from Africa after Genevieve, and claimed that I had—had stolen his plans of the bridge. It seems they were lost in Mr. Leslie's office. He claimed he had handed them in to me for the contest. But so had all the other contestants, and their plans were not lost. It may have been that one of the doorkeepers tore his plans up, out of revenge. Blake was a very rough brute of a fellow at that time. He quarreled with the doorkeeper because the man would not admit him to see Mr. Leslie—threatened to smash him. Afterwards he accused Mr. Leslie of stealing his plans."

"Oh, no, no! he couldn't have done that! He can't be that kind of a man!" protested Isobel.

"It's true! Even he will not deny it. Old Leslie thought him crazy—then. It was different when he came back and accused me! He had been shipwrecked with Genevieve. They were alone together all those weeks, and so one can—" Ashton checked himself. "No, you must not think—He saved her. When they came back he claimed the bridge as his own—those lost plans."

"His plans? So that was it! And you—?"

"Of course they believed him. What was my word against his with Genevieve and Leslie. Leslie's consulting engineer was an old pal of Blake's. So of course I—I'll say though that Blake agreed to put it that I had only borrowed his idea of the central span."

"That was generous of him, if he really believed—"

"Did he?—did Genevieve? Do they believe it now? You see why I must go away."

"I don't any such thing," rejoined the girl.

"You don't?" he exclaimed. "When they are coming here, believing I did it! They must believe it, all of them! And my father—after all this time—They agreed not to tell him. Yet he has found out. That letter, up at the waterhole—it was from his lawyers. He had cut me off—branded me as an outcast."

"Without waiting to hear your side—without asking you to explain? How unjust! how unfair!" cried Isobel.

Ashton winced. "I—I told you I—my record was against me. But I was his son—he had no right to brand me as a—a thief! My valet read the letter. He must have told the guide—the scoundrels!"

Tears of chagrin gathered in the young man's dark eyes. He bit his lip until the blood ran.

"O-o-oh!" sighed the girl. "It's all been frightfully unjust! You haven't had fair play! I shall tell Mr. Blake."

"No, not him!—not him!" Ashton's voice was almost shrill. "All I wish is to slip away, before they see me."

"You don't mean, run away?" she said, quietly placing her little gauntlet-gloved hand on his arm. "You're not going to run away, Lafe."

"What else?" he asked, his eyes dark with bitter despair. "Would you have me return, to be booted off the range when they tell your father?"

"Just wait and see," she replied, gazing at him with a reassuring smile. "You've proved yourself a right smart puncher—for a tenderfoot. You're in the West, the good old-style West, where it's a man's present record that counts; not what he has been or what he has done. No, you're not going to run. You're going to face it out—and going to stay to learn your new profession of puncher and—man!"

"But they will not wish to associate with me."

"Yes, they will," she predicted. "I shall see to that."

He took heart a little from her cheery, positive assurance. "Well, if you insist, I shall not go until they show—"

"They'll not recognize you at first. That will give me a chance to speak before they can say anything disagreeable. I'm sure Mr. Blake will understand."

"But—Genevieve?"

"If she married him when he was as rough as you say, and if he agrees to let bygones be bygones, you need have no fear of Mrs. Blake. Only be sure to go into raptures over the baby. Tell her it's the perfect image of its father."

"What if it isn't?" objected Ashton gloomily.

She dimpled. "One must allow for the difference in age; and there's always some resemblance—each must have a mouth and eyes and ears and a nose."

He caught himself on the verge of laughter. Her eyes were fixed upon him, pure and honest and dancing with mirth. A sudden flood of crimson swept up his face from his bristly, tanned chin to his white forehead. He averted his gaze from hers.

"You're good!" he choked out. "I don't deserve—But I can't go—when you tell me to stay!"

"Of course you can't," she lightly rejoined. "Look! There's the train coming. Push on the lines!"



CHAPTER XII

THE MEETING

A word started the horses into a lope. The buckboard was whirled along over the last two miles to Stockchute in a wild race against the train. The steam horse won. It had sidetracked the private car attached to the rear of the last pullman and was puffing away westward, when Ashton guided his running team in among the crude shacks of the town. He swung around at a more moderate pace towards the big chute for cattle-loading, and fetched up a few yards out from the rear step of the private car.

An assiduous porter had already swung down with a box step. A big, square-faced, square-framed man of twenty-eight or thirty stepped out into the car vestibule. He sprang to the ground as Miss Knowles stepped from the buckboard. She had lowered her veil, but it failed to mask the extreme brilliancy of her eyes and her quick changes of color. Her face, flushed from the excitement of the race into town, went white when she first saw the man in the vestibule; flushed again when he sprang down; again paled; and, last of all, glowed radiantly as she advanced to meet him.

He hastened to her, baring his big head of its Panama, and staring at her fashionable hat and dress in frank surprise.

"Mr. Blake!" she murmured.

At the sound of her voice he started and fixed his light blue eyes on her veiled face with a keen glance. She turned pale and as quickly blushed, as if embarrassed by his scrutiny.

"Excuse me!" he apologized. "You are Miss Knowles?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"Knowles?" he repeated, half to himself. "Strange! Haven't I met you before?"

"In Denver?" she suggested. "I spend my winters in Denver. But there was one in Europe."

"No, it wouldn't be either. You must excuse me, Miss Knowles. There was something about your voice and face—rather threw me off my balance. If you'll kindly overlook the bungling start-off! I'm greatly pleased to meet you. My wife will be, too. May I ask you to step aboard the car?—No, here she is now."

A graceful, rather small lady, dressed with elegant simplicity, had come out into the car vestibule.

"Jenny, here's Miss Knowles now," said Blake. "She came to meet us herself."

"That was very good of you, Miss Knowles," said the lady, as the two advanced towards her. "We are very glad to meet you. Will you not come up out of the sun?"

The white-uniformed porter promptly stood at attention. Blake as promptly offered his hand. The girl accepted his assistance and mounted the car steps with an absence of awkwardness instantly noted by Mrs. Blake. That lady held out a somewhat thin white hand as Isobel drew off her gauntlet gloves. But she did not stop with the light firm handclasp. Lifting the girl's veil, she kissed her full on her coral lips.

"We shall be friends," she stated, a smile in her hazel eyes.

"I hope so," murmured the girl, blushing with delight. "The only question is whether you will like me."

Mrs. Blake patted the plump, sunbrowned hand that she had not yet relinquished. She was little if any older than the girl, but her air was that of matronly wisdom. "My dear, can you doubt it? I was prepared to like even the kind of young woman my husband told me to expect."

"Bronco Bess, Queen of the Cattle Camp," suggested the girl, dimpling. "Wait till you see me rope and hogtie a steer."

Mrs. Blake smiled, and looked across at Ashton, who sat motionless under the shadow of his big sombrero, his face half averted from the car.

"I've a real surprise for you," said the girl. "Mr. Blake, if I may tell it to you also."

Blake swung up the steps, hat in hand. "It can't be half as pleasant as the surprise you've already given us," he said.

"I fear not," she replied, with a quick change to gravity. She looked earnestly into their faces. "Still, I hope—yes, I really believe it will please you when you consider it. But first, I want to tell you that out here it's our notion that a man should be rated according to his present life, and not blamed for his past mistakes."

"Certainly not!" agreed Mrs. Blake, with a swift glance at her husband. "If a man has mounted to a higher level, he should be upheld, not dragged down again."

"That's good old-style Western fair play," added Blake.

"I'm so glad you take it that way!" said Isobel. "A young man utterly ruined in fortune—partly at least through his own fault—came to us and asked to be hired. He has been a hard worker and a gentleman. His name is Lafayette Ashton."

"Ashton?" said Blake, his face as impassive as a granite mask.

"Yes. He has told me all about the bridge. He wished to go away, because he thought you and Mrs. Blake would not like to meet him. I told him you would be willing to let bygones be bygones, and help him start off with a new tally card."

"Lafayette Ashton working—as a cowboy!" murmured Mrs. Blake.

"He is still a good deal of a tenderfoot. But he is learning fast; and work!—the way he pesters Daddy to find him something to do!"

"He certainly must be a changed man," dryly commented Blake.

"Cherchez la femme," said his wife.

"Mrs. Blake!" protested the girl, blushing.

"What's that?" he asked.

"'Find the woman,'" explained Mrs. Blake.

"That's easy," he said, fixing his twinkling eyes on the rosy-faced girl.

"But I'm sure it has not been because of me—at least not altogether," she qualified with her uncompromising honesty.

"I wouldn't blame him even if it was altogether," said Blake.

"Then you will be willing to overlook your past trouble with him?"

"Since you say he has straightened out—yes."

"That's good of you! That's what I expected of you!" exclaimed the girl. "That is he, in the buckboard."

Without a word, Blake started down the car steps.

"Bring him here at once, Tom," said Mrs. Blake.

Her husband went up beside the motionless figure in the buckboard and held out his hand. "Glad to meet you, Ashton," he said with matter-of-fact heartiness. "Jenny wants you to come to her. We're not ready to start, as we were not certain we would be met."

"Miss—Mrs. Blake wishes me to come!" mumbled Ashton.

"Yes," said Blake, gripping the other's hesitatingly extended hand.

Ashton flushed darkly. "But I—I can't leave the horses," he replied.

Blake signed to the porter, who hastened forward. "Hold the lines for this gentleman, Sam."

Ashton reluctantly gave the lines into the mulatto's sallow hands and stepped from the buckboard. His head hung forward as he followed Blake. But at the foot of the steps he removed his sombrero and forced himself to look up. Isobel was smiling down at him encouragingly. He looked from her to Mrs. Blake, his handsome face crimson with shame.

"How do you do, Lafayette?" Mrs. Blake greeted him with quiet cordiality. "This is a pleasant surprise."

"Yes—yes, indeed! I—yes, very!" he stammered, so embarrassed that he would have stuck at the foot of the steps had not Blake started him up with a vigorous boost.

Mrs. Blake gave him her hand. "You look so strong and hearty!" she remarked. "It speaks well for the fare Miss Knowles provides."

"Oh, that credit is due our Jap chef," laughed the girl. "I can cut out a cow from the herd better than I can bone a chop. But the butter and eggs and cream that are awaiting you—Which reminds me that we've yet to see It."

"It?" asked Blake.

"Yes, him—the baby!"

"Oh, you dear girl!" cooed Mrs. Blake. "Come in and see him."

Isobel followed her into the car. Blake nodded to Ashton. But the younger man shrank away from the door.

"If you'll kindly excuse me," he muttered. "It would remind me too much of—the time when—No, I'd rather not."

"Of course," assented Blake with ready understanding. "How do you like this country? I went through here once on a railway survey. It's rare good luck—this chance to visit Miss Knowles. Jenny is a little run down, as you see."

"I shall trust that her visit to this locality will soon quite restore her," remarked Ashton.

"It will. The doctors said Maine; I said Colorado. It has done you no end of good. You are looking particularly fine and fit."

"It has helped me—in more ways than one," murmured Ashton.

"Glad to hear you say it!" responded Blake in hearty approval.

Ashton turned from him as Isobel appeared in the doorway, cuddling a lusty, rosy-cheeked baby. The mother hovered close behind her.

"Look at him!" jeered Blake with heavily feigned derision. "Did you ever see such a big, fat, lubberly—"

"Yes, look at him, Lafe," said the girl, stepping out into the vestibule. "He is only a yearling, but isn't he just the perfect image of his father?"

Ashton burst into a ringing laugh, but abruptly checked himself at sight of the sober face of the young mother. "I—I beg pardon!" he stammered. "I—she—Miss Knowles—that is what she told me to tell you about him."

"And you didn't play up worth a little bit, Lafe!" complained the girl.

It was Blake's turn to laugh. "You—!" he accused. "Schemed to frame up a case on us did you!"

His wife smiled faintly, not altogether certain that an aspersion had not been cast upon her chuckling son.

"But it's partly true, really," remarked Ashton, peering at the baby's big pale-blue eyes.

Blake burst into a hilarious roar. But Mrs. Blake now beamed upon Ashton. "Then you, too, see the resemblance, Lafayette! Isn't it wonderful, and he so young? His name is Thomas Herbert Vincent Leslie Blake.—Now, my dear, if you please, I shall take him in. We must be preparing to start, if it is so long a drive."

"Do let me hold him until you and Mr. Blake are ready," begged the girl.

"I am not quite sure that—You will be careful not to drop him? He is tremendously strong, and he squirms," dubiously assented the fond mother. "Come, Tom. We must not keep Miss Knowles waiting."

Blake disappeared with her into the luxuriously furnished car.

"Isn't he a dear?" cooed the girl, clasping the baby to her bosom and kissing his chubby clenched hands. He stared up into her glowing face with his round light-blue eyes. "Thomas Blake!—Tom Blake!" she whispered.

Ashton did not heed the words. He was gazing too intently at the girl and the child. His eyes glistened with a wonderment and longing so exquisitely intense that it was like a pain. The girl sank down in one of the cane chairs and laid the baby on his back. He kicked and gurgled, seized one of his upraised feet and thrust a pink big toe in between his white milk teeth.

"That's more than you can do, Lafe!" challenged the girl.

She glanced up, dimpling with merriment,—met the adoration in his eyes, and looked down, blushing. He attempted to speak, but the words choked into an incoherent sound like a sob. He jumped from the car and hurried to take the lines from the porter.



CHAPTER XIII

THE OTHER LADY'S HUSBAND

Miss Knowles did not seem to observe Ashton's deflection. She remained worshipfully downbent over the wriggling, chuckling baby until its parents reappeared.

Mrs. Blake had changed to an easy and serviceable dress of plain, strong material. The skirt, cut to walking length, showed that her feet and ankles were protected by a pair of absurdly small laced boots. Her husband had shifted to an equally serviceable costume—flannel shirt, broad-brimmed felt hat, and surveyor's boots.

"Crossing the plains we packed a trunk with what we considered most necessary," said Mrs. Blake, as she took the baby. "It is not a large one, and in addition there is only my satchel and the level and the lunch my maid is putting up for us."

"There is room for more, if you wish," replied Isobel. "But we can send over here for anything you need, any time."

"You're not going to let us really rough-it!" complained Mrs. Blake, as her husband swung her to the ground. "Were it not for Thomas Herbert—"

"—We'd go to Africa again and eat lions," Blake completed the sentence. "Wait, though—we may have a chance at mountain lions."

The porter had gone to help a manservant fetch the trunk from the other end of the car. Isobel untied the saddle horses from the rear of the buckboard. The trunk was lifted in, and Blake lashed it on, together with his level rod and tripod, using Ashton's lariat.

"Level is in the trunk," he explained, in response to Ashton's look of inquiry. "I suppose we ride."

"I think it will be better if Lafe drives," objected Isobel. "I am so reckless, and you don't know the road, as he does. The only thing is Rocket—Lafe has about trained him out of his tricks. But I should warn you that the hawss has been rather vicious."

"Tom will ride him," confidently stated Mrs. Blake.

Her husband took the bridle reins of the big horse and mounted him with the agility of a cowboy. For a moment Rocket stood motionless. Then, whether because of Blake's weight or the fact that he was a stranger, all the beast's newly acquired docility vanished. He began to plunge and buck even more violently than when first mounted by Ashton.

Half a hundred Stockchuteites—all the residents of the town and several floaters—had come down to inspect the palatial private car and its passengers. At Rocket's first leap these highly interested spectators broke into a murmur of joyful anticipation. They were about to see the millionaire tenderfoot pull leather.

Yet somehow the event failed to transpire. Blake sat the flat saddle as if glued fast to it. His knees and legs were crushing against the sides of the leaping, whirling beast with the firmness of an iron vise. He held both hands upraised, away from the "leather."

Presently Rocket's efforts began to flag. Instead of seeking to quiet the frantic beast, Blake began to whoop and to strike him with his hat. Thus taunted, Rocket resorted to his second trick. He took the bit in his teeth and started to bolt. The crowd scattered before the rush of the runaway. But they need not have moved. Blake reached down on each side of the beast's outstretched neck and pulled. Tough-mouthed as he was, Rocket could not resist that powerful grip. His head was drawn down and backwards until his trumpet nostrils blew against his deep chest. After half a dozen wild plunges, he was forced to a stand, snorting but subdued.

"That's some riding, Miss Chuckie!" called the burly sheriff of the county. "Your guest forks a hawss like a buster."

The girl rode forward beside Blake, her face radiant. She paid him the highest of compliments by taking his riding as a matter of course; but in her eyes was a look strangely like that of his wife's fond gaze,—a look of pride at his achievement, rather than admiration.

"We'll ride ahead of the team to keep clear of the dust," she remarked.

He twisted about and saw that Ashton was starting to drive after them. His wife's elderly maid was waving her handkerchief from one of the car windows. The porter and the manservant stood at attention. He exchanged a nod and smile with his wife, patted Rocket's arched neck and clicked to him to start.

"This is great, Miss Knowles!" he said. "I did not look for such fun, first crack out of the box. And—if you don't mind my saying it—it's such a jolly surprise your being what you are."

The girl blushed with pleasure. "I—we have been so eager to meet you," she murmured. She added hurriedly, "On account of your wonderful work as an engineer, you know."

"I wouldn't have suspected Ashton of bragging for me," he replied.

"Oh, he—he says you have a remarkable knack of hitting on the solution of problems. But it's in the engineering journals and reports that we've read about your work. Perhaps that is why you thought we had met before. After reading about you so much, I felt that I already knew you, and so my manner, you know—"

He shook his head at this seemingly ingenuous explanation. "No, there is something about your voice and face—" His eyes clouded with the grief of a painful memory; his head sank forward until his square chin touched his broad chest. He muttered brokenly: "But that's impossible.... Anyway—better for them they died—better than to live after...."

Behind her veil the girl's face became deathly white. He raised his head and looked at her with a wistful gleam of hope. She had averted her face from him and was gazing off at the hills with dim unseeing eyes.

"Pardon me, Miss Knowles," he said, "but do you mind if I ask what is your first name?"

She hesitated almost imperceptibly before replying: "I am called Chuckie—Chuckie Knowles. Doesn't that sound cowgirlish? We always have a chuck-wagon on the round-ups, you know. But it's a name that used to be quite common in the West."

"Yes, it comes from the Spanish Chiquita," he said. He repeated the word with the soft caressing Spanish accent, "Che-kee-tah!"

A flood of scarlet swept up into the girl's pallid face, and slowly subsided to her normal rich coloring. After a short silence she asked in a conventional tone: "I suppose you are glad to get away from Chicago. The last papers we received say that the East is sweltering in one of those smothery heat waves."

"It's the humidity and close air that kills," said Blake. "I ought to know. I lived for years in the slums."

"Oh, you—you really speak of it—openly!" the girl exclaimed.

"What of it?" he asked, astonished in turn at her lack of tact.

"Nothing—nothing," she hastened to disclaim. "Only I know—have read about the dreadful conditions in the Chicago slums. It is—it must be so painful to recall them—That was so rude of me to—"