The Light of Western Stars
by Zane Grey
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

by Zane Grey

Contents

I.   A Gentleman of the Range
II.  A Secret Kept
III. Sister and Brother
IV.  A Ride From Sunrise to Sunset
V.   The Round-up
VI.  A Gift and a Purchase
VII. Her Majesty's Rancho
VIII. El Capitan
IX.  The New Foreman
X.   Don Carlo's Vaqueros
XI.  A Band of Guerrillas
XII. Friends from the East
XIII. Cowboy Golf
XIV. Bandits
XV.  The Mountain Trail
XVI. The Crags
XVII. The Lost Mine of the Padres
XVIII.Bonita
XIX. Don Carlos
XX.  The Sheriff of El Cajon
XXI. Unbridled
XXII. The Secret Told
XXIII.The Light of Western Stars
XXIV. The Ride
XXV. At the End of the Road

The Light of Western Stars

I A Gentleman of the Range

When Madeline Hammond stepped from the train at El Cajon, New
Mexico, it was nearly midnight, and her first impression was of a
huge dark space of cool, windy emptiness, strange and silent,
stretching away under great blinking white stars.

"Miss, there's no one to meet you," said the conductor, rather
anxiously.

"I wired my brother," she replied. "The train being so late--
perhaps he grew tired of waiting. He will be here presently.
But, if he should not come--surely I can find a hotel?"

"There's lodgings to be had. Get the station agent to show you.
If you'll excuse me--this is no place for a lady like you to be
alone at night. It's a rough little town--mostly Mexicans,
miners, cowboys. And they carouse a lot. Besides, the revolution
across the border has stirred up some excitement along the line.
Miss, I guess it's safe enough, if you--"

"Thank you. I am not in the least afraid."

As the train started to glide away Miss Hammond walked towards
the dimly lighted station. As she was about to enter she
encountered a Mexican with sombrero hiding his features and a
blanket mantling his shoulders.

"Is there any one here to meet Miss Hammond?" she asked.

"No sabe, Senora," he replied from under the muffling blanket,
and he shuffled away into the shadow.

She entered the empty waiting-room. An oil-lamp gave out a thick
yellow light. The ticket window was open, and through it she saw
there was neither agent nor operator in the little compartment.
A telegraph instrument clicked faintly.

Madeline Hammond stood tapping a shapely foot on the floor, and
with some amusement contrasted her reception in El Cajon with
what it was when she left a train at the Grand Central. The only
time she could remember ever having been alone like this was once
when she had missed her maid and her train at a place outside of
Versailles--an adventure that had been a novel and delightful
break in the prescribed routine of her much-chaperoned life. She
crossed the waiting-room to a window and, holding aside her veil,
looked out. At first she could descry only a few dim lights, and
these blurred in her sight. As her eyes grew accustomed to the
darkness she saw a superbly built horse standing near the window.
Beyond was a bare square. Or, if it was a street, it was the
widest one Madeline had ever seen. The dim lights shone from
low, flat buildings. She made out the dark shapes of many
horses, all standing motionless with drooping heads. Through a
hole in the window-glass came a cool breeze, and on it breathed a
sound that struck coarsely upon her ear--a discordant mingling of
laughter and shout, and the tramp of boots to the hard music of a
phonograph.

"Western revelry," mused Miss Hammond, as she left the window.
"Now, what to do? I'll wait here. Perhaps the station agent
will return soon, or Alfred will come for me."

As she sat down to wait she reviewed the causes which accounted
for the remarkable situation in which she found herself. That
Madeline Hammond should be alone, at a late hour, in a dingy
little Western railroad station, was indeed extraordinary.

The close of her debutante year had been marred by the only
unhappy experience of her life--the disgrace of her brother and
his leaving home. She dated the beginning of a certain
thoughtful habit of mind from that time, and a dissatisfaction
with the brilliant life society offered her. The change had been
so gradual that it was permanent before she realized it. For a
while an active outdoor life--golf, tennis, yachting--kept this
realization from becoming morbid introspection. There came a
time when even these lost charm for her, and then she believed
she was indeed ill in mind. Travel did not help her.

There had been months of unrest, of curiously painful wonderment
that her position, her wealth, her popularity no longer sufficed.
She believed she had lived through the dreams and fancies of a
girl to become a woman of the world. And she had gone on as
before, a part of the glittering show, but no longer blind to the
truth--that there was nothing in her luxurious life to make it
significant.

Sometimes from the depths of her there flashed up at odd moments
intimations of a future revolt. She remembered one evening at
the opera when the curtain bad risen upon a particularly
well-done piece of stage scenery--a broad space of deep
desolateness, reaching away under an infinitude of night sky,
illumined by stars. The suggestion it brought of vast wastes of
lonely, rugged earth, of a great, blue-arched vault of starry
sky, pervaded her soul with a strange, sweet peace.

When the scene was changed she lost this vague new sense of
peace, and she turned away from the stage in irritation. She
looked at the long, curved tier of glittering boxes that
represented her world. It was a distinguished and splendid
world--the wealth, fashion, culture, beauty, and blood of a
nation. She, Madeline Hammond, was a part of it. She smiled, she
listened, she talked to the men who from time to time strolled
into the Hammond box, and she felt that there was not a moment
when she was natural, true to herself. She wondered why these
people could not somehow, some way be different; but she could
not tell what she wanted them to be. If they had been different
they would not have fitted the place; indeed, they would not have
been there at all. Yet she thought wistfully that they lacked
something for her.

And suddenly realizing she would marry one of these men if she
did not revolt, she had been assailed by a great weariness, an
icy-sickening sense that life had palled upon her. She was tired
of fashionable society. She was tired of polished, imperturbable
men who sought only to please her. She was tired of being feted,
admired, loved, followed, and importuned; tired of people; tired
of houses, noise, ostentation, luxury. She was so tired of
herself!

In the lonely distances and the passionless stars of boldly
painted stage scenery she had caught a glimpse of something that
stirred her soul. The feeling did not last. She could not call it
back. She imagined that the very boldness of the scene had
appealed to her; she divined that the man who painted it had
found inspiration, joy, strength, serenity in rugged nature. And
at last she knew what she needed--to be alone, to brood for long
hours, to gaze out on lonely, silent, darkening stretches, to
watch the stars, to face her soul, to find her real self.

Then it was she had first thought of visiting the brother who had
gone West to cast his fortune with the cattlemen. As it
happened, she had friends who were on the eve of starting for
California, and she made a quick decision to travel with them.
When she calmly announced her intention of going out West her
mother had exclaimed in consternation; and her father, surprised
into pathetic memory of the black sheep of the family, had stared
at her with glistening eyes. "Why, Madeline! You want to see
that wild boy!"  Then he had reverted to the anger he still felt
for his wayward son, and he had forbidden Madeline to go. Her
mother forgot her haughty poise and dignity. Madeline, however,
had exhibited a will she had never before been known to possess.
She stood her ground even to reminding them that she was
twenty-four and her own mistress. In the end she had prevailed,
and that without betraying the real state of her mind.

Her decision to visit her brother had been too hurriedly made and
acted upon for her to write him about it, and so she had
telegraphed him from New York, and also, a day later, from
Chicago, where her traveling friends had been delayed by illness.
Nothing could have turned her back then. Madeline had planned to
arrive in El Cajon on October 3d, her brother's birthday, and she
had succeeded, though her arrival occurred at the twenty-fourth
hour. Her train had been several hours late. Whether or not the
message had reached Alfred's hands she had no means of telling,
and the thing which concerned her now was the fact that she had
arrived and he was not there to meet her.

It did not take long for thought of the past to give way wholly
to the reality of the present.

"I hope nothing has happened to Alfred," she said to herself.
"He was well, doing splendidly, the last time he wrote. To be
sure, that was a good while ago; but, then, he never wrote often.
He's all right. Pretty soon he'll come, and how glad I'll be! I
wonder if he has changed."

As Madeline sat waiting in the yellow gloom she heard the faint,
intermittent click of the telegraph instrument, the low hum of
wires, the occasional stamp of an iron-shod hoof, and a distant
vacant laugh rising above the sounds of the dance. These
commonplace things were new to her. She became conscious of a
slight quickening of her pulse. Madeline had only a limited
knowledge of the West. Like all of her class, she had traveled
Europe and had neglected America. A few letters from her brother
had confused her already vague ideas of plains and mountains, as
well as of cowboys and cattle. She had been astounded at the
interminable distance she had traveled, and if there had been
anything attractive to look at in all that journey she had passed
it in the night. And here she sat in a dingy little station,
with telegraph wires moaning a lonely song in the wind.

A faint sound like the rattling of thin chains diverted
Madeline's attention. At first she imagined it was made by the
telegraph wires. Then she heard a step. The door swung wide; a
tall man entered, and with him came the clinking rattle. She
realized then that the sound came from his spurs. The man was a
cowboy, and his entrance recalled vividly to her that of Dustin
Farnum in the first act of "The Virginian."

"Will you please direct me to a hotel?" asked Madeline, rising.

The cowboy removed his sombrero, and the sweep he made with it
and the accompanying bow, despite their exaggeration, had a kind
of rude grace. He took two long strides toward her.

"Lady, are you married?"

In the past Miss Hammond's sense of humor had often helped her to
overlook critical exactions natural to her breeding. She kept
silence, and she imagined it was just as well that her veil hid
her face at the moment. She had been prepared to find cowboys
rather striking, and she had been warned not to laugh at them.

This gentleman of the range deliberately reached down and took up
her left hand. Before she recovered from her start of amaze he
had stripped off her glove.

"Fine spark, but no wedding-ring," he drawled. "Lady, I'm glad
to see you're not married."

He released her hand and returned the glove.

"You see, the only ho-tel in this here town is against boarding
married women."

"Indeed?" said Madeline, trying to adjust her wits to the
situation.

"It sure is," he went on. "Bad business for ho-tels to have
married women. Keeps the boys away. You see, this isn't Reno."

Then he laughed rather boyishly, and from that, and the way he
slouched on his sombrero, Madeline realized he was half drunk.
As she instinctively recoiled she not only gave him a keener
glance, but stepped into a position where a better light shone on
his face. It was like red bronze, bold, raw, sharp. He laughed
again, as if good-naturedly amused with himself, and the laugh
scarcely changed the hard set of his features. Like that of all
women whose beauty and charm had brought them much before the
world, Miss Hammond's intuition had been developed until she had
a delicate and exquisitely sensitive perception of the nature of
men and of her effect upon them. This crude cowboy, under the
influence of drink, had affronted her; nevertheless, whatever was
in his mind, he meant no insult.

"I shall be greatly obliged if you will show me to the hotel,"
she said.

"Lady, you wait here," he replied, slowly, as if his thought did
not come swiftly. "I'll go fetch the porter."

She thanked him, and as he went out, closing the door, she sat
down in considerable relief. It occurred to her that she should
have mentioned her brother's name, Then she fell to wondering
what living with such uncouth cowboys had done to Alfred. He had
been wild enough in college, and she doubted that any cowboy
could have taught him much. She alone of her family bad ever
believed in any latent good in Alfred Hammond, and her faith had
scarcely survived the two years of silence.

Waiting there, she again found herself listening to the moan of
the wind through the wires. The horse outside began to pound
with heavy hoofs, and once he whinnied. Then Madeline heard a
rapid pattering, low at first and growing louder, which presently
she recognized as the galloping of horses. She went to the
window, thinking, hoping her brother had arrived. But as the
clatter in-creased to a roar, shadows sped by--lean horses,
flying manes and tails, sombreroed riders, all strange and wild
in her sight. Recalling what the conductor had said, she was at
some pains to quell her uneasiness. Dust-clouds shrouded the dim
lights in the windows. Then out of the gloom two figures
appeared, one tall, the other slight. The cowboy was returning
with a porter.

Heavy footsteps sounded without, and lighter ones dragging along,
and then suddenly the door rasped open, jarring the whole room.
The cowboy entered, pulling a disheveled figure--that of a
priest, a padre, whose mantle had manifestly been disarranged by
the rude grasp of his captor. Plain it was that the padre was
extremely terrified.

Madeline Hammond gazed in bewilderment at the little man, so pale
and shaken, and a protest trembled upon her lips; but it was
never uttered, for this half-drunken cowboy now appeared to be a
cool, grim-smiling devil; and stretching out a long arm, he
grasped her and swung her back to the bench.

"You stay there!" he ordered.

His voice, though neither brutal nor harsh nor cruel, had the
unaccountable effect of making her feel powerless to move. No
man had ever before addressed her in such a tone. It was the
woman in her that obeyed--not the personality of proud Madeline
Hammond.

The padre lifted his clasped hands as if supplicating for his
life, and began to speak hurriedly in Spanish. Madeline did not
understand the language. The cowboy pulled out a huge gun and
brandished it in the priest's face. Then he lowered it,
apparently to point it at the priest's feet. There was a red
flash, and then a thundering report that stunned Madeline. The
room filled with smoke and the smell of powder. Madeline did not
faint or even shut her eyes, but she felt as if she were fast in
a cold vise. When she could see distinctly through the smoke she
experienced a sensation of immeasurable relief that the cowboy
had not shot the padre. But he was still waving the gun, and now
appeared to be dragging his victim toward her. What possibly
could be the drunken fool's intention? This must be, this surely
was a cowboy trick. She had a vague, swiftly flashing
recollection of Alfred's first letters descriptive of the
extravagant fun of cowboys. Then she vividly remembered a moving
picture she had seen--cowboys playing a monstrous joke on a lone
school-teacher. Madeline no sooner thought of it than she made
certain her brother was introducing her to a little wild West
amusement. She could scarcely believe it, yet it must be true.
Alfred's old love of teasing her might have extended even to this
outrage. Probably he stood just outside the door or window
laughing at her embarrassment.

Anger checked her panic. She straightened up with what composure
this surprise had left her and started for the door. But the
cowboy barred her passage--grasped her arms. Then Madeline
divined that her brother could not have any knowledge of this
indignity. It was no trick. It was something that was
happening, that was real, that threatened she knew not what. She
tried to wrench free, feeling hot all over at being handled by
this drunken brute. Poise, dignity, culture--all the acquired
habits of character--fled before the instinct to fight. She was
athletic. She fought. She struggled desperately. But he forced
her back with hands of iron. She had never known a man could be
so strong. And then it was the man's coolly smiling face, the
paralyzing strangeness of his manner, more than his strength,
that weakened Madeline until she sank trembling against the
bench.

"What--do you--mean?" she panted.

"Dearie, ease up a little on the bridle," he replied, gaily.

Madeline thought she must be dreaming. She could not think
clearly. It had all been too swift, too terrible for her to
grasp. Yet she not only saw this man, but also felt his powerful
presence. And the shaking priest, the haze of blue smoke, the
smell of powder-these were not unreal.

Then close before her eyes burst another blinding red flash, and
close at her ears bellowed another report. Unable to stand,
Madeline slipped down onto the bench. Her drifting faculties
refused clearly to record what transpired during the next few
moments; presently, however, as her mind steadied somewhat, she
heard, though as in a dream, the voice of the padre hurrying over
strange words. It ceased, and then the cowboy's voice stirred
her.

"Lady, say Si--Si. Say it--quick! Say it--Si!"

From sheer suggestion, a force irresistible at this moment when
her will was clamped by panic, she spoke the word.

"And now, lady--so we can finish this properly--what's your
name?"

Still obeying mechanically, she told him.

He stared for a while, as if the name had awakened associations
in a mind somewhat befogged. He leaned back unsteadily.
Madeline heard the expulsion of his breath, a kind of hard puff,
not unusual in drunken men.

"What name?" he demanded.

"Madeline Hammond. I am Alfred Hammond's sister."

He put his hand up and brushed at an imaginary something before
his eyes. Then he loomed over her, and that hand, now shaking a
little, reached out for her veil. Before he could touch it,
however, she swept it back, revealing her face.

"You're--not--Majesty Hammond?"

How strange--stranger than anything that had ever happened to her
before--was it to hear that name on the lips of this cowboy! It
was a name by which she was familiarly known, though only those
nearest and dearest to her had the privilege of using it. And
now it revived her dulled faculties, and by an effort she
regained control of herself.

"You are Majesty Hammond," he replied; and this time he affirmed
wonderingly rather than questioned.

Madeline rose and faced him.

"Yes, I am."

He slammed his gun back into its holster.

"Well, I reckon we won't go on with it, then."

"With what, sir? And why did you force me to say Si to this
priest?"

"I reckon that was a way I took to show him you'd be willing to
get married."

"Oh! . . . You--you! . . ."  Words failed her.

This appeared to galvanize the cowboy into action. He grasped the
padre and led him toward the door, cursing and threatening, no
doubt enjoining secrecy. Then he pushed him across the threshold
and stood there breathing hard and wrestling with himself.

"Here--wait--wait a minute, Miss--Miss Hammond," he said,
huskily. "You could fall into worse company than mine--though I
reckon you sure think not. I'm pretty drunk, but I'm--all right
otherwise. Just wait--a minute."

She stood quivering and blazing with wrath, and watched this
savage fight his drunkenness. He acted like a man who had been
suddenly shocked into a rational state of mind, and he was now
battling with himself to hold on to it. Madeline saw the dark,
damp hair lift from his brows as he held it up to the cool wind.
Above him she saw the white stars in the deep-blue sky, and they
seemed as unreal to her as any other thing in this strange night.
They were cold, brilliant, aloof, distant; and looking at them,
she felt her wrath lessen and die and leave her calm.

The cowboy turned and began to talk.

"You see--I was pretty drunk," he labored. "There was a fiesta--
and a wedding. I do fool things when I'm drunk. I made a fool
bet I'd marry the first girl who came to town. . . . If you
hadn't worn that veil--the fellows were joshing me--and Ed Linton
was getting married--and everybody always wants to gamble. . . .
I must have been pretty drunk."

After the one look at her when she had first put aside her veil
he had not raised his eyes to her face. The cool audacity had
vanished in what was either excessive emotion or the maudlin
condition peculiar to some men when drunk. He could not stand
still; perspiration collected in beads upon his forehead; he kept
wiping his face with his scarf, and he breathed like a man after
violent exertions.

"You see--I was pretty--" he began.

"Explanations are not necessary," she interrupted. "I am very
tired--distressed. The hour is late. Have you the slightest
idea what it means to be a gentleman?"

His bronzed face burned to a flaming crimson.

"Is my brother here--in town to-night?"  Madeline went on.

"No. He's at his ranch."

"But I wired him."

"Like as not the message is over in his box at the P.O. He'll be
in town to-morrow. He's shipping cattle for Stillwell."

"Meanwhile I must go to a hotel. Will you please--"

If he heard her last words he showed no evidence of it. A noise
outside had attracted his attention. Madeline listened. Low
voices of men, the softer liquid tones of a woman, drifted in
through the open door. They spoke in Spanish, and the voices
grew louder. Evidently the speakers were approaching the
station. Footsteps crunching on gravel attested to this, and
quicker steps, coming with deep tones of men in anger, told of a
quarrel. Then the woman's voice, hurried and broken, rising
higher, was eloquent of vain appeal.

The cowboy's demeanor startled Madeline into anticipation of
something dreadful. She was not deceived. From outside came the
sound of a scuffle--a muffled shot, a groan, the thud of a
falling body, a woman's low cry, and footsteps padding away in
rapid retreat.

Madeline Hammond leaned weakly back in her seat, cold and sick,
and for a moment her ears throbbed to the tramp of the dancers
across the way and the rhythm of the cheap music. Then into the
open door-place flashed a girl's tragic face, lighted by dark
eyes and framed by dusky hair. The girl reached a slim brown
hand round the side of the door and held on as if to support
herself. A long black scarf accentuated her gaudy attire.

"Senor--Gene!" she exclaimed; and breathless glad recognition
made a sudden break in her terror.

"Bonita!"  The cowboy leaped to her. "Girl! Are you hurt?"

"No, Senor."

He took hold of her. "I heard--somebody got shot. Was it Danny?"

"No, Senor."

"Did Danny do the shooting? Tell me, girl."

"No, Senor."

"I'm sure glad. I thought Danny was mixed up in that. He had
Stillwell's money for the boys--I was afraid. . . . Say, Bonita,
but you'll get in trouble. Who was with you? What did you do?"

"Senor Gene--they Don Carlos vaqueros--they quarrel over me. I
only dance a leetle, smile a leetle, and they quarrel. I beg
they be good--watch out for Sheriff Hawe . . . and now Sheriff
Hawe put me in jail. I so frighten; he try make leetle love to
Bonita once, and now he hate me like he hate Senor Gene."

"Pat Hawe won't put you in jail. Take my horse and hit the
Peloncillo trail. Bonita, promise to stay away from El Cajon."

"Si, Senor."

He led her outside. Madeline heard the horse snort and champ his
bit. The cowboy spoke low; only a few words were intelligible--
"stirrups . . . wait . . . out of town . . . mountain . . . trail
. . . now ride!"

A moment's silence ensued, and was broken by a pounding of hoofs,
a pattering of gravel. Then Madeline saw a big, dark horse run
into the wide space. She caught a glimpse of wind-swept scarf
and hair, a little form low down in the saddle. The horse was
outlined in black against the line of dim lights. There was
something wild and splendid in his flight.

Directly the cowboy appeared again in the doorway.

"Miss Hammond, I reckon we want to rustle out of here. Been bad
goings-on. And there's a train due."

She hurried into the open air, not daring to look back or to
either side. Her guide strode swiftly. She had almost to run to
keep up with him. Many conflicting emotions confused her. She
had a strange sense of this stalking giant beside her, silent
except for his jangling spurs. She had a strange feeling of the
cool, sweet wind and the white stars. Was it only her disordered
fancy, or did these wonderful stars open and shut? She had a
queer, disembodied thought that somewhere in ages back, in
another life, she had seen these stars. The night seemed dark,
yet there was a pale, luminous light--a light from the stars--and
she fancied it would always haunt her.

Suddenly aware that she had been led beyond the line of houses,
she spoke:

"Where are you taking me?"

"To Florence Kingsley," he replied.

"Who is she?"

"I reckon she's your brother's best friend out here." Madeline
kept pace with the cowboy for a few moments longer, and then she
stopped. It was as much from necessity to catch her breath as it
was from recurring fear. All at once she realized what little
use her training had been for such an experience as this. The
cowboy, missing her, came back the few intervening steps. Then
he waited, still silent, looming beside her.

"It's so dark, so lonely," she faltered. "How do I know . . .
what warrant can you give me that you--that no harm will befall
me if I go farther?"

"None, Miss Hammond, except that I've seen your face."

II A Secret Kept

Because of that singular reply Madeline found faith to go farther
with the cowboy. But at the moment she really did not think
about what he had said. Any answer to her would have served if
it had been kind. His silence had augmented her nervousness,
compelling her to voice her fear. Still, even if he had not
replied at all she would have gone on with him. She shuddered at
the idea of returning to the station, where she believed there
had been murder; she could hardly have forced herself to go back
to those dim lights in the street; she did not want to wander
around alone in the dark.

And as she walked on into the windy darkness, much relieved that
he had answered as he had, reflecting that he had yet to prove
his words true, she began to grasp the deeper significance of
them. There was a revival of pride that made her feel that she
ought to scorn to think at all about such a man. But Madeline
Hammond discovered that thought was involuntary, that there were
feelings in her never dreamed of before this night.

Presently Madeline's guide turned off the walk and rapped at a
door of a low-roofed house.

"Hullo--who's there?" a deep voice answered.

"Gene Stewart," said the cowboy. "Call Florence--quick!"

Thump of footsteps followed, a tap on a door, and voices.
Madeline heard a woman exclaim: "Gene! here when there's a dance
in town! Something wrong out on the range." A light flared up
and shone bright through a window. In another moment there came
a patter of soft steps, and the door opened to disclose a woman
holding a lamp.

"Gene! Al's not--"

"Al is all right," interrupted the cowboy.

Madeline had two sensations then--one of wonder at the note of
alarm and love in the woman's voice, and the other of unutterable
relief to he safe with a friend of her brother's.

"It's Al's sister--came on to-night's train," the cowboy was
saying. "I happened to be at the station, and I've fetched her
up to you."

Madeline came forward out of the shadow.

"Not--not really Majesty Hammond!" exclaimed Florence Kingsley.
She nearly dropped the lamp, and she looked and looked, astounded
beyond belief.

"Yes, I am really she," replied Madeline. "My train was late,
and for some reason Alfred did not meet me. Mr.--Mr. Stewart saw
fit to bring me to you instead of taking me to a hotel."

"Oh, I'm so glad to meet you," replied Florence, warmly. "Do
come in. I'm so surprised, I forget my manners. Why, Al never
mentioned your coming."

"He surely could not have received my messages," said Madeline,
as she entered.

The cowboy, who came in with her satchel, had to stoop to enter
the door, and, once in, he seemed to fill the room. Florence set
the lamp down upon the table. Madeline saw a young woman with a
smiling, friendly face, and a profusion of fair hair hanging down
over her dressing-gown.

"Oh, but Al will be glad!" cried Florence. "Why, you are white
as a sheet. You must he tired. What a long wait you had at the
station! I heard the train come in hours ago as I was going to
bed. That station is lonely at night. If I had known you were
coming! Indeed, you are very pale. Are you ill?"

"No. Only I am very tired. Traveling so far by rail is harder
than I imagined. I did have rather a long wait after arriving at
the station, but I can't say that it was lonely."

Florence Kingsley searched Madeline's face with keen eyes, and
then took a long, significant look at the silent Stewart. With
that she deliberately and quietly closed a door leading into
another room.

"Miss Hammond, what has happened?"  She had lowered her voice.

"I do not wish to recall all that has happened," replied
Madeline. "I shall tell Alfred, however, that I would rather
have met a hostile Apache than a cowboy."

"Please don't tell Al that!" cried Florence. Then she grasped
Stewart and pulled him close to the light. "Gene, you're drunk!"

"I was pretty drunk," he replied, hanging his head.

"Oh, what have you done?"

"Now, see here, Flo, I only--"

"I don't want to know. I'd tell it. Gene, aren't you ever going
to learn decency? Aren't you ever going to stop drinking?
You'll lose all your friends. Stillwell has stuck to you. Al's
been your best friend. Molly and I have pleaded with you, and
now you've gone and done--God knows what!"

"What do women want to wear veils for?" he growled. "I'd have
known her but for that veil."

"And you wouldn't have insulted her. But you would the next girl
who came along. Gene, you are hopeless. Now, you get out of
here and don't ever come back."

"Flo!" he entreated.

"I mean it."

"I reckon then I'll come back to-morrow and take my medicine," he
replied.

"Don't you dare!" she cried.

Stewart went out and closed the door.

"Miss Hammond, you--you don't know how this hurts me," said
Florence. "What you must think of us! It's so unlucky that you
should have had this happen right at first. Now, maybe you won't
have the heart to stay. Oh, I've known more than one Eastern
girl to go home without ever learning what we really are cut
here. Miss Hammond, Gene Stewart is a fiend when he's drunk.
All the same I know, whatever be did, he meant no shame to you.
Come now, don't think about it again to-night."  She took up the
lamp and led Madeline into a little room. "This is out West,"
she went on, smiling, as she indicated the few furnishings; "but
you can rest. You're perfectly safe. Won't you let me help you
undress--can't I do anything for you?"

"You are very kind, thank you, but I can manage," replied
Madeline.

"Well, then, good night. The sooner I go the sooner you'll rest.
Just forget what happened and think how fine a surprise you're to
give your brother to-morrow."

With that she slipped out and softly shut the door.

As Madeline laid her watch on the bureau she noticed that the
time was past two o'clock. It seemed long since she had gotten
off the train. When she had turned out the lamp and crept
wearily into bed she knew what it was to be utterly spent. She
was too tired to move a finger. But her brain whirled.

She had at first no control over it, and a thousand thronging
sensations came and went and recurred with little logical
relation. There were the roar of the train; the feeling of being
lost; the sound of pounding hoofs; a picture of her brother's
face as she had last seen it five years before; a long, dim line
of lights; the jingle of silver spurs; night, wind, darkness,
stars. Then the gloomy station, the shadowy blanketed Mexican,
the empty room, the dim lights across the square, the tramp of
the dancers and vacant laughs and discordant music, the door
flung wide and the entrance of the cowboy. She did not recall
how he had looked or what he had done. And the next instant she
saw him cool, smiling, devilish--saw him in violence; the next
his bigness, his apparel, his physical being were vague as
outlines in a dream. The white face of the padre flashed along in
the train of thought, and it brought the same dull, half-blind,
indefinable state of mind subsequent to that last nerve-breaking
pistol-shot. That passed, and then clear and vivid rose memories
of the rest that had happened--strange voices betraying fury of
men, a deadened report, a moan of mortal pain, a woman's poignant
cry. And Madeline saw the girl's great tragic eyes and the wild
flight of the big horse into the blackness, and the dark,
stalking figure of the silent cowboy, and the white stars that
seemed to look down remorselessly.

This tide of memory rolled over Madeline again and again, and
gradually lost its power and faded. All distress left her, and
she felt herself drifting. How black the room was--as black with
her eyes open as it was when they were shut! And the silence--it
was like a cloak. There was absolutely no sound. She was in
another world from that which she knew. She thought of this
fair-haired Florence and of Alfred; and, wondering about them,
she dropped to sleep.

When she awakened the room was bright with sunlight. A cool wind
blowing across the bed caused her to put her hands under the
blanket. She was lazily and dreamily contemplating the mud walls
of this little room when she remembered where she was and how she
had come there.

How great a shock she had been subjected to was manifest in a
sensation of disgust that overwhelmed her. She even shut her
eyes to try and blot out the recollection. She felt that she had
been contaminated.

Presently Madeline Hammond again awoke to the fact she had
learned the preceding night--that there were emotions to which
she had heretofore been a stranger. She did not try to analyze
them, but she exercised her self-control to such good purpose
that by the time she had dressed she was outwardly her usual
self. She scarcely remembered when she had found it necessary to
control her emotions. There had been no trouble, no excitement,
no unpleasantness in her life. It had been ordered for her--
tranquil, luxurious, brilliant, varied, yet always the same.

She was not surprised to find the hour late, and was going to
make inquiry about her brother when a voice arrested her. She
recognized Miss Kingsley's voice addressing some one outside, and
it had a sharpness she had not noted before.

"So you came back, did you? Well, you don't look very proud of
yourself this mawnin'. Gene Stewart, you look like a coyote."

"Say, Flo if I am a coyote I'm not going to sneak," he said.

"What 'd you come for?" she demanded.

"I said I was coming round to take my medicine."

"Meaning you'll not run from Al Hammond? Gene, your skull is as
thick as an old cow's. Al will never know anything about what
you did to his sister unless you tell him. And if you do that
he'll shoot you. She won't give you away. She's a thoroughbred.
Why, she was so white last night I thought she'd drop at my feet,
but she never blinked an eyelash. I'm a woman, Gene Stewart and
if I couldn't feel like Miss Hammond I know how awful an ordeal
she must have had. Why, she's one of the most beautiful, the
most sought after, the most exclusive women in New York City.
There's a crowd of millionaires and lords and dukes after her.
How terrible it 'd he for a woman like her to be kissed by a
drunken cowpuncher! I say it--"

"Flo, I never insulted her that way," broke out Stewart.

"It was worse, then?" she queried, sharply.

"I made a bet that I'd marry the first girl who came to town. I
was on the watch and pretty drunk. When she came--well, I got
Padre Marcos and tried to bully her into marrying me."

"Oh, Lord!"  Florence gasped. "It's worse than I feared. . .
.Gene, Al will kill you."

"That'll be a good thing," replied the cowboy, dejectedly.

"Gene Stewart, it certainly would, unless you turn over a new
leaf," retorted Florence. "But don't be a fool."  And here she
became earnest and appealing. "Go away, Gene. Go join the
rebels across the border--you're always threatening that.
Anyhow, don't stay here and run any chance of stirring Al up.
He'd kill you just the same as you would kill another man for
insulting your sister. Don't make trouble for Al. That'd only
make sorrow for her, Gene."

The subtle import was not host upon Madeline. She was distressed
because she could not avoid hearing what was not meant for her
ears. She made an effort not to listen, and it was futile.

"Flo, you can't see this a man's way," he replied, quietly.
"I'll stay and take my medicine."

"Gene, I could sure swear at you or any other pig-head of a
cowboy. Listen. My brother-in-law, Jack, heard something of
what I said to you last night. He doesn't like you. I'm afraid
he'll tell Al. For Heaven's sake, man, go down-town and shut him
up and yourself, too."

Then Madeline heard her come into the house and presently rap on
the door and call softly:

"Miss Hammond. Are you awake?"

"Awake and dressed, Miss Kingsley. Come in."

"Oh! You've rested. You look so--so different. I'm sure glad.
Come out now. We'll have breakfast, and then you may expect to
meet your brother any moment."

"Wait, please. I heard you speaking to Mr. Stewart. It was
unavoidable. But I am glad. I must see him. Will you please
ask him to come into the parlor a moment?"

"Yes," replied Florence, quickly; and as she turned at the door
she flashed at Madeline a woman's meaning glance. "Make him keep
his mouth shut!"

Presently there were slow, reluctant steps outside the front
door, then a pause, and the door opened. Stewart stood
bareheaded in the sunlight. Madeline remembered with a kind of
shudder the tall form, the embroidered buckskin vest, the red
scarf, the bright leather wristbands, the wide silver-buckled
belt and chaps. Her glance seemed to run over him swift as
lightning. But as she saw his face now she did not recognize it.
The man's presence roused in her a revolt. Yet something in her,
the incomprehensible side of her nature, thrilled in the look of
this splendid dark-faced barbarian.

"Mr. Stewart, will you please come in?" she asked, after that
long pause.

"I reckon not," he said. The hopelessness of his tone meant that
he knew he was not fit to enter a room with her, and did not care
or cared too much.

Madeline went to the door. The man's face was hard, yet it was
sad, too. And it touched her.

"I shall not tell my brother of your--your rudeness to me," she
began. It was impossible for her to keep the chill out of her
voice, to speak with other than the pride and aloofness of her
class. Nevertheless, despite her loathing, when she had spoken
so far it seemed that kindness and pity followed involuntarily.
"I choose to overlook what you did because you were not wholly
accountable, and because there must be no trouble between Alfred
and you. May I rely on you to keep silence and to seal the lips
of that priest? And you know there was a man killed or injured
there last night. I want to forget that dreadful thing. I don't
want it known that I heard--"

"The Greaser didn't die," interrupted Stewart.

"Ah! then that's not so bad, after all. I am glad for the sake
of your friend--the little Mexican girl."

A slow scarlet wave overspread his face, and his shame was
painful to see. That fixed in Madeline's mind a conviction that
if he was a heathen he was not wholly bad. And it made so much
difference that she smiled down at him.

"You will spare me further distress, will you not, please?"  His
hoarse reply was incoherent, but she needed only to see his
working face to know his remorse and gratitude.

Madeline went back to her room; and presently Florence came for
her, and directly they were sitting at breakfast. Madeline
Hammond's impression of her brother's friend had to be
reconstructed in the morning light. She felt a wholesome, frank,
sweet nature. She liked the slow Southern drawl. And she was
puzzled to know whether Florence Kingsley was pretty or striking
or unusual. She had a youthful glow and flush, the clear tan of
outdoors, a face that lacked the soft curves and lines of Eastern
women, and her eyes were light gray, like crystal, steady, almost
piercing, and her hair was a beautiful bright, waving mass.

Florence's sister was the elder of the two, a stout woman with a
strong face and quiet eyes. It was a simple fare and service
they gave to their guest; but they made no apologies for that.
Indeed, Madeline felt their simplicity to be restful. She was
sated with respect, sick of admiration, tired of adulation; and
it was good to see that these Western women treated her as very
likely they would have treated any other visitor. They were
sweet, kind; and what Madeline had at first thought was a lack of
expression or vitality she soon discovered to be the natural
reserve of women who did not live superficial lives. Florence
was breezy and frank, her sister quaint and not given much to
speech. Madeline thought she would like to have these women near
her if she were ill or in trouble. And she reproached herself
for a fastidiousness, a hypercritical sense of refinement that
could not help distinguishing what these women lacked.

"Can you ride?" Florence was asking. "That's what a Westerner
always asks any one from the East. Can you ride like a man--
astride, I mean? Oh, that's fine. You look strong enough to
hold a horse. We have some fine horses out here. I reckon when
Al comes we'll go out to Bill Stillwell's ranch. We'll have to
go, whether we want to or not, for when Bill learns you are here
he'll just pack us all off. You'll love old Bill. His ranch is
run down, but the range and the rides up in the mountains--they
are beautiful. We'll hunt and climb, and most of all we'll ride.
I love a horse--I love the wind in my face, and a wide stretch
with the mountains beckoning. You must have the best horse on
the ranges. And that means a scrap between Al and Bill and all
the cowboys. We don't all agree about horses, except in case of
Gene Stewart's iron-gray."

"Does Mr. Stewart own the best horse in the country?" asked
Madeline. Again she had an inexplicable thrill as she remembered
the wild flight of Stewart's big dark steed and rider.

"Yes, and that's all he does own," replied Florence. "Gene can't
keep even a quirt. But he sure loves that horse and calls him--"

At this juncture a sharp knock on the parlor door interrupted the
conversation. Florence's sister went to open it. She returned
presently and said:

"It's Gene. He's been dawdlin' out there on the front porch, and
he knocked to let us know Miss Hammond's brother is comin'."

Florence hurried into the parlor, followed by Madeline. The door
stood open, and disclosed Stewart sitting on the porch steps.
From down the road came a clatter of hoofs. Madeline looked cut
over Florence's shoulder and saw a cloud of dust approaching, and
in it she distinguished outlines of horses and riders. A warmth
spread over her, a little tingle of gladness, and the feeling
recalled her girlish love for her brother. What would he be like
after long years?

"Gene, has Jack kept his mouth shut?" queried Florence; and again
Madeline was aware of a sharp ring in the girl's voice.

"No," replied Stewart.

"Gene! You won't let it come to a fight? Al can be managed.
But Jack hates you and he'll have his friends with him."

"There won't be any fight."

"Use your brains now," added Florence; and then she turned to
push Madeline gently back into the parlor.

Madeline's glow of warmth changed to a blank dismay. Was she to
see her brother act with the violence she now associated with
cowboys? The clatter of hoofs stopped before the door. Looking
out, Madeline saw a bunch of dusty, wiry horses pawing the gravel
and tossing lean heads. Her swift glance ran over the lithe
horsemen, trying to pick out the one who was her brother. But
she could not. Her glance, however, caught the same rough dress
and hard aspect that characterized the cowboy Stewart. Then one
rider threw his bridle, leaped from the saddle, and came bounding
up the porch steps. Florence met him at the door.

"Hello, Flo. Where is she?" he called, eagerly. With that he
looked over her shoulder to espy Madeline. He actually jumped at
her. She hardly knew the tall form and the bronzed face, but the
warm flash of blue eyes was familiar. As for him, he had no
doubt of his sister, it appeared, for with broken welcome he
threw his arms around her, then held her off and looked
searchingly at her.

"Well, sister," he began, when Florence turned hurriedly from the
door and interrupted him.

"Al, I think you'd better stop the wrangling out there."  He
stared at her, appeared suddenly to hear the loud voices from the
street, and then, releasing Madeline, he said:

"By George! I forgot, Flo. There is a little business to see
to. Keep my sister in here, please, and don't be fussed up now."

He went out on the porch and called to his men:

"Shut off your wind, Jack! And you, too, Blaze! I didn't want
you fellows to come here. But as you would come, you've got to
shut up. This is my business."

Whereupon he turned to Stewart, who was sitting on the fence.

"Hello, Stewart!" he said.

It was a greeting; but there was that in the voice which alarmed
Madeline.

Stewart leisurely got up and leisurely advanced to the porch.

"Hello, Hammond!" he drawled.

"Drunk again last night?"

"Well, if you want to know, and if it's any of your mix, yes, I
was-pretty drunk," replied Stewart.

It was a kind of cool speech that showed the cowboy in control of
himself and master of the situation--not an easy speech to follow
up with undue inquisitiveness. There was a short silence.

"Damn it, Stewart," said the speaker, presently, "here's the
situation: It's all over town that you met my sister last night
at the station and--and insulted her. Jack's got it in for you,
so have these other boys. But it's my affair. Understand, I
didn't fetch them here. They can see you square yourself, or
else--Gene, you've been on the wrong trail for some time,
drinking and all that. You're going to the bad. But Bill
thinks, and I think, you're still a man. We never knew you to
lie. Now what have you to say for yourself?"

"Nobody is insinuating that I am a liar?" drawled Stewart.

"No."

"Well, I'm glad to hear that. You see, Al, I was pretty drunk
last night, but not drunk enough to forget the least thing I did.
I told Pat Hawe so this morning when he was curious. And that's
polite for me to be to Pat. Well, I found Miss Hammond waiting
alone at the station. She wore a veil, but I knew she was a
lady, of course. I imagine, now that I think of it, that Miss
Hammond found my gallantry rather startling, and--"

At this point Madeline, answering to unconsidered impulse, eluded
Florence and walked out upon the porch.

Sombreros flashed down and the lean horses jumped.

"Gentlemen," said Madeline, rather breathlessly; and it did not
add to her calmness to feel a hot flush in her cheeks, "I am very
new to Western ways, but I think you are laboring under a
mistake, which, in justice to Mr. Stewart, I want to correct.
Indeed, he was rather--rather abrupt and strange when he came up
to me last night; but as I understand him now, I can attribute
that to his gallantry. He was somewhat wild and sudden and--
sentimental in his demand to protect me--and it was not clear
whether he meant his protection for last night or forever; but I
am happy to say be offered me no word that was not honorable. And
be saw me safely here to Miss Kingsley's home."

III Sister and Brother

Then Madeline returned to the little parlor with the brother whom
she had hardly recognized.

"Majesty!" he exclaimed. "To think of your being here!"

The warmth stole back along her veins. She remembered how that
pet name had sounded from the lips of this brother who bad given
it to her.

"Alfred!"

Then his words of gladness at sight of her, his chagrin at not
being at the train to welcome her, were not so memorable of him
as the way he clasped her, for he had held her that way the day
he left home, and she had not forgotten. But now he was so much
taller and bigger, so dusty and strange and different and
forceful, that she could scarcely think him the same man. She
even had a humorous thought that here was another cowboy bullying
her, and this time it was her brother.

"Dear old girl," he said, more calmly, as he let her go, "you
haven't changed at all, except to grow lovelier. Only you're a
woman now, and you've fulfilled the name I gave you. God! how
sight of you brings back home! It seems a hundred years since I
left. I missed you more than all the rest."

Madeline seemed to feel with his every word that she was
remembering him. She was so amazed at the change in him that she
could not believe her eyes. She saw a bronzed, strong-jawed,
eagle-eyed man, stalwart, superb of height, and, like the
cowboys, belted, booted, spurred. And there was something hard
as iron in his face that quivered with his words. It seemed that
only in those moments when the hard lines broke and softened
could she see resemblance to the face she remembered. It was his
manner, the tone of his voice, and the tricks of speech that
proved to her he was really Alfred. She had bidden good-by to a
disgraced, disinherited, dissolute boy. Well she remembered the
handsome pale face with its weakness and shadows and careless
smile, with the ever-present cigarette hanging between the lips.
The years had passed, and now she saw him a man--the West had
made him a man. And Madeline Hammond felt a strong, passionate
gladness and gratefulness, and a direct check to her suddenly
inspired hatred of the West.

"Majesty, it was good of you to come. I'm all broken up. How
did you ever do it? But never mind that now. Tell me about that
brother of mine."

And Madeline told him, and then about their sister Helen.
Question after question he fired at her; and she told him of her
mother; of Aunt Grace, who had died a year ago; of his old
friends, married, scattered, vanished. But she did not tell him
of his father, for he did not ask.

Quite suddenly the rapid-fire questioning ceased; he choked, was
silent a moment, and then burst into tears. It seemed to her
that a long, stored-up bitterness was flooding away. It hurt her
to see him--hurt her more to hear him. And in the succeeding few
moments she grew closer to him than she had ever been in the
past. Had her father and mother done right by him? Her pulse
stirred with unwonted quickness. She did not speak, but she
kissed him, which, for her, was an indication of unusual feeling.
And when he recovered command over his emotions he made no
reference to his breakdown, nor did she. But that scene struck
deep into Madeline Hammond's heart. Through it she saw what he
had lost and gained.

"Alfred, why did you not answer my last letters?" asked Madeline.
"I had not heard from you for two years."

"So long? How time flies! Well, things went bad with me about the
last time I heard from you. I always intended to write some day,
but I never did."

"Things went wrong? Tell me."

"Majesty, you mustn't worry yourself with my troubles. I want you
to enjoy your stay and not be bothered with my difficulties."

"Please tell me. I suspected something had gone wrong. That is
partly why I decided to come out."

"All right; if you must know," he began; and it seemed to
Madeline that there was a gladness in his decision to unburden
himself. "You remember all about my little ranch, and that for a
while I did well raising stock? I wrote you all that. Majesty,
a man makes enemies anywhere. Perhaps an Eastern man in the West
can make, if not so many, certainly more bitter ones. At any
rate, I made several. There was a cattleman, Ward by name--he's
gone now--and he and I had trouble over cattle. That gave me a
back-set. Pat Hawe, the sheriff here, has been instrumental in
hurting my business. He's not so much of a rancher, but he has
influence at Santa Fe and El Paso and Douglas. I made an enemy
of him. I never did anything to him. He hates Gene Stewart, and
upon one occasion I spoiled a little plot of his to get Gene in
his clutches. The real reason for his animosity toward me is that
he loves Florence, and Florence is going to marry me."

"Alfred!"

"What's the matter, Majesty? Didn't Florence impress you
favorably?" he asked, with a keen glance.

"Why--yes, indeed. I like her. But I did not think of her in
relation to you--that way. I am greatly surprised. Alfred, is
she well born? What connections?"

"Florence is just a girl of ordinary people. She was born in
Kentucky, was brought up in Texas. My aristocratic and wealthy
family would scorn--"

"Alfred, you are still a Hammond," said Madeline, with uplifted
head.

Alfred laughed. "We won't quarrel, Majesty. I remember you, and
in spite of your pride you've got a heart. If you stay here a
month you'll love Florence Kingsley. I want you to know she's
had a great deal to do with straightening me up. . . . Well, to
go on with my story. There's Don Carlos, a Mexican rancher, and
he's my worst enemy. For that matter, he's as bad an enemy of
Bill Stillwell and other ranchers. Stillwell, by the way, is my
friend and one of the finest men on earth. I got in debt to Don
Carlos before I knew he was so mean. In the first place I lost
money at faro--I gambled some when I came West--and then I made
unwise cattle deals. Don Carlos is a wily Greaser, he knows the
ranges, he has the water, and he is dishonest. So he outfigured
me. And now I am practically ruined. He has not gotten
possession of my ranch, but that's only a matter of time, pending
lawsuits at Santa Fe. At present I have a few hundred cattle
running on Stillwell's range, and I am his foreman."

"Foreman?" queried Madeline.

"I am simply boss of Stillwell's cowboys, and right glad of my
job."

Madeline was conscious of an inward burning. It required an
effort for her to retain her outward tranquillity. Annoying
consciousness she had also of the returning sense of new
disturbing emotions. She began to see just how walled in from
unusual thought-provoking incident and sensation had been her
exclusive life.

"Cannot your property be reclaimed?" she asked. "How much do you
owe?"

"Ten thousand dollars would clear me and give me another start.
But, Majesty, in this country that's a good deal of money, and I
haven't been able to raise it. Stillwell's in worse shape than I
am."

Madeline went over to Alfred and put her hands on his shoulders.

"We must not be in debt."

He stared at her as if her words had recalled something long
forgotten. Then he smiled.

"How imperious you are! I'd fcrgotten just who my beautiful
sister really is. Majesty, you're not going to ask me to take
money from you?"

"I am."

"Well, I'll not do it. I never did, even when I was in college,
and then there wasn't much beyond me."

"Listen, Alfred," she went on, earnestly, "this is entirely
different. I had only an allowance then. You had no way to know
that since I last wrote you I had come into my inheritance from
Aunt Grace. It was--well, that doesn't matter. Only, I haven't
been able to spend half the income. It's mine. It's not father's
money. You will make me very happy if you'll consent. Alfred,
I'm so--so amazed at the change in you. I'm so happy. You must
never take a backward step from now on. What is ten thousand
dollars to me? Sometimes I spend that in a month. I throw money
away. If you let me help you it will be doing me good as well as
you. Please, Alfred."

He kissed her, evidently surprised at her earnestness. And indeed
Madeline was surprised herself. Once started, her speech had
flowed.

"You always were the best of fellows, Majesty. And if you really
care--if you really want to help me I'll be only too glad to
accept. It will be fine. Florence will go wild. And that
Greaser won't harass me any more. Majesty, pretty soon some
titled fellow will be spending your money; I may as well take a
little before he gets it all," he finished, jokingly.

"What do you know about me?" she asked, lightly.

"More than you think. Even if we are lost out here in the woolly
West we get news. Everybody knows about Anglesbury. And that
Dago duke who chased you all over Europe, that Lord Castleton has
the running now and seems about to win. How about it, Majesty?"

Madeline detected a hint that suggested scorn in his gay speech.
And deep in his searching glance she saw a flame. She became
thoughtful. She had forgotten Castleton, New York, society.

"Alfred," she began, seriously, "I don't believe any titled
gentleman will ever spend my money, as you elegantly express it."

"I don't care for that. It's you!" he cried, passionately, and
he grasped her with a violence that startled her. He was white;
his eyes were now like fire. "You are so splendid--so wonderful.
People called you the American Beauty, but you're more than that.
You're the American Girl! Majesty, marry no man unless you love
him, and love an American. Stay away from Europe long enough to
learn to know the men--the real men of your own country."

"Alfred, I'm afraid there are not always real men and real love
for American girls in international marriages. But Helen knows
this. It'll be her choice. She'll be miserable if she marries
Anglesbury."

"It'll serve her just right," declared her brother. "Helen was
always crazy for glitter, adulation, fame. I'll gamble she never
saw more of Anglesbury than the gold and ribbons on his breast."

"I am sorry. Anglesbury is a gentleman; but it is the money he
wanted, I think. Alfred, tell me how you came to know about me,
'way out here? You may be assured I was astonished to find that
Miss Kingsley knew me as Majesty Hammond."

"I imagine it was a surprise," he replied, with a laugh, "I told
Florence about you--gave her a picture of you. And, of course,
being a woman, she showed the picture and talked. She's in love
with you. Then, my dear sister, we do get New York papers out
here occasionally, and we can see and read. You may not be aware
that you and your society friends are objects of intense interest
in the U. S. in general, and the West in particular. The papers
are full of you, and perhaps a lot of things you never did."

"That Mr. Stewart knew, too. He said, 'You're not Majesty
Hammond?'"

"Never mind his impudence!" exclaimed Alfred; and then again he
laughed. "Gene is all right, only you've got to know him. I'll
tell you what he did. He got hold of one of those newspaper
pictures of you--the one in the Times; he took it away from here,
and in spite of Florence he wouldn't fetch it back. It was a
picture of you in riding-habit with your blue-ribbon horse, White
Stockings--remember? It was taken at Newport. Well, Stewart
tacked the picture up in his bunk-house and named his beautiful
horse Majesty. All the cowboys knew it. They would see the
picture and tease him unmercifully. But he didn't care. One day
I happened to drop in on him and found him just recovering from a
carouse. I saw the picture, too, and I said to him, 'Gene, if my
sister knew you were a drunkard she'd not be proud of having her
picture stuck up in your room.'  Majesty, he did not touch a drop
for a month, and when he did drink again he took the picture
down, and he has never put it back."

Madeline smiled at her brother's amusement, but she did not
reply. She simply could not adjust herself to these queer free
Western' ways. Her brother had eloquently pleaded for her to
keep herself above a sordid and brilliant marriage, yet he not
only allowed a cowboy to keep her picture in his room, but
actually spoke of her and used her name in a temperance lecture.
Madeline just escaped feeling disgust. She was saved from this,
however, by nothing less than her brother's naive gladness that
through subtle suggestion Stewart had been persuaded to be good
for a month. Something made up of Stewart's effrontery to her;
of Florence Kingsley meeting her, frankly as it were, as an
equal; of the elder sister's slow, quiet, easy acceptance of this
visitor who had been honored at the courts of royalty; of that
faint hint of scorn in Alfred's voice, and his amused statement
in regard to her picture and the name Majesty--something made up
of all these stung Madeline Hammond's pride, alienated her for an
instant, and then stimulated her intelligence, excited her
interest, and made her resolve to learn a little about this
incomprehensible West.

"Majesty, I must run down to the siding," he said, consulting his
watch. "We're loading a shipment of cattle. I'll be back by
supper-time and bring Stillwell with me. You'll like him. Give
me the check for your trunk."

She went into the little bedroom and, taking up her bag, she got
out a number of checks.

"Six! Six trunks!" he exclaimed. "Well, I'm very glad you
intend to stay awhile. Say, Majesty, it will take me as long to
realize who you really are as it'll take to break you of being a
tenderfoot. I hope you packed a riding-suit. If not you'll have
to wear trousers! You'll have to do that, anyway, when we go up
in the mountains."

"No!"

"You sure will, as Florence says."

"We shall see about that. I don't know what's in the trunks. I
never pack anything. My dear brother, what do I have maids for?"

"How did it come that you didn't travel with a maid?"

"I wanted to be alone. But don't you worry. I shall be able to
look after myself. I dare say it will be good for me."

She went to the gate with him.

"What a shaggy, dusty horse! He's wild, too. Do you let him
stand that way without being haltered? I should think he would
run off."

"Tenderfoot! You'll be great fun, Majesty, especially for the
cowboys."

"Oh, will I?" she asked, constrainedly.

"Yes, and in three days they will be fighting one another over
you. That's going to worry me. Cowboys fall in love with a
plain woman, an ugly woman, any woman, so long as she's young.
And you! Good Lord! They'll go out of their heads."

"You are pleased to he facetious, Alfred. I think I have had
quite enough of cowboys, and I haven't been here twenty-four
hours."

"Don't think too much of first impressions. That was my mistake
when I arrived here. Good-by. I'll go now. Better rest awhile.
You look tired."

The horse started as Alfred put his foot in the stirrup and was
running when the rider slipped his leg over the saddle. Madeline
watched him in admiration. He seemed to be loosely fitted to the
saddle, moving with the horse.

"I suppose that's a cowboy's style. It pleases me," she said.
"How different from the seat of Eastern riders!"

Then Madeline sat upon the porch and fell to interested
observation of her surrounding. Near at hand it was decidedly
not prepossessing. The street was deep in dust, and the cool
wind whipped up little puffs. The houses along this street were
all low, square, flat-roofed structures made of some kind of red
cement. It occurred to her suddenly that this building-material
must be the adobe she had read about. There was no person in
sight. The long street appeared to have no end, though the line
of houses did not extend far. Once she heard a horse trotting at
some distance, and several times the ringing of a locomotive
bell. Where were the mountains, wondered Madeline. Soon low
over the house-roofs she saw a dim, dark-blue, rugged outline.
It seemed to charm her eyes and fix her gaze. She knew the
Adirondacks, she bad seen the Alps from the summit of Mont Blanc,
and had stood under the great black, white-tipped shadow of the
Himalayas. But they had not drawn her as these remote Rockies.
This dim horizon line boldly cutting the blue sky fascinated her.
Florence Kingsley's expression "beckoning mountains" returned to
Madeline. She could not see or feel so much as that. Her
impression was rather that these mountains were aloof,
unattainable, that if approached they would recede or vanish like
the desert mirage.

Madeline went to her room, intending to rest awhile, and she fell
asleep. She was aroused by Florence's knock and call.

"Miss Hammond, your brother has come back with Stillwell."

"Why, how I have slept!" exclaimed Madeline. "It's nearly six
o'clock."

"I'm sure glad. You were tired. And the air here makes
strangers sleepy. Come, we want you to meet old Bill. He calls
himself the last of the cattlemen. He has lived in Texas and
here all his life."

Madeline accompanied Florence to the porch. Her brother, who was
sitting near the door, jumped up and said:

"Hello, Majesty!"  And as he put his arm around her he turned
toward a massive man whose broad, craggy face began to ripple and
wrinkle. "I want to introduce my friend Stillwell to you. Bill,
this is my sister, the sister I've so often told you about--
Majesty."

"Wal, wal, Al, this 's the proudest meetin' of my life," replied
Stillwell, in a booming voice. He extended a huge hand. "Miss--
Miss Majesty, sight of you is as welcome as the rain an' the
flowers to an old desert cattleman."

Madeline greeted him, and it was all she could do to repress a
cry at the way he crunched her baud in a grasp of iron. He was
old, white-haired, weather-beaten, with long furrows down his
checks and with gray eyes almost hidden in wrinkles. If he was
smiling she fancied it a most extraordinary smile. The next
instant she realized that it had been a smile, for his face
appeared to stop rippling, the light died, and suddenly it was
like rudely chiseled stone. The quality of hardness she had seen
in Stewart was immeasurably intensified in this old man's face.

"Miss Majesty, it's plumb humiliatin' to all of us thet we wasn't
on hand to meet you," Stillwell said. "Me an' Al stepped into
the P. O. an' said a few mild an' cheerful things. Them messages
ought to hev been sent out to the ranch. I'm sure afraid it was
a bit unpleasant fer you last night at the station."

"I was rather anxious at first and perhaps frightened," replied
Madeline.

"Wal, I'm some glad to tell you thet there's no man in these
parts except your brother thet I'd as lief hev met you as Gene
Stewart."

"Indeed?"

"Yes, an' thet's takin' into consideration Gene's weakness, too.
I'm allus fond of sayin' of myself thet I'm the last of the old
cattlemen. Wal, Stewart's not a native Westerner, but he's my
pick of the last of the cowboys. Sure, he's young, but he's the
last of the old style--the picturesque--an' chivalrous, too, I
make bold to say, Miss Majesty, as well as the old hard-ridin'
kind. Folks are down on Stewart. An' I'm only sayin' a good
word for him hecause he is down, an' mebbe last night he might
hev scared you, you bein' fresh from the East."

Madeline liked the old fellow for his loyalty to the cowboy he
evidently cared for; but as there did not seem anything for her
to say, she remained silent.

"Miss Majesty, the day of the cattleman is about over. An' the
day of the cowboy, such as Gene Stewart, is over. There's no
place for Gene. If these weren't modern days he'd come near
bein' a gun-man, same as we had in Texas, when I ranched there in
the 'seventies. But he can't fit nowhere now; he can't hold a
job, an' he's goin' down."

"I am sorry to hear it," murmured Madeline. "But, Mr. Stillwell,
aren't these modern days out here just a little wild--yet? The
conductor on my train told me of rebels, bandits, raiders. Then
I have had other impressions of--well, that were wild enough for
me."

"Wal, it's some more pleasant an' excitin' these days than for
many years," replied Stillwell. "The boys hev took to packin'
guns again. But thet's owin' to the revolution in Mexico.
There's goin' to be trouble along the border. I reckon people in
the East don't know there is a revolution. Wal, Madero will oust
Diaz, an' then some other rebel will oust Madero. It means
trouble on the border an' across the border, too. I wouldn't
wonder if Uncle Sam hed to get a hand in the game. There's
already been holdups on the railroads an' raids along the Rio
Grande Valley. An' these little towns are full of Greasers, all
disturbed by the fightin' down in Mexico. We've been hevin'
shootin'-scrapes an' knifin'-scrapes, an' some cattle-raidin'. I
hev been losin' a few cattle right along. Reminds me of old
times; an' pretty soon if it doesn't stop, I'll take the old-time
way to stop it."

"Yes, indeed, Majesty," put in Alfred, "you have hit upon an
interesting time to visit us."

"Wal, thet sure 'pears to be so," rejoined Stillwell. "Stewart
got in trouble down heah to-day, an' I'm more than sorry to hev
to tell you thet your name figgered in it. But I couldn't blame
him, fer I sure would hev done the same myself."

"That so?" queried Aifred, laughing. "Well, tell us about it."

Madeline simply gazed at her brother, and, though he seemed
amused at her consternation, there was mortification in his face.

It required no great perspicuity, Madeline thought, to see that
Stillwell loved to talk, and the way he squared himself and
spread his huge hands over his knees suggested that he meant to
do this opportunity justice.

"Miss Majesty, I reckon, bein' as you're in the West now, thet
you must take things as they come, an' mind each thing a little
less than the one before. If we old fellers hedn't been thet way
we'd never hev lasted.

"Last night wasn't particular bad, ratin' with some other nights
lately. There wasn't much doin'. But, I had a hard knock.
Yesterday when we started in with a bunch of cattle I sent one of
my cowboys, Danny Mains, along ahead, carryin' money I hed to pay
off hands an' my bills, an' I wanted thet money to get in town
before dark. Wal, Danny was held up. I don't distrust the lad.
There's been strange Greasers in town lately, an' mebbe they knew
about the money comin'.

"Wal, when I arrived with the cattle I was some put to it to make
ends meet. An' to-day I wasn't in no angelic humor. When I bed
my business all done I went around pokin' my nose beak an' there,
tryin' to get scent of thet money. An' I happened in at a hall
we hev thet does duty fer' jail an' hospital an' election-post
an' what not. Wal, just then it was doin' duty as a hospital.
Last night was fiesta night--these Greasers hev a fiesta every
week or so--an' one Greaser who hed been bad hurt was layin' in
the hall, where he hed been fetched from the station. Somebody
hed sent off to Douglas fer a doctor, but be hedn't come yet.
I've hed some experience with gunshot wounds, an' I looked this
feller over. He wasn't shot up much, but I thought there was
danger of blood-poison-in'. Anyway, I did all I could.

"The hall was full of cowboys, ranchers, Greasers, miners, an'
town folks, along with some strangers. I was about to get
started up this way when Pat Hawe come in.

"Pat he's the sheriff. I reckon, Miss Majesty, thet sheriffs are
new to you, an' fer sake of the West I'll explain to you thet we
don't hev many of the real thing any more. Garrett, who killed
Billy the Kid an' was killed himself near a year or so ago--he
was the kind of sheriff thet helps to make a self-respectin'
country. But this Pat Hawe--wal, I reckon there's no good in me
sayin' what I think of him. He come into the hall, an' he was
roarin' about things. He was goin' to arrest Danny Mains on
sight. Wal, I jest polite-like told Pat thet the money was mine
an' he needn't get riled about it. An' if I wanted to trail the
thief I reckon I could do it as well as anybody. Pat howled thet
law was law, an' he was goin' to lay down the law. Sure it
'peared to me thet Pat was daid set to arrest the first man he
could find excuse to.

"Then he cooled down a bit an' was askin' questions about the
wounded Greaser when Gene Stewart come in. Whenever Pat an' Gene
come together it reminds me of the early days back in the
'seventies. Jest naturally everybody shut up. Fer Pat hates
Gene, an' I reckon Gene ain't very sweet on Pat. They're jest
natural foes in the first place, an' then the course of events
here in El Cajon has been aggravatin'.

"'Hello, Stewart! You're the feller I'm lookin' fer,' said Pat.

"Stewart eyed him an' said, mighty cool an' sarcastic, 'Hawe, you
look a good deal fer me when I'm hittin' up the dust the other
way.'

"Pat went red at thet, but he held in. 'Say, Stewart, you-all
think a lot of thet roan horse of yourn, with the aristocratic
name?'

"'I reckon I do,' replied Gene, shortly.

"'Wal, where is he?'

"'Thet's none of your business, Hawe.'

"'Oho! it ain't, hey? Wal, I guess I can make it my business.
Stewart, there was some queer goings-on last night thet you know
somethin' about. Danny Mains robbed--Stillwell's money gone--
your roan horse gone--thet little hussy Bonita gone--an' this
Greaser near gone, too. Now, seein' thet you was up late an'
prowlin' round the station where this Greaser was found, it ain't
onreasonable to think you might know how he got plugged--is it?'

"Stewart laughed kind of cold, an' he rolled a cigarette, all the
time eyin' Pat, an' then he said if he'd plugged the Greaser it
'd never hev been sich a bunglin' job.

"'I can arrest you on suspicion, Stewart, but before I go thet
far I want some evidence. I want to round up Danny Mains an'
thet little Greaser girl. I want to find out what's become of
your hoss. You've never lent him since you bed him, an' there
ain't enough raiders across the border to steal him from you.
It's got a queer look--thet hoss bein' gone.'

"'You sure are a swell detective, Hawe, an' I wish you a heap of
luck,' replied Stewart.

"Thet 'peared to nettle Pat beyond bounds, an' he stamped around
an' swore. Then he had an idea. It jest stuck out all over him,
an' he shook his finger in Stewart's face.

"'You was drunk last night?'

"Stewart never batted an eye.

'You met some woman on Number Eight, didn't you?' shouted Hawe.

"'I met a lady,' replied Stewart, quiet an' menacin' like.

"'You met Al Hammond's sister, an' you took her up to Kingsley's.
An' cinch this, my cowboy cavalier, I'm goin' up there an' ask
this grand dame some questions, an' if she's as close-mouthed as
you are I'll arrest her!'

"Gene Stewart turned white. I fer one expected to see him jump
like lightnin', as he does when he's riled sudden. But he was
calm an' he was thinkin' hard. Presently he said:

"'Pat, thet's a fool idee, an' if you do the trick it'll hurt you
all the rest of your life. There's absolutely no reason to
frighten Miss Hammond. An' tryin' to arrest her would be such a
damned outrage as won't be stood fer in El Cajon. If you're sore
on me send me to jail. I'll go. If you want to hurt Al Hammond,
go an' do it some man kind of way. Don't take your spite out on
us by insultin' a lady who has come hyar to hev a little visit.
We're bad enough without bein' low-down as Greasers.'

"It was a long talk for Gene, an' I was as surprised as the rest
of the fellers. Think of Gene Stewart talkin' soft an' sweet to
thet red-eyed coyote of a sheriff! An' Pat, he looked so
devilishly gleeful thet if somethin' about Gene hedn't held me
tight I'd hev got in the game my-self. It was plain to me an'
others who spoke of it afterwards thet Pat Hawe hed forgotten the
law an' the officer in the man an' his hate.

"'I'm a-goin', an' I'm a-goin' right now!' he shouted. "An' after
thet any one could hev heerd a clock tick a mile off. Stewart
seemed kind of chokin', an' he seemed to hev been bewildered by
the idee of Hawe's confrontin' you.

"An' finally he burst out: 'But, man, think who it is! It's Miss
Hammond! If you seen her, even if you was locoed or drunk, you--
you couldn't do it.'

"'Couldn't I? Wal, I'll show you damn quick. What do I care who
she is? Them swell Eastern women--I've heerd of them. They're
not so much. This Hamrnond woman--'

"Suddenly Hawe shut up, an' with his red mug turnin' green he
went for his gun."

Stillwell paused in his narrative to get breath, and he wiped his
moist brow. And now his face began to lose its cragginess. It
changed, it softened, it rippled and wrinkled, and all that
strange mobility focused and shone in a wonderful smile.

"An' then, Miss Majesty, then there was somethin' happened.
Stewart took Pat's gun away from him and throwed it on the floor.
An' what followed was beautiful. Sure it was the beautifulest
sight I ever seen. Only it was over so soon! A little while
after, when the doctor came, he hed another patient besides the
wounded Greaser, an' he said thet this new one would require
about four months to be up an' around cheerful-like again. An'
Gene Stewart hed hit the trail for the border."

IV A Ride From Sunrise To Sunset

Next morning, when Madeline was aroused by her brother, it was
not yet daybreak; the air chilled her, and in the gray gloom she
had to feel around for matches and lamp. Her usual languid
manner vanished at a touch of the cold water. Presently, when
Alfred knocked on her door and said he was leaving a pitcher of
hot water outside, she replied, with chattering teeth, "Th-thank
y-you, b-but I d-don't ne-need any now."  She found it necessary,
however, to warm her numb fingers before she could fasten hooks
and buttons. And when she was dressed she marked in the dim
mirror that there were tinges of red in her cheeks.

"Well, if I haven't some color!" she exclaimed.

Breakfast waited for her in the dining-room. The sisters ate
with her. Madeline quickly caught the feeling of brisk action
that seemed to be in the air. From the back of the house sounded
the tramp of boots and voices of men, and from outside came a
dull thump of hoofs, the rattle of harness, and creak of wheels.
Then Alfred came stamping in.

"Majesty, here's where you get the real thing," he announced,
merrily. "We're rushing you off, I'm sorry to say; but we must
hustle back to the ranch. The fall round-up begins to-morrow.
You will ride in the buck-board with Florence and Stillwell.
I'll ride on ahead with the boys and fix up a little for you at
the ranch. Your baggage will follow, but won't get there till
to-morrow sometime. It's a long ride out--nearly fifty miles by
wagon-road. Flo, don't forget a couple of robes. Wrap her up
well. And hustle getting ready. We're waiting."

A little later, when Madeline went out with Florence, the gray
gloom was lightening. Horses were champing bits and pounding
gravel.

"Mawnin', Miss Majesty," said Stillwell, gruffly, from the front
seat of a high vehicle.

Alfred bundled her up into the back seat, and Florence after her,
and wrapped them with robes. Then he mounted his horse and
started off. "Gid-eb!" growled Stillwell, and with a crack of
his whip the team jumped into a trot. Florence whispered into
Madeline's ear:

"Bill's grouchy early in the mawnin'. He'll thaw out soon as it
gets warm."

It was still so gray that Madeline could not distinguish objects
at any considerable distance, and she left El Cajon without
knowing what the town really looked like. She did know that she
was glad to get out of it, and found an easier task of dispelling
persistent haunting memory.

"Here come the cowboys," said Florence.

A line of horsemen appeared coming from the right and fell in
behind Alfred, and gradually they drew ahead, to disappear from
sight. While Madeline watched them the gray gloom lightened into
dawn. All about her was bare and dark; the horizon seemed close;
not a hill nor a tree broke the monotony. The ground appeared to
be flat, but the road went up and down over little ridges.
Madeline glanced backward in the direction of El Cajon and the
mountains she had seen the day before, and she saw only bare and
dark ground, like that which rolled before.

A puff of cold wind struck her face and she shivered. Florence
noticed her and pulled up the second robe and tucked it closely
round her up to her chin.

"If we have a little wind you'll sure feel it," said the Western
girl.

Madeline replied that she already felt it. The wind appeared to
penetrate the robes. it was cold, pure, nipping. It was so thin
she had to breathe as fast as if she were under ordinary
exertion. It hurt her nose and made her lungs ache.

"Aren't you co-cold?" asked Madeline.

"I?" Florence laughed. "I'm used to it. I never get cold."

The Western girl sat with ungloved hands on the outside of the
robe she evidently did not need to draw up around her. Madeline
thought she had never seen such a clear-eyed, healthy, splendid
girl.

"Do you like to see the sun rise?" asked Florence.

"Yes, I think I do," replied Madeline, thoughtfully. "Frankly, I
have not seen it for years."

"We have beautiful sunrises, and sunsets from the ranch are
glorious."

Long lines of pink fire ran level with the eastern horizon, which
appeared to recede as day brightened. A bank of thin, fleecy
clouds was turning rose. To the south and west the sky was dark;
but every moment it changed, the blue turning bluer. The eastern
sky was opalescent. Then in one place gathered a golden light,
and slowly concentrated till it was like fire. The rosy bank of
cloud turned to silver and pearl, and behind it shot up a great
circle of gold. Above the dark horizon gleamed an intensely
bright disk. It was the sun. It rose swiftly, blazing out the
darkness between the ridges and giving color and distance to the
sweep of land.

"Wal, wal," drawled Stillwell, and stretched his huge arms as if
he had just awakened, "thet's somethin' like."

Florence nudged Madeline and winked at her.

"Fine mawnin', girls," went on old Bill, cracking his whip.
"Miss Majesty, it'll be some oninterestin' ride all mawnin'. But
when we get up a bit you'll sure like it. There! Look to the
southwest, jest over thet farthest ridge."

Madeline swept her gaze along the gray, sloping horizon-line to
where dark-blue spires rose far beyond the ridge.

"Peloncillo Mountains," said Stillwell. "Thet's home, when we
get there. We won't see no more of them till afternoon, when
they rise up sudden-like."

Peloncillo! Madeline murmured the melodious name. Where had she
heard it? Then she remembered. The cowboy Stewart had told the
little Mexican girl Bonita to "hit the Peloncillo trail."
Probably the girl had ridden the big, dark horse over this very
road at night, alone. Madeline had a little shiver that was not
occasioned by the cold wind.

"There's a jack!" cried Florence, suddenly.

Madeline saw her first jack-rabbit. It was as large as a dog,
and its ears were enormous. It appeared to be impudently tame,
and the horses kicked dust over it as they trotted by. From then
on old Bill and Florence vied with each other in calling
Madeline's attention to many things along the way. Coyotes
stealing away into the brush; buzzards flapping over the carcass
of a cow that had been mired in a wash; queer little lizards
running swiftly across the road; cattle grazing in the hollows;
adobe huts of Mexican herders; wild, shaggy horses, with heads
high, watching from the gray ridges--all these things Madeline
looked at, indifferently at first, because indifference had
become habitual with her, and then with an interest that
flourished up and insensibly grew as she rode on. It grew until
sight of a little ragged; Mexican boy astride the most diminutive
burro she had ever seen awakened her to the truth. She became
conscious of faint, unmistakable awakening of long-dead feelings-
-enthusiasm and delight. When she realized that, she breathed
deep of the cold, sharp air and experienced an inward joy. And
she divined then, though she did not know why, that henceforth
there was to be something new in her life, something she had
never felt before, something good for her soul in the homely, the
commonplace, the natural, and the wild.

Meanwhile, as Madeline gazed about her and listened to her
companions, the sun rose higher and grew warm and soared and grew
hot; the horses held tirelessly to their steady trot, and mile
after mile of rolling land slipped by.

From the top of a ridge Madeline saw down into a hollow where a
few of the cowboys had stopped and were sitting round a fire,
evidently busy at the noonday meal. Their horses were feeding on
the long, gray grass.

"Wal, smell of thet burnin' greasewood makes my mouth water,"
said Stillwell. "I'm sure hungry. We'll noon hyar an' let the
hosses rest. It's a long pull to the ranch."

He halted near the camp-fire, and, clambering down, began to
unharness the team. Florence leaped out and turned to help
Madeline.

"Walk round a little," she said. "You must be cramped from
sitting still so long. I'll get lunch ready."

Madeline got down, glad to stretch her limbs, and began to stroll
about. She heard Stillwell throw the harness on the ground and
slap his horses. "Roll, you sons-of-guns!" he said. Both horses
bent their fore legs, heaved down on their sides, and tried to
roll over. One horse succeeded on the fourth try, and then
heaved up with a satisfied snort and shook off the dust and
gravel. The other one failed to roll over, and gave it up, half
rose to his feet, and then lay down on the other side.

"He's sure going to feel the ground," said Florence, smiling at
Madeline. "Miss Hammond, I suppose that prize horse of yours--
White Stockings--would spoil his coat if he were heah to roll in
this greasewood and cactus."

During lunch-time Madeline observed that she was an object of
manifestly great interest to the three cowboys. She returned the
compliment, and was amused to see that a g1ance their way caused
them painful embarrassment. They were grown men--one of whom had
white hair--yet they acted like boys caught in the act of
stealing a forbidden look at a pretty girl.

"Cowboys are sure all flirts," said Florence, as if stating an
uninteresting fact. But Madeline detected a merry twinkle in her
clear eyes. The cowboys heard, and the effect upon them was
magical. They fell to shamed confusion and to hurried useless
tasks. Madeline found it difficult to see where they had been
bold, though evidently they were stricken with conscious guilt.
She recalled appraising looks of critical English eyes, impudent
French stares, burning Spanish glances--gantlets which any
American girl had to run abroad. Compared with foreign eyes the
eyes of these cowboys were those of smiling, eager babies.

"Haw, haw!" roared Stillwell. "Florence, you jest hit the nail
on the haid. Cowboys are all plumb flirts. I was wonderin' why
them boys nooned hyar. This ain't no place to noon. Ain't no
grazin' or wood wuth burnin' or nuthin'. Them boys jest held up,
throwed the packs, an' waited fer us. It ain't so surprisin' fer
Booly an' Ned--they're young an' coltish--but Nels there, why,
he's old enough to be the paw of both you girls. It sure is
amazin' strange."

A silence ensued. The white-haired cowboy, Nels, fussed
aimlessly over the camp-fire, and then straightened up with a
very red face.

"Bill, you're a dog-gone liar," he said. "I reckon I won't stand
to be classed with Booly an' Ned. There ain't no cowboy on this
range thet's more appreciatin' of the ladies than me, but I shore
ain't ridin' out of my way. I reckon I hev enough ridin' to do.
Now, Bill, if you've sich dog-gone good eyes mebbe you seen
somethin' on the way out?"

"Nels, I hevn't seen nothin'," he replied, bluntly. His levity
disappeared, and the red wrinkles narrowed round his searching
eyes.

"Jest take a squint at these hoss tracks," said Nels, and he drew
Stillwell a few paces aside and pointed to large hoofprints in
the dust. "I reckon you know the hoss thet made them?"

"Gene Stewart's roan, or I'm a son-of-a-gun!" exclaimed
Stillwell, and he dropped heavily to his knees and began to
scrutinize the tracks. "My eyes are sure pore; but, Nels, they
ain't fresh."

"I reckon them tracks was made early yesterday mornin'."

"Wal, what if they was?" Stillwell looked at his cowboy. "It's
sure as thet red nose of yourn Gene wasn't ridin' the roan."

"Who's sayin' he was? Bill, its more 'n your eyes thet's gettin'
old. Jest foller them tracks. Come on."

Stillwell walked slowly, with his head bent, muttering to
himself. Some thirty paces or more from the camp-fire he stopped
short and again flopped to his knees. Then he crawled about,
evidently examining horse tracks.

"Nels, whoever was straddlin' Stewart's hoss met somebody. An'
they hauled up a bit, but didn't git down."

"Tolerable good for you, Bill, thet reasonin'," replied the
cowboy.

Stillwell presently got up and walked swiftly to the left for
some rods, halted, and faced toward the southwest, then retraced
his steps. He looked at the imperturbable cowboy.

"Nels, I don't like this a little," he growled. "Them tracks make
straight fer the Peloncillo trail."

"Shore," replied Nels.

"Wal?" went on Stillwell, impatiently.

"I reckon you know what hoss made the other tracks?"

"I'm thinkin' hard, but I ain't sure"

"It was Danny Mains's bronc."

"How do you know thet?" demanded Stillwell, sharply. "Bill, the
left front foot of thet little hoss always wears a shoe thet sets
crooked. Any of the boys can tell you. I'd know thet track if I
was blind."

Stillwell's ruddy face clouded and he kicked at a cactus plant.

"Was Danny comin' or goin'?" he asked.

"I reckon he was hittin' across country fer the Peloncillo trail.
But I ain't shore of thet without back-trailin' him a ways. I
was jest waitin' fer you to come up."

"Nels, you don't think the boy's sloped with thet little hussy,
Bonita?"

"Bill, he shore was sweet on Bonita, same as Gene was, an' Ed
Linton before he got engaged, an' all the boys. She's shore
chain-lightnin', that little black-eyed devil. Danny might hev
sloped with her all right. Danny was held up on the way to town,
an' then in the shame of it he got drunk. But he'll shew up
soon."

"Wal, mebbe you an' the boys are right. I believe you are.
Nels, there ain't no doubt on earth about who was ridin'
Stewart's hoss?"

"Thet's as plain as the hoss's tracks."

"Wal, it's all amazin' strange. It beats me. I wish the boys
would ease up on drinkin'. I was pretty fond of Danny an' Gene.
I'm afraid Gene's done fer, sure. If he crosses the border where
he can fight it won't take long fer him to get plugged. I guess
I'm gettin' old. I don't stand things like I used to."

"Bill, I reckon I'd better hit the Peloncillo trail. Mebbe I can
find Danny."

"I reckon you had, Nels," replied Stillwell. "But don't take
more 'n a couple of days. We can't do much on the round-up
without you. I'm short of boys."

That ended the conversation. Stillwell immediately began to
hitch up his team, and the cowboys went out to fetch their
strayed horses. Madeline had been curiously interested, and she
saw that Florence knew it.

"Things happen, Miss Hammond," she said, soberly, almost sadly.

Madeline thought. And then straightway Florence began brightly
to hum a tune and to busy herself repacking what was left of the
lunch. Madeline conceived a strong liking and respect for this
Western girl. She admired the consideration or delicacy or
wisdom--what-ever it was--which kept Florence from asking her
what she knew or thought or felt about the events that had taken
place.

Soon they were once more bowling along the road down a gradual
incline, and then they began to climb a long ridge that had for
hours hidden what lay beyond. That climb was rather tiresome,
owing to the sun and the dust and the restricted view.

When they reached the summit Madeline gave a little gasp of
pleasure. A deep, gray, smooth valley opened below and sloped up
on the other side in little ridges like waves, and these led to
the foothills, dotted with clumps of brush or trees, and beyond
rose dark mountains, pine-fringed and crag-spired.

"Wal, Miss Majesty, now we're gettin' somewhere," said Stillwell,
cracking his whip. "Ten miles across this valley an' we'll be in
the foothills where the Apaches used to run."

"Ten miles!" exclaimed Madeline. "It looks no more than half a
mile to me."

"Wal, young woman, before you go to ridin' off alone you want to
get your eyes corrected to Western distance. Now, what'd you
call them black things off there on the slope?"

"Horsemen. No, cattle," replied Madeline, doubtfully. "Nope.
Jest plain, every-day cactus. An' over hyar--look down the
valley. Somethin' of a pretty forest, ain't thet?" he asked,
pointing.

Madeline saw a beautiful forest in the center of the valley
toward the south.

"Wal, Miss Majesty, thet's jest this deceivin' air. There's no
forest. It's a mirage."

"Indeed! How beautiful it is!"  Madeline strained her gaze on
the dark blot, and it seemed to float in the atmosphere, to have
no clearly defined margins, to waver and shimmer, and then it
faded and vanished.

The mountains dropped down again behind the horizon, and
presently the road began once more to slope up. The horses
slowed to a walk. There was a mile of rolling ridge, and then
came the foothills. The road ascended through winding valleys.
Trees and brush and rocks began to appear in the dry ravines.
There was no water, yet all along the sandy washes were
indications of floods at some periods. The heat and the dust
stifled Madeline, and she had already become tired. Still she
looked with all her eyes and saw birds, and beautiful quail with
crests, and rabbits, and once she saw a deer.

"Miss Majesty," said Stillwell, "in the early days the Indians
made this country a bad one to live in. I reckon you never heerd
much about them times. Surely you was hardly born then. I'll
hev to tell you some day how I fought Comanches in the Panhandle-
-thet was northern Texas--an' I had some mighty hair-raisin'
scares in this country with Apaches."

He told her about Cochise, chief of the Chiricahua Apaches, the
most savage and bloodthirsty tribe that ever made life a horror
for the pioneer. Cochise befriended the whites once; but he was
the victim of that friendliness, and he became the most
implacable of foes. Then, Geronimo, another Apache chief, had,
as late as 1885, gone on the war-path, and had left a bloody
trail down the New Mexico and Arizona line almost to the border.
Lone ranchmen and cowboys had been killed, and mothers had shot
their children and then themselves at the approach of the Apache.
The name Apache curdled the blood of any woman of the Southwest
in those days.

Madeline shuddered, and was glad when the old frontiersman
changed the subject and began to talk of the settling of that
country by the Spaniards, the legends of lost gold-mines handed
down to the Mexicans, and strange stories of heroism and mystery
and religion. The Mexicans had not advanced much in spite of the
spread of civilization to the Southwest. They were still
superstitious, and believed the legends of treasures hidden in
the walls of their missions, and that unseen hands rolled rocks
down the gullies upon the heads of prospectors who dared to hunt
for the lost mines of the padres.

"Up in the mountains back of my ranch there's a lost mine," said
Stillwell. "Mebbe it's only a legend. But somehow I believe
it's there. Other lost mines hev been found. An' as fer' the
rollin' stones, I sure know thet's true, as any one can find out
if he goes trailin' up the gulch. Mebbe thet's only the
weatherin' of the cliffs. It's a sleepy, strange country, this
Southwest, an', Miss Majesty, you're a-goin' to love it. You'll
call it ro-mantic, Wal, I reckon ro-mantic is correct. A feller
gets lazy out hyar an' dreamy, an' he wants to put off work till
to-morrow. Some folks say it's a land of manana--a land of
to-morrow. Thet's the Mexican of it.

"But I like best to think of what a lady said to me ouct--an
eddicated lady like you, Miss Majesty. Wal, she said it's a land
where it's always afternoon. I liked thet. I always get up sore
in the mawnin's, an' don't feel good till noon. But in the
afternoon I get sorta warm an' like things. An' sunset is my
time. I reckon I don't want nothin' any finer than sunset from
my ranch. You look out over a valley that spreads wide between
Guadalupe Mountains an' the Chiricahuas, down across the red
Arizona desert clear to the Sierra Madres in Mexico. Two hundred
miles, Miss Majesty! An' all as clear as print! An' the sun
sets behind all thet! When my time comes to die I'd like it to be
on my porch smokin' my pipe an' facin' the west."

So the old cattleman talked on while Madeline listened, and
Florence dozed in her seat, and the sun began to wane, and the
horses climbed steadily. Presently, at the foot of the steep
ascent, Stillwell got out and walked, leading the team. During
this long climb fatigue claimed Madeline, and she drowsily closed
her eyes, to find when she opened them again that the glaring
white sky had changed to a steel-blue. The sun had sunk behind
the foothills and the air was growing chilly. Stillwell had
returned to the driving-seat and was chuckling to the horses.
Shadows crept up cut of the hollows.

"Wal, Flo," said Stillwell, "I reckon we'd better hev the rest of
thet there lunch before dark."

"You didn't leave much of it," laughed Florence, as she produced
the basket from under the seat.

While they ate, the short twilight shaded and gloom filled the
hollows. Madeline saw the first star, a faint, winking point of
light. The sky had now changed to a hazy gray. Madeline saw it
gradually clear and darken, to show other faint stars. After
that there was perceptible deepening of the gray and an enlarging
of the stars and a brightening of new-born ones. Night seemed to
come on the cold wind. Madeline was glad to have the robes close
around her and to lean against Florence. The hollows were now
black, but the tops of the foothills gleamed pale in a soft
light. The steady tramp of the horses went on, and the creak of
wheels and crunching of gravel. Madeline grew so sleepy that she
could not keep her weary eyelids from falling. There were
drowsier spells in which she lost a feeling of where she was, and
these were disturbed by the jolt of wheels over a rough place.
Then came a blank interval, short or long, which ended in a more
violent lurch of the buckboard. Madeline awoke to find her head
on Florence's shoulder. She sat up laughing and apologizing for
her laziness. Florence assured her they would soon reach the
ranch.

Madeline observed then that the horses were once more trotting.
The wind was colder, the night darker, the foot-hills flatter.
And the sky was now a wonderful deep velvet-blue blazing with
millions of stars. Some of them were magnificent. How strangely
white and alive! Again Madeline felt the insistence of familiar
yet baffling associations. These white stars called strangely to
her or haunted her.

V The Round-Up

It was a crackling and roaring of fire that awakened Madeline
next morning, and the first thing she saw was a huge stone
fireplace in which lay a bundle of blazing sticks. Some one had
kindled a fire while she slept. For a moment the curious
sensation of being lost returned to her. She just dimly
remembered reaching the ranch and being taken into a huge house
and a huge, dimly lighted room. And it seemed to her that she
had gone to sleep at once, and had awakened without remembering
how she had gotten to bed.

But she was wide awake in an instant. The bed stood near one end
of an enormous chamber. The adobe walls resembled a hall in an
ancient feudal castle, stone-floored, stone-walled, with great
darkened rafters running across the ceiling. The few articles of
furniture were worn out and sadly dilapidated. Light flooded
into the room from two windows on the right of the fireplace and
two on the left, and another large window near the bedstead.
Looking out from where she lay, Madeline saw a dark, slow
up-sweep of mountain. Her eyes returned to the cheery, snapping
fire, and she watched it while gathering courage to get up. The
room was cold. When she did slip her bare feet out upon the
stone floor she very quickly put them back under the warm
blankets. And she was still in bed trying to pluck up her
courage when, with a knock on the door and a cheerful greeting,
Florence entered, carrying steaming hot water.

"Good mawnin', Miss Hammond. Hope you slept well. You sure were
tired last night. I imagine you'll find this old rancno house as
cold as a barn. It'll warm up directly. Al's gone with the boys
and Bill. We're to ride down on the range after a while when
your baggage comes."

Florence wore a woolen blouse with a scarf round her neck, a
short corduroy divided skirt, and boots; and while she talked she
energetically heaped up the burning wood in the fireplace, and
laid Madeline's clothes at the foot of the bed, and heated a rug
and put that on the floor by the bedside. And lastly, with a
sweet, direct smile, she said:

"Al told me--and I sure saw myself--that you weren't used to
being without your maid. Will you let me help you?"

"Thank you, I am going to be my own maid for a while. I expect I
do appear a very helpless individual, but really I do not feel
so. Perhaps I have had just a little too much waiting on."

"All right. Breakfast will be ready soon, and after that we'll
look about the place."

Madeline was charmed with the old Spanish house, and the more she
saw of it the more she thought what a delightful home it could be
made. All the doors opened into a courtyard, or patio, as
Florence called it. The house was low, in the shape of a
rectangle, and so immense in size that Madeline wondered if it
had been a Spanish barracks. Many of the rooms were dark,
without windows, and they were empty. Others were full of
ranchers' implements and sacks of grain and bales of hay.
Florence called these last alfalfa. The house itself appeared
strong and well preserved, and it was very picturesque. But in
the living-rooms were only the barest necessities, and these were
worn out and comfortless.

However, when Madeline went outdoors she forgot the cheerless,
bare interior. Florence led the way out on a porch and waved a
hand at a vast, colored void. "That's what Bill likes," she
said.

At first Madeline could not tell what was sky and what was land.
The immensity of the scene stunned her faculties of conception.
She sat down in one of the old rocking-chairs and looked and
looked, and knew that she was not grasping the reality of what
stretched wondrously before her.

"We're up at the edge of the foothills," Florence said. "You
remember we rode around the northern end of the mountain range?
Well, that's behind us now, and you look down across the line
into Arizona and Mexico. That long slope of gray is the head of
the San Bernardino Valley. Straight across you see the black
Chiricahua Mountains, and away down to the south the Guadalupe
Mountains. That awful red gulf between is the desert, and far,
far beyond the dim, blue peaks are the Sierra Madres in Mexico."

Madeline listened and gazed with straining eyes, and wondered if
this was only a stupendous mirage, and why it seemed so different
from all else that she had seen, and so endless, so baffling, so
grand.

" It'll sure take you a little while to get used to being up high
and seeing so much," explained Florence. "That's the secret--
we're up high, the air is clear, and there's the whole bare world
beneath us. Don't it somehow rest you? Well, it will. Now see
those specks in the valley. They are stations, little towns.
The railroad goes down that way. The largest speck is
Chiricahua. It's over forty miles by trail. Here round to the
north you can see Don Carlos's rancho. He's fifteen miles off,
and I sure wish he were a thousand. That little green square
about half-way between here and Don Carlos--that's Al's ranch.
Just below us are the adobe houses of the Mexicans. There's a
church, too. And here to the left you see Stillwell's corrals
and bunk-houses and his stables all falling to pieces. The ranch
has gone to ruin. All the ranches are going to ruin. But most
of them are little one-horse affairs. And here--see that cloud of
dust down in the valley? It's the round-up. The boys are there,
and the cattle. Wait, I'll get the glasses."

By their aid Madeline saw in the foreground a great, dense herd
of cattle with dark, thick streams and dotted lines of cattle
leading in every direction. She saw streaks and clouds of dust,
running horses, and a band of horses grazing; and she descried
horsemen standing still like sentinels, and others in action.

"The round-up! I want to know all about it--to see it," declared
Madeline. "Please tell me what it means, what it's for, and then
take me down there."

"It's sure a sight, Miss Hammond. I'll be glad to take you down,
but I fancy you'll not want to go close. Few Eastern people who
regularly eat their choice cuts of roast beef and porterhouse
have any idea of the open range and the struggle cattle have to
live and the hard life of cowboys. It'll sure open your eyes,
Miss Hammond. I'm glad you care to know. Your brother would
have made a big success in this cattle business if it hadn't been
for crooked work by rival ranchers. He'll make it yet, in spite
of them."

"Indeed he shall," replied Madeline. "But tell me, please, all
about the round-up."

"Well, in the first place, every cattleman has to have a brand to
identify his stock. Without it no cattleman, nor half a hundred
cowboys, if he had so many, could ever recognize all the cattle
in a big herd. There are no fences on our ranges. They are all
open to everybody. Some day I hope we'll be rich enough to fence
a range. The different herds graze together. Every calf has to
be caught, if possible, and branded with the mark of its mother.
That's no easy job. A maverick is an unbranded calf that has
been weaned and shifts for itself. The maverick then belongs to
the man who finds it and brands it. These little calves that
lose their mothers sure have a cruel time of it. Many of them
die. Then the coyotes and wolves and lions prey on them. Every
year we have two big round-ups, but the boys do some branding all
the year. A calf should be branded as soon as it's found. This
is a safeguard against cattle-thieves. We don't have the
rustling of herds and bunches of cattle like we used to. But
there's always the calf-thief, and always will be as long as
there's cattle-raising. The thieves have a good many cunning
tricks. They kill the calf's mother or slit the calf's tongue so
it can't suck and so loses its mother. They steal and hide a
calf and watch it till it's big enough to fare for itself, and
then brand it. They make imperfect brands and finish them at a
later time.

"We have our big round-up in the fall, when there's plenty of
grass and water, and all the riding-stock as well as the cattle
are in fine shape. The cattlemen in the valley meet with their
cowboys and drive in all the cattle they can find. Then they
brand and cut out each man's herd and drive it toward home. Then
they go on up or down the valley, make another camp, and drive in
more cattle. It takes weeks. There are so many Greasers with
little bands of stock, and they are crafty and greedy. Bill says
he knows Greaser cowboys, vaqueros, who never owned a steer or a
cow, and now they've got growing herds. The same might be said
of more than one white cowboy. But there's not as much of that as
there used to be."

"And the horses? I want to know about them," said Madeline, when
Florence paused.

"Oh, the cow-ponies! Well, they sure are interesting. Broncos,
the boys call them. Wild! they're wilder than the steers they
have to chase. Bill's got broncos heah that never have been
broken and never will be. And not every boy can ride them,
either. The vaqueros have the finest horses. Don Carlos has a
black that I'd give anything to own. And he has other fine
stock. Gene Stewart's big roan is a Mexican horse, the swiftest
and proudest I ever saw. I was up on him once and--oh, he can
run! He likes a woman, too, and that's sure something I want in
a horse. I heard Al and Bill talking at breakfast about a horse
for you. They were wrangling. Bill wanted you to have one, and
Al another. It was funny to hear them. Finally they left the
choice to me, until the round-up is over. Then I suppose every
cowboy on the range will offer you his best mount. Come, let's
go out to the corrals and look over the few horses left."

For Madeline the morning hours flew by, with a goodly part of the
time spent on the porch gazing out over that ever-changing vista.
At noon a teamster drove up with her trunks. Then while Florence
helped the Mexican woman get lunch Madeline unpacked part of her
effects and got out things for which she would have immediate
need. After lunch she changed her dress for a riding-habit and,
going outside, found Florence waiting with the horses.

The Western girl's clear eyes seemed to take stock of Madeline's
appearance in one swift, inquisitive glance and then shone with
pleasure.

"You sure look--you're a picture, Miss Hammond. That
riding-outfit is a new one. What it 'd look like on me or
another woman I can't imagine, but on you it's--it's stunning.
Bill won't let you go within a mile of the cowboys. If they see
you that'll be the finish of the round-up."

While they rode down the slope Florence talked about the open
ranges of New Mexico and Arizona.

"Water is scarce," she said. "If Bill could afford to pipe water
down from the mountains he'd have the finest ranch in the
valley."

She went on to tell that the climate was mild in winter and hot
in summer. Warm, sunshiny days prevailed nearly all the year
round. Some summers it rained, and occasionally there would be a
dry year, the dreaded ano seco of the Mexicans. Rain was always
expected and prayed for in the midsummer months, and when it came
the grama-grass sprang up, making the valleys green from mountain
to mountain. The intersecting valleys, ranging between the long
slope of foothills, afforded the best pasture for cattle, and
these were jealously sought by the Mexicans who had only small
herds to look after. Stillwell's cowboys were always chasing
these vaqueros off land that belonged to Stillwell. He owned
twenty thousand acres of unfenced land adjoining the open range.
Don Carlos possessed more acreage than that, and his cattle were
always mingling with Stillwell's. And in turn Don Carlos's
vaqueros were always chasing Stillwell's cattle away from the
Mexican's watering-place. Bad feeling had been manifested for
years, and now relations were strained to the breaking-point.

As Madeline rode along she made good use of her eyes. The soil
was sandy and porous, and she understood why the rain and water
from the few springs disappeared so quickly. At a little
distance the grama-grass appeared thick, but near at hand it was
seen to be sparse. Bunches of greasewood and cactus plants were
interspersed here and there in the grass. What surprised Madeline
was the fact that, though she and Florence had seemed to be
riding quite awhile, they had apparently not drawn any closer to
the round-up. The slope of the valley was noticeable only after
some miles had been traversed. Looking forward, Madeline
imagined the valley only a few miles wide. She would have been
sure she could walk her horse across it in an hour. Yet that
black, bold range of Chiricahua Mountains was distant a long
day's journey for even a hard-riding cowboy. It was only by
looking back that Madeline could grasp the true relation of
things; she could not be deceived by distance she had covered.

Gradually the black dots enlarged and assumed shape of cattle and
horses moving round a great dusty patch. In another half-hour
Madeline rode behind Florence to the outskirts of the scene of
action. They drew rein near a huge wagon in the neighborhood of
which were more than a hundred horses grazing and whistling and
trotting about and lifting heads to watch the new-comers. Four
cowboys stood mounted guard over this drove of horses. Perhaps a
quarter of a mile farther out was a dusty melee. A roar of
tramping hoofs filled Madeline's ears. The lines of marching
cattle had merged into a great, moving herd half obscured by
dust.

"I can make little of what is going on," said Madeline. "I want
to go closer."

They trotted across half the intervening distance, and when
Florence halted again Madeline was still not satisfied and asked
to be taken nearer. This time, before they reined in again, Al
Hammond saw them and wheeled his horse in their direction. He
yelled something which Madeline did not understand, and then
halted them.

"Close enough," he called; and in the din his voice was not very
clear. "It's not safe. Wild steers! I'm glad you came, girls.
Majesty, what do you think of that bunch of cattle?"

Madeline could scarcely reply what she thought, for the noise and
dust and ceaseless action confused her.

"They're milling, Al," said Florence.

"We just rounded them up. They're milling, and that's bad. The
vaqueros are hard drivers. They beat us all hollow, and we drove
some, too."  He was wet with sweat, black with dust, and out of
breath. "I'm off now. Flo, my sister will have enough of this
in about two minutes. Take her back to the wagon. I'll tell
Bill you're here, and run in whenever I get a minute."

The bawling and bellowing, the crackling of horns and pounding of
hoofs, the dusty whirl of cattle, and the flying cowboys
disconcerted Madeline and frightened her a little; but she was
intensely interested and meant to stay there until she saw for
herself what that strife of sound and action meant. When she
tried to take in the whole scene she did not make out anything
clearly and she determined to see it little by little.

"Will you stay longer?" asked Florence; and, receiving an
affirmative reply, she warned Madeline: "If a runaway steer or
angry cow comes this way let your horse go. He'll get out of the
way."

That lent the situation excitement, and Madeline became absorbed.
The great mass of cattle seemed to be eddying like a whirlpool,
and from that Madeline understood the significance of the range
word "milling."  But when Madeline looked at one end of the herd
she saw cattle standing still, facing outward, and calves
cringing close in fear. The motion of the cattle slowed from the
inside of the herd to the outside and gradually ceased. The roar
and tramp of hoofs and crack of horns and thump of heads also
ceased in degree, but the bawling and bellowing continued. While
she watched, the herd spread, grew less dense, and stragglers
appeared to be about to bolt through the line of mounted cowboys.

From that moment so many things happened, and so swiftly, that
Madeline could not see a tenth of what was going on within
eyesight. It seemed horsemen darted into the herd and drove out
cattle. Madeline pinned her gaze on one cowboy who rode a white
horse and was chasing a steer. He whirled a lasso around his
head and threw it; the rope streaked out and the loop caught the
leg of the steer. The white horse stopped with wonderful
suddenness, and the steer slid in the dust. Quick as a flash the
cowboy was out of the saddle, and, grasping the legs of the steer
before it could rise, he tied them with a rope. It had all been
done almost as quickly as thought. Another man came with what
Madeline divined was a branding-iron. He applied it to the flank
of the steer. Then it seemed the steer was up with a jump,
wildly looking for some way to run, and the cowboy was circling
his lasso. Madeline saw fires in the background, with a man in
charge, evidently heating the irons. Then this same cowboy roped
a heifer which bawled lustily when the hot iron seared its hide.
Madeline saw the smoke rising from the touch of the iron, and the
sight made her shrink and want to turn away, but she resolutely
fought her sensitiveness. She bad never been able to bear the
sight of any animal suffering. The rough work in men's lives was
as a sealed book to her; and now, for some reason beyond her
knowledge, she wanted to see and hear and learn some of the
every-day duties that made up those lives.

"Look, Miss Hammond, there's Don Carlos!" said Florence. "Look
at that black horse!"

Madeleine saw a dark-faced Mexican riding by. He was too far
away for her to distinguish his features, but he reminded her of
an Italian brigand. He bestode a magnificent horse.

Stillwell rode up to the girls then and greeted them in his big
voice.

"Right in the thick of it, hey? Wal, thet's sure fine. I'm glad
to see, Miss Majesty, thet you ain't afraid of a little dust or
smell of burnin' hide an' hair."

"Couldn't you brand the calves without hurting them?" asked
Madeline.

"Haw, haw! Why, they ain't hurt none. They jest bawl for their
mammas. Sometimes, though, we hev to hurt one jest to find which
is his mamma."

"I want to know how you tell what brand to put on those calves
that are separated from their mothers," asked Madeline.

"Thet's decided by the round-up bosses. I've one boss an' Don
Carlos has one. They decide everything, an' they hev to be
obyed. There's Nick Steele, my boss. Watch him! He's ridin' a
bay in among the cattle there. He orders the calves an' steers
to be cut out. Then the cowboys do the cuttin' out an' the
brandin'. We try to divide up the mavericks as near as
possible."

At this juncture Madeline's brother joined the group, evidently
in search of Stillwell.

"Bill, Nels just rode in," he said.

"Good! We sure need him. Any news of Danny Mains?"

"No. Nels said he lost the trail when he got on hard ground."

"Wal, wal. Say, Al, your sister is sure takin' to the round-up.
An' the boys are gettin' wise. See thet sun-of-a-gun Ambrose
cuttin' capers all around. He'll sure do his prettiest. Ambrose
is a ladies' man, he thinks."

The two men and Florence joined in a little pleasant teasing of
Madeline, and drew her attention to what appeared to be really
unnecessary feats of horsemanship all made in her vicinity. The
cowboys evinced their interest in covert glances while recoiling
a lasso or while passing to and fro. It was all too serious for
Madeline to be amused at that moment. She did not care to talk.
She sat her horse and watched.

The lithe, dark vaqueros fascinated her. They were here, there,
everywhere, with lariats flying, horses plunging back, jerking
calves and yearlings to the grass. They were cruel to their
mounts, cruel to their cattle. Madeline winced as the great
silver rowels of the spurs went plowing into the flanks of their
horses. She saw these spurs stained with blood, choked with
hair. She saw the vaqueros break the legs of calves and let them
lie till a white cowboy came along and shot them. Calves were
jerked down and dragged many yards; steers were pulled by one
leg. These vaqueros were the most superb horsemen Madeline had
ever seen, and she had seen the Cossacks and Tatars of the
Russian steppes. They were swift, graceful, daring; they never
failed to catch a running steer, and the lassoes always went
true. What sharp dashes the horses made, and wheelings here and
there, and sudden stops, and how they braced themselves to
withstand the shock!

The cowboys, likewise, showed wonderful horsemanship, and,
reckless as they were, Madeline imagined she saw consideration
for steed and cattle that was wanting in the vaqueros. They
changed mounts oftener than the Mexican riders, and the horses
they unsaddled for fresh ones were not so spent, so wet, so
covered with lather. It was only after an hour or more of
observation that Madeline began to realize the exceedingly
toilsome and dangerous work cowboys had to perform. There was
little or no rest for them. They were continually among wild and
vicious and wide-horned steers. In many instances they owed
their lives to their horses. The danger came mostly when the
cowboy leaped off to tie and brand a calf he had thrown. Some of
the cows charged with lowered, twisting horns. Time and again
Madeline's heart leaped to her throat for fear a man would be
gored. One cowboy roped a calf that bawled loudly. Its mother
dashed in and just missed the kneeling cowboy as he rolled over.
Then he had to run, and he could not run very fast. He was
bow-legged and appeared awkward. Madeline saw another cowboy
thrown and nearly run over by a plunging steer. His horse bolted
as if it intended to leave the range. Then close by Madeline a
big steer went down at the end of a lasso. The cowboy who had
thrown it nimbly jumped down, and at that moment his horse began
to rear and prance and suddenly to lower his head close to the
ground and kick high. He ran round in a circle, the fallen steer
on the taut lasso acting as a pivot. The cowboy loosed the rope
from the steer, and then was dragged about on the grass. It was
almost frightful for Madeline to see that cowboy go at his horse.
But she recognized the mastery and skill. Then two horses came
into collision on the run. One horse went down; the rider of the
other was unseated and was kicked before he could get up. This
fellow limped to his mount and struck at him, while the horse
showed his teeth in a vicious attempt to bite.

All the while this ceaseless activity was going on there was a
strange uproar--bawl and bellow, the shock of heavy bodies
meeting and falling, the shrill jabbering of the vaqueros, and
the shouts and banterings of the cowboys. They took sharp orders
and replied in jest. They went about this stern toil as if it
were a game to be played in good humor. One sang a rollicking
song, another whistled, another smoked a cigarette. The sun was
hot, and they, like their horses, were dripping with sweat. The
characteristic red faces had taken on so much dust that cowboys
could not be distinguished from vaqueros except by the difference
in dress. Blood was not wanting on tireless hands. The air was
thick, oppressive, rank with the smell of cattle and of burning
hide.

Madeline began to sicken. She choked with dust, was almost
stifled by the odor. But that made her all the more determined
to stay there. Florence urged her to come away, or at least move
back out of the worst of it. Stillwell seconded Florence.
Madeline, however, smilingly refused. Then her brother said:
"Here, this is making you sick. You're pale." And she replied
that she intended to stay until the day's work ended. Al gave
her a strange look, and made no more comment. The kindly
Stillwell then began to talk.

"Miss Majesty, you're seein' the life of the cattleman an,
cowboy--the real thing--same as it was in the early days. The
ranchers in Texas an' some in Arizona hev took on style,
new-fangled idees thet are good, an' I wish we could follow them.
But we've got to stick to the old-fashioned, open-range
round-tip. It looks cruel to you, I can see thet. Wal, mebbe
so, mebbe so. Them Greasers are cruel, thet's certain. Fer thet
matter, I never seen a Greaser who wasn't cruel. But I reckon
all the strenuous work you've seen to-day ain't any tougher than
most any day of a cowboy's life. Long hours on hossback, poor
grub, sleepin' on the ground, lonesome watches, dust an' sun an,
wind an' thirst, day in an' day out all the year round--thet's
what a cowboy has.

"Look at Nels there. See, what little hair be has is snow-white.
He's red an' thin an' hard--burned up. You notice thet hump of
his shoulders. An' his hands, when he gets close--jest take a
peep at his hands. Nels can't pick up a pin. He can't hardly
button his shirt or untie a knot in his rope. He looks sixty
years--an old man. Wal, Nels 'ain't seen forty. He's a young
man, but he's seen a lifetime fer every year. Miss Majesty, it
was Arizona thet made Nels what he is, the Arizona desert an' the
work of a cowman. He's seen ridin' at Canon Diablo an' the Verdi
an' Tonto Basin. He knows every mile of Aravaipa Valley an' the
Pinaleno country. He's ranged from Tombstone to Douglas. He hed
shot bad white men an' bad Greasers before he was twenty-one.
He's seen some life, Nels has. My sixty years ain't nothin'; my
early days in the Staked Plains an' on the border with Apaches
ain't nothin' to what Nels has seen an' lived through. He's just
come to be part of the desert; you might say he's stone an' fire
an' silence an' cactus an' force. He's a man, Miss Majesty, a
wonderful man. Rough he'll seem to you. Wal, I'll show you
pieces of quartz from the mountains back of my ranch an' they're
thet rough they'd cut your hands. But there's pure gold in them.
An' so it is with Nels an' many of these cowboys.

"An' there's Price--Monty Price. Monty stands fer Montana, where
he hails from. Take a good look at him, Miss Majesty. He's been
hurt, I reckon. Thet accounts fer him bein' without hoss or
rope; an' thet limp. Wal, he's been ripped a little. It's sure
rare an seldom thet a cowboy gets foul of one of them thousands
of sharp horns; but it does happen."

Madeline saw a very short, wizened little man, ludicrously
bow-legged, with a face the color and hardness of a burned-out
cinder. He was hobbling by toward the wagon, and one of his
short, crooked legs dragged.

"Not much to look at, is he?" went on Stillwell. "Wal; I know
it's natural thet we're all best pleased by good looks in any
one, even a man. It hedn't ought to be thet way. Monty Price
looks like hell. But appearances are sure deceivin'. Monty saw
years of ridin' along the Missouri bottoms, the big prairies,
where there's high grass an' sometimes fires. In Montana they
have blizzards that freeze cattle standin' in their tracks. An'
hosses freeze to death. They tell me thet a drivin' sleet in the
face with the mercury forty below is somethin' to ride against.
You can't get Monty to say much about cold. All you hev to do is
to watch him, how he hunts the sun. It never gets too hot fer
Monty. Wal, I reckon he was a little more prepossessin' once.
The story thet come to us about Monty is this: He got caught out
in a prairie fire an' could hev saved himself easy, but there was
a lone ranch right in the line of fire, an' Monty knowed the
rancher was away, an' his wife an' baby was home. He knowed,
too, the way the wind was, thet the ranch-house would burn. It
was a long chance he was takin'. But he went over, put the woman
up behind him, wrapped the baby an' his hoss's haid in a wet
blanket, an' rode away. Thet was sure some ride, I've heerd. But
the fire ketched Monty at the last. The woman fell an' was lost,
an' then his hoss. An' Monty ran an' walked an' crawled through
the fire with thet baby, an' he saved it. Monty was never much
good as a cowboy after thet. He couldn't hold no jobs. Wal,
he'll have one with me as long as I have a steer left."

VI A Gift and A Purchase

For a week the scene of the round-up lay within riding-distance
of the ranch-house, and Madeline passed most of this time in the
saddle, watching the strenuous labors of the vaqueros and
cowboys. She overestimated her strength, and more than once had
to be lifted from her horse. Stillwell's pleasure in her
attendance gave place to concern. He tried to persuade her to
stay away from the round-up, and Florence grew even more
solicitous.

Madeline, however, was not moved by their entreaties. She grasped
only dimly the truth of what it was she was learning--something
infinitely more than the rounding up of cattle by cowboys, and
she was loath to lose an hour of her opportunity.

Her brother looked out for her as much as his duties permitted;
but for several days he never once mentioned her growing fatigue
and the strain of excitement, or suggested that she had better go
back to the house with Florence. Many times she felt the drawing
power of his keen blue eyes on her face. And at these moments she
sensed more than brotherly regard. He was watching her, studying
her, weighing her, and the conviction was vaguely disturbing. It
was disquieting for Madeline to think that Alfred might have
guessed her trouble. From time to time he brought cowboys to her
and introduced them, and laughed and jested, trying to make the
ordeal less embarrassing for these men so little used to women.

Before the week was out, however, Alfred found occasion to tell
her that it would be wiser for her to let the round-up go on
without gracing it further with her presence. He said it
laughingly; nevertheless, he was serious. And when Madeline
turned to him in surprise he said, bluntly:

"I don't like the way Don Carlos follows you around. Bill's
afraid that Nels or Ambrose or one of the cowboys will take a
fall out of the Mexican. They're itching for the chance. Of
course, dear, it's absurd to you, but it's true."

Absurd it certainly was, yet it served to show Madeline how
intensely occupied she had been with her own feelings, roused by
the tumult and toil of the round-up. She recalled that Don
Carlos had been presented to her, and that she had not liked his
dark, striking face with its bold, prominent, glittering eyes and
sinister lines; and she had not liked his suave, sweet,
insinuating voice or his subtle manner, with its slow bows and
gestures. She had thought he looked handsome and dashing on the
magnificent black horse. However, now that Alfred's words made
her think, she recalled that wherever she had been in the field
the noble horse, with his silver-mounted saddle and his dark
rider, had been always in her vicinity.

"Don Carlos has been after Florence for a long time," said
Alfred. "He's not a young man by any means. He's fifty, Bill
says; but you can seldom tell a Mexican's age from his looks.
Don Carlos is well educated and a man we know very little about.
Mexicans of his stamp don't regard women as we white men do.
Now, my dear, beautiful sister from New York, I haven't much use
for Don Carlos; but I don't want Nels or Ambrose to make a wild
throw with a rope and pull the Don off his horse. So you had
better ride up to the house and stay there."

"Alfred, you are joking, teasing me," said Madeline. "Indeed
not," replied Alfred. "How about it, Flo?"  Florence replied
that the cowboys would upon the slightest provocation treat Don
Carlos with less ceremony and gentleness than a roped steer. Old
Bill Stillwell came up to be importuned by Alfred regarding the
conduct of cowboys on occasion, and he not only corroborated the
assertion, but added emphasis and evidence of his own.

"An', Miss Majesty," he concluded, "I reckon if Gene Stewart was
ridin' fer me, thet grinnin' Greaser would hev hed a bump in the
dust before now."

Madeline had been wavering between sobriety and laughter until
Stillwell's mention of his ideal of cowboy chivalry decided in
favor of the laughter.

"I am not convinced, but I surrender," she said. "You have only
some occult motive for driving me away. I am sure that handsome
Don Carlos is being unjustly suspected. But as I have seen a
little of cowboys' singular imagination and gallantry, I am
rather inclined to fear their possibilities. So good-by."

Then she rode with Florence up the long, gray slope to the
ranch-house. That night she suffered from excessive weariness,
which she attributed more to the strange working of her mind than
to riding and sitting her horse. Morning, however, found her in
no disposition to rest. It was not activity that she craved, or
excitement, or pleasure. An unerring instinct, rising dear from
the thronging sensations of the last few days, told her that she
had missed something in life. It could not have been love, for
she loved brother, sister, parents, friends; it could not have
been consideration for the poor, the unfortunate, the hapless;
she had expressed her sympathy for these by giving freely; it
could not have been pleasure, culture, travel, society, wealth,
position, fame, for these had been hers all her life. Whatever
this something was, she had baffling intimations of it, hopes
that faded on the verge of realizations, haunting promises that
were unfulfilled. Whatever it was, it had remained hidden and
unknown at home, and here in the West it began to allure and
drive her to discovery. Therefore she could not rest; she wanted
to go and see; she was no longer chasing phantoms; it was a hunt
for treasure that held aloof, as intangible as the substance of
dreams.

That morning she spoke a desire to visit the Mexican quarters
lying at the base of the foothills. Florence protested that this
was no place to take Madeline. But Madeline insisted, and it
required only a few words and a persuading smile to win Florence
over.

From the porch the cluster of adobe houses added a picturesque
touch of color and contrast to the waste of gray valley. Near at
hand they proved the enchantment lent by distance. They were
old, crumbling, broken down, squalid. A few goats climbed around
upon them; a few mangy dogs barked announcement of visitors; and
then a troop of half-naked, dirty, ragged children ran out. They
were very shy, and at first retreated in affright. But kind
words and smiles gained their confidence, and then they followed
in a body, gathering a quota of new children at each house.
Madeline at once conceived the idea of doing something to better
the condition of these poor Mexicans, and with this in mind she
decided to have a look indoors. She fancied she might have been
an apparition, judging from the effect her presence had upon the
first woman she encountered. While Florence exercised what
little Spanish she had command of, trying to get the women to
talk, Madeline looked about the miserable little rooms. And
there grew upon her a feeling of sickness, which increased as she
passed from one house to another. She had not believed such
squalor could exist anywhere in America. The huts reeked with
filth; vermin crawled over the dirt floors. There was absolutely
no evidence of water, and she believed what Florence told her--
that these people never bathed. There was little evidence of
labor. Idle men and women smoking cigarettes lolled about, some
silent, others jabbering. They did not resent the visit of the
American women, nor did they show hospitality. They appeared
stupid. Disease was rampant in these houses; when the doors were
shut there was no ventilation, and even with the doors open
Madeline felt choked and stifled. A powerful penetrating odor
pervaded the rooms that were less stifling than others, and this
odor Florence explained came from a liquor the Mexicans distilled
from a cactus plant. Here drunkenness was manifest, a terrible
inert drunkenness that made its victims deathlike.

Madeline could not extend her visit to the little mission-house.
She saw a padre, a starved, sad-faced man who, she instinctively
felt, was good. She managed to mount her horse and ride up to
the house; but, once there, she weakened and Florence had almost
to carry her in-doors. She fought off a faintness, only to
succumb to it when alone in her room. Still, she did not entirely
lose consciousness, and soon recovered to the extent that she did
not require assistance.

Upon the morning after the end of the round-up, when she went out
on the porch, her brother and Stillwell appeared to be arguing
about the identity of a horse.

"Wal, I reckon it's my old roan," said Stillwell, shading his
eves with his hand.

"Bill, if that isn't Stewart's horse my eyes are going back on
me," replied Al. "It's not the color or shape--the distance is
too far to judge by that. It's the motion--the swing."

"Al, mebbe you're right. But they ain't no rider up on thet
hoss. Flo, fetch my glass."

Florence went into the house, while Madeline tried to discover
the object of attention. Presently far up the gray hollow along
a foothill she saw dust, and then the dark, moving figure of a
horse. She was watching when Florence returned with the glass.
Bill took a long look, adjusted the glasses carefully, and tried
again.

"Wal, I hate to admit my eyes are gettin' pore. But I guess I'll
hev to. Thet's Gene Stewart's hoss, saddled, an' comin' at a
fast clip without a rider. It's amazin' strange, an' some in
keepin' with other things concernin' Gene."

"Give me the glass," said Al. "Yes, I was right. Bill, the horse
is not frightened. He's coming steadily; he's got something on
his mind."

"Thet's a trained hoss, Al. He has more sense than some men I
know. Take a look with the glasses up the hollow. See anybody?"

"No."

"Swing up over the foothills--where the trail leads. Higher--
along thet ridge where the rocks begin. See anybody?"

"By Jove! Bill--two horses! But I can't make out much for dust.
They are climbing fast. One horse gone among the rocks. There--
the other's gone. What do you make of that?"

"Wal, I can't make no more 'n you. But I'll bet we know
somethin' soon, fer Gene's hoss is comin' faster as he nears the
ranch."

The wide hollow sloping up into the foothills lay open to
unobstructed view, and less than half a mile distant Madeline saw
the riderless horse coming along the white trail at a rapid
canter. She watched him, recalling the circumstances under which
she had first seen him, and then his wild flight through the
dimly lighted streets of El Cajon out into the black night. She
thrilled again and believed she would never think of that starry
night's adventure without a thrill. She watched the horse and
felt more than curiosity. A shrill, piercing whistle pealed in.

"Wal, he's seen us, thet's sure," said Bill.

The horse neared the corrals, disappeared into a lane, and then,
breaking his gait again, thundered into the inclosure and pounded
to a halt some twenty yards from where Stillwell waited for him.

One look at him at close range in the clear light of day was
enough for Madeline to award him a blue ribbon over all horses,
even her prize-winner, White Stockings. The cowboy's great steed
was no lithe, slender-bodied mustang. He was a charger, almost
tremendous of build, with a black coat faintly mottled in gray,
and it shone like polished glass in the sun. Evidently he had
been carefully dressed down for this occasion, for there was no
dust on him, nor a kink in his beautiful mane, nor a mark on his
glossy hide.

"Come hyar, you son-of-a-gun," said Stillwell.

The horse dropped his head, snorted, and came obediently up. He
was neither shy nor wild. He poked a friendly nose at Stillwell,
and then looked at Al and the women. Unhooking the stirrups from
the pommel, Stillwell let them fall and began to search the
saddle for something which he evidently expected to find.
Presently from somewhere among the trappings he produced a folded
bit of paper, and after scrutinizing it handed it to Al.

"Addressed to you; an' I'll bet you two bits I know what's in
it," he said.

Alfred unfolded the letter, read it, and then looked at
Stillwell.

"Bill, you're a pretty good guesser. Gene's made for the border.
He sent the horse by somebody, no names mentioned, and wants my
sister to have him if she will accept."

"Any mention of Danny Mains?" asked the rancher.

"Not a word."

"Thet's bad. Gene'd know about Danny if anybody did. But he's a
close-mouthed cuss. So he's sure hittin' for Mexico. Wonder if
Danny's goin', too? Wal, there's two of the best cowmen I ever
seen gone to hell an' I'm sorry."

With that he bowed his head and, grumbling to himself, went into
the house. Alfred lifted the reins over the head of the horse
and, leading him to Madeline, slipped the knot over her arm and
placed the letter in her hand.

"Majesty, I'd accept the horse," he said. "Stewart is only a
cowboy now, and as tough as any I've known. But he comes of a
good family. He was a college man and a gentleman once. He went
to the bad out here, like so many fellows go, like I nearly did.
Then he had told me about his sister and mother. He cared a good
deal for them. I think he has been a source of unhappiness to
them. It was mostly when he was reminded of this in some way
that he'd get drunk. I have always stuck to him, and I would do
so yet if I had the chance. You can see Bill is heartbroken about
Danny Mains and Stewart. I think he rather hoped to get good
news. There's not much chance of them coming back now, at least
not in the case of Stewart. This giving up his horse means he's
going to join the rebel forces across the border. What wouldn't
I give to see that cowboy break loose on a bunch of Greasers!
Oh, damn the luck! I beg your pardon, Majesty. But I'm upset,
too. I'm sorry about Stewart. I liked him pretty well before he
thrashed that coyote of a sheriff, Pat Hawe, and afterward I
guess I liked him more. You read the letter, sister, and accept
the horse."

In silence Madeline bent her gaze from her brother's face to the
letter:

Friend Al,--I'm sending my horse down to you because I'm going
away and haven't the nerve to take him where he'd get hurt or
fall into strange hands.

If you think it's all right, why, give him to your sister with my
respects. But if you don't like the idea, Al, or if she won't
have him, then he's for you. I'm not forgetting your kindness to
me, even if I never showed it. And, Al, my horse has never felt a
quirt or a spur, and I'd like to think you'd never hurt him. I'm
hoping your sister will take him. She'll be good to him, and she
can afford to take care of him. And, while I'm waiting to be
plugged by a Greaser bullet, if I happen to have a picture in
mind of how she'll look upon my horse, why, man, it's not going
to make any difference to you. She needn't ever know it.
Between you and me, Al, don't let her or Flo ride alone over Don
Carlos's way. If I had time I could tell you something about that
slick Greaser. And tell your sister, if there's ever any reason
for her to run away from anybody when she's up on that roan, just
let her lean over and yell in his ear. She'll find herself
riding the wind. So long.

Gene Stewart.

Madeline thoughtfully folded the letter and murmured, "How he
must love his horse!"

"Well, I should say so," replied Alfred. "Flo will tell you.
She's the only person Gene ever let ride that horse, unless, as
Bill thinks, the little Mexican girl, Bonita, rode him out of El
Cajon the other night. Well, sister mine, how about it--will you
accept the horse?"

"Assuredly. And very happy indeed am I to get him. Al, you said,
I think, that Mr. Stewart named him after me--saw my nickname in
the New York paper?"

"Yes."

"Well, I will not change his name. But, Al, how shall I ever
climb up on him? He's taller than I am. What a giant of a
horse! Oh, look at him--he's nosing my hand. I really believe
he understood what I said. Al, did you ever see such a splendid
head and such beautiful eyes? They are so large and dark and
soft--and human. Oh, I am a fickle woman, for I am forgetting
White Stockings."

"I'll gamble he'll make you forget any other horse," said Alfred.
"You'll have to get on him from the porch."

As Madeline was not dressed for the saddle, she did not attempt
to mount.

"Come, Majesty--how strange that sounds!--we must get acquainted.
You have now a new owner, a very severe young woman who will
demand loyalty from you and obedience, and some day, after a
decent period, she will expect love."

Madeline led the horse to and fro, and was delighted with his
gentleness. She discovered that he did not need to be led. He
came at her call, followed her like a pet dog, rubbed his black
muzzle against her. Sometimes, at the turns in their walk, he
lifted his head and with ears forward looked up the trail by
which he had come, and beyond the foothills. He was looking over
the range. Some one was calling to him, perhaps, from beyond the
mountains. Madeline liked him the better for that memory, and
pitied the wayward cowboy who had parted with his only possession
for very love of it.

That afternoon when Alfred lifted Madeline to the back of the big
roan she felt high in the air.

"We'll have a run out to the mesa," said her brother, as he
mounted. "Keep a tight rein on him and ease up when you want him
to go faster. But don't yell in his ear unless you want Florence
and me to see you disappear on the horizon."

He trotted out of the yard, down by the corrals, to come out on
the edge of a gray, open flat that stretched several miles to the
slope of a mesa. Florence led, and Madeline saw that she rode
like a cowboy. Alfred drew on to her side, leaving Madeline in
the rear. Then the leading horses broke into a gallop. They
wanted to run, and Madeline felt with a thrill that she would
hardly be able to keep Majesty from running, even if she wanted
to. He sawed on the tight bridle as the others drew away and
broke from pace to gallop. Then Florence put her horse into a
run. Alfred turned and called to Madeline to come along.

"This will never do. They are running away from us," said
Madeline, and she eased up her hold on the bridle. Something
happened beneath her just then; she did not know at first exactly
what. As much as she had been on horseback she had never ridden
at a running gait. In New York it was not decorous or safe. So
when Majesty lowered and stretched and changed the stiff, jolting
gallop for a wonderful, smooth, gliding run it required Madeline
some moments to realize what was happening. It did not take long
for her to see the distance diminishing between her and her
companions. Still they had gotten a goodly start and were far
advanced. She felt the steady, even rush of the wind. It amazed
her to find how easily, comfortably she kept to the saddle. The
experience was new. The one fault she had heretofore found with
riding was the violent shaking-up. In this instance she
experienced nothing of that kind, no strain, no necessity to hold
on with a desperate awareness of work. She had never felt the
wind in her face, the whip of a horse's mane, the buoyant, level
spring of a tanning gait. It thrilled her, exhilarated her,
fired her blood. Suddenly she found herself alive, throbbing;
and, inspired by she knew not what, she loosened the bridle and,
leaning far forward, she cried, "Oh, you splendid fellow, run!"

She heard from under her a sudden quick clattering roar of hoofs,
and she swayed back with the wonderfully swift increase in
Majesty's speed. The wind stung her face, howled in her ears,
tore at her hair. The gray plain swept by on each side, and in
front seemed to be waving toward her. In her blurred sight
Florence and Alfred appeared to be coming back. But she saw
presently, upon nearer view, that Majesty was overhauling the
other horses, was going to pass them. Indeed, he did pass them,
shooting by so as almost to make them appear standing still. And
be ran on, not breaking his gait till he reached the steep side
of the mesa, where he slowed down and stopped.

"Glorious!" exclaimed Madeline. She was all in a blaze, and
every muscle and nerve of her body tingled and quivered. Her
hands, as she endeavored to put up the loosened strands of hair,
trembled and failed of their accustomed dexterity. Then she
faced about and waited for her companions.

Alfred reached her first, laughing, delighted, yet also a little
anxious.

"Holy smoke! But can't he run? Did he bolt on you?"

"No, I called in his ear," replied Madeline.

"So that was it. That's the woman of you, and forbidden fruit.
Flo said she'd do it the minute she was on him. Majesty, you can
ride. See if Flo doesn't say so."

The Western girl came up then with her pleasure bright in her
face.

"It was just great to see you. How your hair burned in the wind!
Al, she sure can ride. Oh, I'm so glad! I was a little afraid.
And that horse! Isn't he grand? Can't he run?"

Alfred led the way up the steep, zigzag trail to the top of the
mesa. Madeline saw a beautiful flat surface of short grass,
level as a floor. She uttered a little cry of wonder and
enthusiasm.

"Al, what a place for golf! This would be the finest links in
the world."

Well, I've thought of that myself," he replied. "The only
trouble would be--could anybody stop looking at the scenery long
enough to hit a ball? Majesty, look!"

And then it seemed that Madeline was confronted by a spectacle
too sublime and terrible for her gaze. The immensity of this
red-ridged, deep-gulfed world descending incalculable distances
refused to be grasped, and awed her,shocked her.

"Once, Majesty, when I first came out West, I was down and out--
determined to end it all," said Alfred. "And happened to climb
up here looking for a lonely place to die. When I saw that I
changed my mind."

Madeline was silent. She remained so during the ride around the
rim of the mesa and down the steep trail. This time Alfred and
Florence failed to tempt her into a race. She had been
awe-struck; she had been exalted she had been confounded; and she
recovered slowly without divining exactly what had come to her.

She reached the ranch-house far behind her companions, and at
supper-time was unusually thoughtful. Later, when they assembled
on the porch to watch the sunset, Stillwell's humorous
complainings inspired the inception of an idea which flashed up
in her mind swift as lightning. And then by listening
sympathetically she encouraged him to recite the troubles of a
poor cattleman. They were many and long and interesting, and
rather numbing to the life of her inspired idea.

Mr. Stillwell, could ranching here on a large scale, with
up-to-date methods, be made--well, not profitable, exactly, but
to pay--to run without loss?" she asked, determined to kill her
new-born idea at birth or else give it breath and hope of life.

"Wal, I reckon it could," he replied, with a short laugh. "It'd
sure be a money-maker. Why, with all my bad luck an' poor
equipment I've lived pretty well an' paid my debts an' haven't
really lost any money except the original outlay. I reckon
thet's sunk fer good."

"Would you sell--if some one would pay your price?"

"Miss Majesty, I'd jump at the chance. Yet somehow I'd hate to
leave hyar. I'd jest be fool enough to go sink the money in
another ranch."

"Would Don Carlos and these other Mexicans sell?"

"They sure would. The Don has been after me fer years, wantin'
to sell thet old rancho of his; an' these herders in the valley
with their stray cattle, they'd fall daid at sight of a little
money."

"Please tell me, Mr. Stillwell, exactly what you would do here if
you had unlimited means?" went on Madeline.

"Good Lud!" ejaculated the rancher, and started so he dropped his
pipe. Then with his clumsy huge fingers he refilled it,
relighted it, took a few long pulls, puffed great clouds of
smoke, and, squaring round, hands on his knees, he looked at
Madeline with piercing intentness. His hard face began to relax
and soften and wrinkle into a smile.

"Wal, Miss Majesty, it jest makes my old heart warm up to think
of sich a thing. I dreamed a lot when I first come hyar. What
would I do if I hed unlimited money? Listen. I'd buy out Don
Carlos an' the Greasers. I'd give a job to every good cowman in
this country. I'd make them prosper as I prospered myself. I'd
buy all the good horses on the ranges. I'd fence twenty thousand
acres of the best grazin'. I'd drill fer water in the valley.
I'd pipe water down from the mountains. I'd dam up that draw out
there. A mile-long dam from hill to hill would give me a big
lake, an' hevin' an eye fer beauty, I'd plant cottonwoods around
it. I'd fill that lake full of fish. I'd put in the biggest
field of alfalfa in the South-west. I'd plant fruit-trees an'
garden. I'd tear down them old corrals an' barns an' bunk-houses
to build new ones. I'd make this old rancho some comfortable an'
fine. I'd put in grass an' flowers all around an' bring young
pine-trees down from the mountains. An' when all thet was done
I'd sit in my chair an' smoke an' watch the cattle stringin' in
fer water an' stragglin' back into the valley. An' I see the
cowboys ridin' easy an' heah them singin' in their bunks. An'
thet red sun out there wouldn't set on a happier man in the world
than Bill Stillwell, last of the old cattlemen."

Madeline thanked the rancher, and then rather abruptly retired to
her room, where she felt no restraint to hide the force of that
wonderful idea, now full-grown and tenacious and alluring.

Upon the next day, late in the afternoon, she asked Alfred if it
would be safe for her to ride out to the mesa.

"I'll go with you," he said, gaily.

"Dear fellow, I want to go alone," she replied.

"Ah!" Alfred exclaimed, suddenly serious. He gave her just a
quick glance, then turned away. "Go ahead. I think it's safe.
I'll make it safe by sitting here with my glass and keeping an
eye on you. Be careful coming down the trail. Let the horse
pick his way. That's all."

She rode Majesty across the wide flat, up the zigzag trail,
across the beautiful grassy level to the far rim of the mesa, and
not till then did she lift her eyes to face the southwest.

Madeline looked from the gray valley at her feet to the blue
Sierra Madres, gold-tipped in the setting sun. Her vision
embraced in that glance distance and depth and glory hitherto
unrevealed to her. The gray valley sloped and widened to the
black sentinel Chiricahuas, and beyond was lost in a vast
corrugated sweep of earth, reddening down to the west, where a
golden blaze lifted the dark, rugged mountains into bold relief.
The scene had infinite beauty. But after Madeline's first swift,
all-embracing flash of enraptured eyes, thought of beauty passed
away. In that darkening desert there was something illimitable.
Madeline saw the hollow of a stupendous hand; she felt a mighty
hold upon her heart. Out of the endless space, out of silence
and desolation and mystery and age, came slow-changing colored
shadows, phantoms of peace, and they whispered to Madeline. They
whispered that it was a great, grim, immutable earth; that time
was eternity; that life was fleeting. They whispered for her to
be a woman; to love some one before it was too late; to love any
one, every one; to realize the need of work, and in doing it to
find happiness.

She rode back across the mesa and down the trail, and, once more
upon the flat, she called to the horse and made him run. His
spirit seemed to race with hers. The wind of his speed blew her
hair from its fastenings. When he thundered to a halt at the
porch steps Madeline, breathless and disheveled, alighted with
the mass of her hair tumbling around her.

Alfred met her, and his exclamation, and Florence's rapt eyes
shining on her face, and Stillwell's speechlessness made her
self-conscious. Laughing, she tried to put up the mass of hair.

"I must--look a--fright," she panted.

"Wal, you can say what you like," replied the old cattleman, "but
I know what I think."

Madeline strove to attain calmness.

"My hat--and my combs--went on the wind. I thought my hair would
go, too. . . . There is the evening star. . . . I think I am very
hungry."

And then she gave up trying to be calm, and likewise to fasten up
her hair, which fell again in a golden mass.

"Mr. Stillwell," she began, and paused, strangely aware of a
hurried note, a deeper ring in her voice. "Mr. Stillwell, I want
to buy your ranch--to engage you as my superintendent. I want to
buy Don Carlos's ranch and other property to the extent, say, of
fifty thousand acres. I want you to buy horses and cattle--in
short, to make all those improvements which you said you had so
long dreamed of. Then I have ideas of my own, in the development
of which I must have your advice and Alfred's. I intend to
better the condition of those poor Mexicans in the valley. I
intend to make life a little more worth living for them and for
the cowboys of this range. To-morrow we shall talk it all over,
plan all the business details."

Madeline turned from the huge, ever-widening smile that beamed
down upon her and held out her hands to her brother.

"Alfred, strange, is it not, my coming out to you? Nay, don't
smile. I hope I have found myself--my work--my happiness--here
under the light of that western star."

VII Her Majesty's Rancho

FIVE months brought all that Stillwell had dreamed of, and so
many more changes and improvements and innovations that it was as
if a magic touch had transformed the old ranch. Madeline and
Alfred and Florence had talked over a fitting name, and had
decided on one chosen by Madeline. But this instance was the
only one in the course of developments in which Madeline's wishes
were not compiled with. The cowboys named the new ranch "Her
Majesty's Rancho."  Stillwell said the names cowboys bestowed
were felicitous, and as unchangeable as the everlasting hills;
Florence went over to the enemy; and Alfred, laughing at
Madeline's protest, declared the cowboys had elected her queen of
the ranges, and that there was no help for it. So the name stood
"Her Majesty's Rancho."

The April sun shone down upon a slow-rising green knoll that
nestled in the lee of the foothills, and seemed to center bright
rays upon the long ranch-house, which gleamed snow-white from the
level summit. The grounds around the house bore no semblance to
Eastern lawns or parks; there had been no landscape-gardening;
Stillwell had just brought water and grass and flowers and plants
to the knoll-top, and there had left them, as it were, to follow
nature. His idea may have been crude, but the result was
beautiful. Under that hot sun and balmy air, with cool water
daily soaking into the rich soil, a green covering sprang into
life, and everywhere upon it, as if by magic, many colored
flowers rose in the sweet air. Pale wild flowers, lavender
daisies, fragile bluebells, white four-petaled lilies like
Eastern mayflowers, and golden poppies, deep sunset gold, color
of the West, bloomed in happy confusion. California roses,
crimson as blood, nodded heavy heads and trembled with the weight
of bees. Low down in bare places, isolated, open to the full
power of the sun, blazed the vermilion and magenta blossoms of
cactus plants.

Green slopes led all the way down to where new adobe barns and
sheds had been erected, and wide corrals stretched high-barred
fences down to the great squares of alfalfa gently inclining to
the gray of the valley. The bottom of a dammed-up hollow shone
brightly with its slowly increasing acreage of water, upon which
thousands of migratory wildfowl whirred and splashed and
squawked, as if reluctant to leave this cool, wet surprise so new
in the long desert journey to the northland. Quarters for the
cowboys--comfortable, roomy adobe houses that not even the lamest
cowboy dared describe as crampy bunks--stood in a row upon a long
bench of ground above the lake. And down to the edge of the
valley the cluster of Mexican habitations and the little church
showed the touch of the same renewing hand.

All that had been left of the old Spanish house which had been
Stillwell's home for so long was the bare, massive structure, and
some of this had been cut away for new doors and windows. Every
modern convenience, even to hot and cold running water and
acetylene light, had been installed; and the whole interior
painted and carpentered and furrished. The ideal sought had not
been luxury, but comfort. Every door into the patio looked out
upon dark, rich grass and sweet-faced flowers, and every window
looked down the green slopes.

Madeline's rooms occupied the west end of the building and
comprised four in number, all opening out upon the long porch.
There was a small room for her maid, another which she used as an
office, then her sleeping-apartment; and, lastly, the great light
chamber which she had liked so well upon first sight, and which
now, simply yet beautifully furnished and containing her favorite
books and pictures, she had come to love as she had never loved
any room at home. In the morning the fragrant, balmy air blew
the white curtains of the open windows; at noon the drowsy,
sultry quiet seemed to creep in for the siesta that was
characteristic of the country; in the afternoon the westering sun
peeped under the porch roof and painted the walls with gold bars
that slowly changed to red.

Madeline Hammond cherished a fancy that the transformation she
had wrought in the old Spanish house and in the people with whom
she had surrounded herself, great as that transformation had
been, was as nothing compared to the one wrought in herself. She
had found an object in life. She was busy, she worked with her
hands as well as mind, yet she seemed to have more time to read
and think and study and idle and dream than ever before. She had
seen her brother through his difficulties, on the road to all the
success and prosperity that he cared for. Madeline had been a
conscientious student of ranching and an apt pupil of Stillwell.
The old cattleman, in his simplicity, gave her the place in his
heart that was meant for the daughter he had never had. His
pride in her, Madeline thought, was beyond reason or belief or
words to tell. Under his guidance, sometimes accompanied by
Alfred and Florence, Madeline had ridden the ranges and had
studied the life and work of the cowboys. She had camped on the
open range, slept under the blinking stars, ridden forty miles a
day in the face of dust and wind. She had taken two wonderful
trips down into the desert--one trip to Chiricahua, and from
there across the waste of sand and rock and alkali and cactus to
the Mexican borderline; and the other through the Aravaipa
Valley, with its deep, red-walled canons and wild fastnesses.

This breaking-in, this training into Western ways, though she had
been a so-called outdoor girl, had required great effort and
severe pain; but the education, now past its grades, had become a
labor of love. She had perfect health, abounding spirits. She
was so active hat she had to train herself into taking the midday
siesta, a custom of the country and imperative during the hot
summer months. Sometimes she looked in her mirror and laughed
with sheer joy at sight of the lithe, audacious, brown-faced,
flashing-eyed creature reflected there. It was not so much joy
in her beauty as sheer joy of life. Eastern critics had been
wont to call her beautiful in those days when she had been pale
and slender and proud and cold. She laughed. If they could only
see her now! From the tip of her golden head to her feet he was
alive, pulsating, on fire.

Sometimes she thought of her parents, sister, friends, of how
they had persistently refused to believe she could or would stay
in the West. They were always asking her to come home. And when
she wrote, which was dutifully often, the last thing under the
sun that she was likely to mention was the change in her. She
wrote that she would return to her old home some time, of course,
for a visit; and letters such as this brought returns that amused
Madeline, sometimes saddened her. She meant to go back East for a
while, and after that once or twice every year. But the
initiative was a difficult step from which she shrank. Once
home, she would have to make explanations, and these would not be
understood. Her father's business had been such that he could
not leave it for the time required for a Western trip, or else,
according to his letter, he would have come for her. Mrs.
Hammond could not have been driven to cross the Hudson River; her
un-American idea of the wilderness westward was that Indians
still chased buffalo on the outskirts of Chicago. Madeline's
sister Helen had long been eager to come, as much from curiosity,
Madeline thought, as from sisterly regard. And at length
Madeline concluded that the proof of her breaking permanent ties
might better be seen by visiting relatives and friends before she
went back East. With that in mind she invited Helen to visit her
during the summer, and bring as many friends as she liked.

No slight task indeed was it to oversee the many business details
of Her Majesty's Rancho and to keep a record of them. Madeline
found the course of business training upon which her father had
insisted to be invaluable to her now. It helped her to
assimilate and arrange the practical details of cattle-raising as
put forth by the blunt Stillwell. She split up the great stock
of cattle into different herds, and when any of these were out
running upon the open range she had them closely watched. Part
of the time each herd was kept in an inclosed range, fed and
watered, and carefully handled by a big force of cowboys. She
employed three cowboy scouts whose sole duty was to ride the
ranges searching for stray, sick, or crippled cattle or
motherless calves, and to bring these in to be treated and
nursed. There were two cowboys whose business was to master a
pack of Russian stag-hounds and to hunt down the coyotes, wolves,
and lions that preyed upon the herds. The better and tamer milch
cows were separated from the ranging herds and kept in a pasture
adjoining the dairy. All branding was done in corrals, and
calves were weaned from mother-cows at the proper time to benefit
both. The old method of branding and classing, that had so
shocked Madeline, had been abandoned, and one had been
inaugurated whereby cattle and cowboys and horses were spared
brutality and injury.

Madeline established an extensive vegetable farm, and she planted
orchards. The climate was superior to that of California, and,
with abundant water, trees and plants and gardens flourished and
bloomed in a way wonderful to behold. It was with ever-increasing
pleasure that Madeline walked through acres of ground once bare,
now green and bright and fragrant. There were poultry-yards and
pig-pens and marshy quarters for ducks and geese. Here in the
farming section of the ranch Madeline found employment for the
little colony of Mexicans. Their lives had been as hard and
barren as the dry valley where they had lived. But as the valley
had been transformed by the soft, rich touch of water, so their
lives had been transformed by help and sympathy and work. The
children were wretched no more, and many that had been blind
could now see, and Madeline had become to them a new and blessed
virgin.

Madeline looked abroad over these lands and likened the change in
them and those who lived by them to the change in her heart. It
may have been fancy, but the sun seemed to be brighter, the sky
bluer, the wind sweeter. Certain it was that the deep green of
grass and garden was not fancy, nor the white and pink of
blossom, nor the blaze and perfume of flower, nor the sheen of
lake and the fluttering of new-born leaves. Where there had been
monotonous gray there was now vivid and changing color. Formerly
there had been silence both day and night; now during the sunny
hours there was music. The whistle of prancing stallions pealed
in from the grassy ridges. Innumerable birds had come and, like
the northward-journeying ducks, they had tarried to stay. The
song of meadow-lark and blackbird and robin, familiar to Madeline
from childhood, mingled with the new and strange heart-throbbing
song of mocking-bird and the piercing blast of the desert eagle
and the melancholy moan of turtle-dove.

One April morning Madeline sat in her office wrestling with a
problem. She had problems to solve every day. The majority of
these were concerned with the management of twenty-seven
incomprehensible cowboys. This particular problem involved
Ambrose Mills, who had eloped with her French maid, Christine.

Stillwell faced Madeline with a smile almost as huge as his bulk.

"Wal, Miss Majesty, we ketched them; but not before Padre Marcos
had married them. All thet speedin' in the autoomoobile was jest
a-scarin' of me to death fer nothin'. I tell you Link Stevens is
crazy about runnin' thet car. Link never hed no sense even with
a hoss. He ain't afraid of the devil hisself. If my hair hedn't
been white it 'd be white now. No more rides in thet thing fer
me! Wal, we ketched Ambrose an' the girl too late. But we
fetched them back, an' they're out there now, spoonin', sure
oblivious to their shameless conduct."

"Stillwell, what shall I say to Ambrose? How shall I punish him?
He has done wrong to deceive me. I never was so surprised in my
life. Christine did not seem to care any more for Ambrose than
for any of the other cowboys. What does my authority amount to?
I must do something. Stillwell, you must help me."

Whenever Madeline fell into a quandary she had to call upon the
old cattleman. No man ever held a position with greater pride
than Stillwell, but he had been put to tests that steeped him in
humility. Here he scratched his head in great perplexity.

"Dog-gone the luck! What's this elopin' bizness to do with
cattle-raisin'? I don't know nothin' but cattle. Miss Majesty,
it's amazin' strange what these cowboys hev come to. I never seen
no cowboys like these we've got hyar now. I don't know them any
more. They dress swell an' read books, an' some of them hev
actooly stopped cussin' an' drinkin'. I ain't sayin' all this is
against them. Why, now, they're jest the finest bunch of
cow-punchers I ever seen or dreamed of. But managin' them now is
beyond me. When cowboys begin to play thet game gol-lof an' run
off with French maids I reckon Bill Stillwell has got to resign."

"Stillwell! Oh, you will not leave me? What in the world would
I do?" exclaimed Madeline, in great anxiety.

"Wal, I sure won't leave you, Miss Majesty. No, I never'll do
thet. I'll run the cattle bizness fer you an' see after the
hosses an' other stock. But I've got to hev a foreman who can
handle this amazin' strange bunch of cowboys."

"You've tried half a dozen foremen. Try more until you find the
man who meets your requirements," said Madeline. "Never mind that
now. Tell me how to impress Ambrose--to make him an example, so
to  speak. I must have another maid. And I do not want a new
one carried off in this summary manner."

"Wal, if you fetch pretty maids out hyar you can't expect nothin'
else. Why, thet black-eyed little French girl, with her white
skin an' pretty airs an' smiles an' shrugs, she had the cowboys
crazy. It'll be wuss with the next one."

"Oh dear!" sighed Madeline.

"An' as fer impressin' Ambrose, I reckon I can tell you how to do
thet. Jest give it to him good an' say you're goin' to fire him.
That'll fix Ambrose, an' mebbe scare the other boys fer a spell."

"Very well, Stillwell, bring Ambrose in to see me, and tell
Christine to wait in my room."

"It was a handsome debonair, bright-eyed cowboy that came
tramping into Madeline's presence. His accustomed shyness and
awkwardness had disappeared in an excited manner. He was a happy
boy. He looked straight into Madeline's face as if he expected
her to wish him joy. And Madeline actually found that expression
trembling to her lips. She held it back until she could be
severe. But Madeline feared she would fail of much severity.
Something warm and sweet, like a fragrance, had entered the room
with Ambrose.

"Ambrose, what have you done?" she asked. "Miss Hammond, I've
been and gone and got married," replied Ambrose, his words
tumbling over one another. His eyes snapped, and there was a
kind of glow upon his clean-shaven brown cheek. "I've stole a
march on the other boys. There was Frank Slade pushin' me close,
and I was havin' some runnin' to keep Jim Bell back in my dust.
Even old man Nels made eyes at Christine! So I wasn't goin' to
take any chances. I just packed her off to El Cajon and married
her."

"Oh, so I heard," said Madeline, slowly, as she watched him.
"Ambrose, do you--love her?"

He reddened under her clear gaze, dropped his head, and fumbled
with his new sombrero, and there was a catch in his breath.
Madeline saw his powerful brown hand tremble. It affected her
strangely that this stalwart cowboy, who could rope and throw and
tie a wild steer in less than one minute, should tremble at a
mere question. Suddenly he raised his head, and at the beautiful
blase of his eyes Madeline turned her own away.

"Yes, Miss Hammond, I love her," he said. "I think I love her in
the way you're askin' about. I know the first time I saw her I
thought how wonderful it'd be to have a girl like that for my
wife. It's all been so strange--her comin' an' how she made me
feel. Sure I never knew many girls, and I haven't seen any girls
at all for years. But when she came! A girl makes a wonderful
difference in a man's feelin's and thoughts. I guess I never had
any before. Leastways, none like I have now. My--it--well, I
guess I have a little understandin' now of Padre Marcos's
blessin'."

"Ambrose, have you nothing to say to me?" asked Madeline.

"I'm sure sorry I didn't have time to tell you. But I was in
some hurry."

"What did you intend to do? Where were you going when Stillwell
found you?"

"We'd just been married. I hadn't thought of anything after
that. Suppose I'd have rustled back to my job. I'll sure have
to work now and save my money."

"Oh, well, Ambrose, I am glad you realize your responsibilities.
Do you earn enough--is your pay sufficient to keep a wife?"

"Sure it is! Why, Miss Hammond, I never before earned half the
salary I'm gettin' now. It's some fine to work for you. I'm
goin' to fire the boys out of my bunk-house and fix it up for
Christine and me. Say, won't they be jealous?"

"Ambrose, I--I congratulate you. I wish you joy," said Madeline.
"I--I shall make Christine a little wedding-present. I want to
talk to her for a few moments. You may go now."

It would have been impossible for Madeline to say one severe word
to that happy cowboy. She experienced difficulty in hiding her
own happiness at the turn of events. Curiosity and interest
mingled with her pleasure when she called to Christine.

"Mrs. Ambrose Mills, please come in."

No sound came from the other room.

"I should like very much to see the bride," went on Madeline.

Still there was no stir or reply

"Christine!" called Madeline.

Then it was as if a little whirlwind of flying feet and
entreating hands and beseeching eyes blew in upon Madeline.
Christine was small, graceful, plump, with very white skin and
very dark hair. She had been Madeline's favorite maid for years
and there was sincere affection between the two. Whatever had
been the blissful ignorance of Ambrose, it was manifestly certain
that Christine knew how she had transgressed. Her fear and
remorse and appeal for forgiveness were poured out in an
incoherent storm. Plain it was that the little French maid had
been overwhelmed. It was only after Madeline had taken the
emotional girl in her arms and had forgiven and soothed her that
her part in the elopement became clear. Christine was in a maze.
But gradually, as she talked and saw that she was forgiven,
calmness came in some degree, and with it a story which amused
yet shocked Madeline. The unmistakable, shy, marveling love,
scarcely realized by Christine, gave Madeline relief and joy. If
Christine loved Ambrose there was no harm done. Watching the
girl's eyes, wonderful with their changes of thought, listening
to her attempts to explain what it was evident she did not
understand, Madeline gathered that if ever a caveman had taken
unto himself a wife, if ever a barbarian had carried off a Sabine
woman, then Ambrose Mills had acted with the violence of such
ancient forebears. Just how it all happened seemed to be beyond
Christine.

"He say he love me," repeated the girl, in a kind of rapt awe.
"He ask me to marry him--he kees me--he hug me--he lift me on ze
horse--he ride with me all night--he marry me."

And she exhibited a ring on the third finger of her left hand.
Madeline saw that, whatever had been the state of Christine's
feeling for Ambrose before this marriage, she loved him now. She
had been taken forcibly, but she was won.

After Christine had gone, comforted and betraying her shy
eagerness to get back to Ambrose, Madeline was haunted by the
look in the girl's eyes, and her words. Assuredly the spell of
romance was on this sunny land. For Madeline there was a
nameless charm, a nameless thrill combating her sense of the
violence and unfitness of Ambrose's wooing. Something, she knew
not what, took arms against her intellectual arraignment of the
cowboy's method of getting himself a wife. He had said straight
out that he loved the girl--he had asked her to marry him--he
kissed her--he hugged her--he lifted her upon his horse--he rode
away with her through the night--and he married her. In whatever
light Madeline reviewed this thing she always came back to her
first natural impression; it thrilled her, charmed her. It went
against all the precepts of her training; nevertheless, it was
somehow splendid and beautiful. She imagined it stripped another
artificial scale from her over-sophisticated eyes.

Scarcely had she settled again to the task on her desk when
Stillwell's heavy tread across the porch interrupted her. This
time when he entered he wore a look that bordered upon the
hysterical; it was difficult to tell whether he was trying to
suppress grief or glee.

"Miss Majesty, there's another amazin' strange thing sprung on
me. Hyars Jim Bell come to see you, an', when I taxed him,
sayin' you was tolerable busy, he up an' says he was hungry an'
be ain't a-goin' to eat any more bread made in a wash-basin!
Says he'll starve first. Says Nels hed the gang over to big bunk
an' feasted them on bread you taught him how to make in some
new-fangled bucket-machine with a crank. Jim says thet bread
beat any cake he ever eat, an' he wants you to show him how to
make some. Now, Miss Majesty, as superintendent of this ranch I
ought to know what's goin' on. Mebbe Jim is jest a-joshin' me.
Mebbe he's gone clean dotty. Mebbe I hev. An' beggin' your
pardon, I want to know if there's any truth in what Jim says Nels
says."

Whereupon it became necessary for Madeline to stifle her mirth
and to inform the sadly perplexed old cattleman that she had
received from the East a patent bread-mixer, and in view of the
fact that her household women had taken fright at the
contrivance, she had essayed to operate it herself. This had
turned out to be so simple, so saving of time and energy and
flour, so much more cleanly than the old method of mixing dough
with the hands, and particularly it had resulted in such good
bread, that Madeline had been pleased. Immediately she ordered
more of the bread-mixers. One day she had happened upon Nels
making biscuit dough in his wash-basin, and she had delicately
and considerately introduced to him the idea of her new method.
Nels, it appeared, had a great reputation as a bread-maker, and
he was proud of it. Moreover, he was skeptical of any clap-trap
thing with wheels and cranks. He consented, however, to let her
show how the thing worked and to sample some of the bread. To
that end she had him come up to the house, where she won him
over. Stillwell laughed loud and long.

"Wal, wal, wal!" he exclaimed, at length. "Thet's fine, an' it's
powerful funny. Mebbe you don't see how funny? Wal, Nels has
jest been lordin' it over the boys about how you showed him, an'
now you'll hev to show every last cowboy on the place the same
thing. Cowboys are the jealousest kind of fellers. They're all
crazy about you, anyway. Take Jim out hyar. Why, thet lazy
cowpuncher jest never would make bread. He's notorious fer
shirkin' his share of the grub deal. I've knowed Jim to trade
off washin' the pots an' pans fer a lonely watch on a rainy
night. All he wants is to see you show him the same as Nels is
crowin' over. Then he'll crow over his bunkie, Frank Slade, an'
then Frank'll get lonely to know all about this wonderful
bread-machine. Cowboys are amazin' strange critters, Miss
Majesty. An' now thet you've begun with them this way, you'll
hev to keep it up. I will say I never seen such a bunch to work.
You've sure put heart in them."

"Indeed, Stillwell, I am glad to hear that," replied Madeline.
"And I shall be pleased to teach them all. But may I not have
them all up here at once--at least those off duty?"

"Wal, I reckon you can't onless you want to hev them scrappin',"
rejoined Stillwell, dryly. "What you've got on your hands now,
Miss Majesty, is to let 'em come one by one, an' make each cowboy
think you're takin' more especial pleasure in showin' him than
the feller who came before him. Then mebbe we can go on with
cattle-raisin'."

Madeline protested, and Stillwell held inexorably to what he said
was wisdom. Several times Madeline had gone against his advice,
to her utter discomfiture and rout. She dared not risk it again,
and resigned herself grace-fully and with subdued merriment to
her task. Jim Bell was ushered into the great, light, spotless
kitchen, where presently Madeline appeared to put on an apron and
roll up her sleeves. She explained the use of the several pieces
of aluminum that made up the bread-mixer and fastened the bucket
to the table-shelf. Jim's life might have depended upon this
lesson, judging from his absorbed manner and his desire to have
things explained over and over, especially the turning of the
crank. When Madeline had to take Jim's hand three times to show
him the simple mechanism and then he did not understand she began
to have faint misgivings as to his absolute sincerity. She
guessed that as long as she touched Jim's hand he never would
understand. Then as she began to measure out flour and milk and
lard and salt and yeast she saw with despair that Jim was not
looking at the ingredients, was not paying the slightest
attention to them. His eyes were covertly upon her.

"Jim, I am not sure about you," said Madeline, severely. "How
can you learn to make bread if you do not watch me mix it?"

"I am a-watchin' you," replied Jim, innocently.

Finally Madeline sent the cowboy on his way rejoicing with the
bread-mixer under his arm. Next morning, true to Stillwell's
prophecy, Frank Slade, Jim's bunkmate, presented himself
cheerfully to Madeline and unbosomed himself of a long-deferred
and persistent desire to relieve his overworked comrade of some
of the house-keeping in their bunk.

"Miss Hammond," said Frank, "Jim's orful kind wantin' to do it
all hisself. But he ain't very bright, an' I didn't believe him.
You see, I'm from Missouri, an, you'll have to show me."

For a whole week Madeline held clinics where she expounded the
scientific method of modern bread-making. She got a good deal of
enjoyment out of her lectures. What boys these great hulking
fellows were! She saw through their simple ruses. Some of them
were grave as deacons; others wore expressions important enough
to have fitted the faces of statesmen signing government
treaties. These cowboys were children; they needed to be
governed; but in order to govern them they had to be humored. A
more light-hearted, fun-loving crowd of boys could not have been
found. And they were grown men. Stillwell explained that the
exuberance of spirits lay in the difference in their fortunes.
Twenty-seven cowboys, in relays of nine, worked eight hours a
day. That had never been heard of before in the West. Stillwell
declared that cowboys from all points of the compass would head
their horses toward Her Majesty's Rancho.

VIII El Capitan

Stillwell's interest in the revolution across the Mexican line
had manifestly increased with the news that Gene Stewart had
achieved distinction with the rebel forces. Thereafter the old
cattleman sent for El Paso and Douglas newspapers, wrote to
ranchmen he knew on the big bend of the Rio Grande, and he would
talk indefinitely to any one who would listen to him. There was
not any possibility of Stillwell's friends at the ranch
forgetting his favorite cowboy. Stillwell always prefaced his
eulogy with an apologetic statement that Stewart had gone to the
bad. Madeline liked to listen to him, though she was not always
sure which news was authentic and which imagination.

There appeared to be no doubt, however, that the cowboy had
performed some daring feats for the rebels. Madeline found his
name mentioned in several of the border papers. When the rebels
under Madero stormed and captured the city of Juarez, Stewart did
fighting that won him the name of El Capitan. This battle
apparently ended the revolution. The capitulation of President
Diaz followed shortly, and there was a feeling of relief among
ranchers on the border from Texas to California. Nothing more was
heard of Gene Stewart until April, when a report reached
Stillwell that the cowboy had arrived in El Cajon, evidently
hunting trouble. The old cattleman saddled a horse and started
post-haste for town. In two days he returned, depressed in
spirit. Madeline happened to be present when Stillwell talked to
Alfred.

"I got there too late, Al," said the cattleman. "Gene was gone.
An' what do you think of this? Danny Mains hed jest left with a
couple of burros packed. I couldn't find what way he went, but
I'm bettin' he hit the Peloncillo trail."

"Danny will show up some day," replied Alfred. "What did you
learn about Stewart? Maybe he left with Danny."

"Not much," said Stillwell, shortly. "Gene's hell-bent fer
election! No mountains fer him."

"Well tell us about him."

Stillwell wiped his sweaty brow and squared himself to talk.

"Wal, it's sure amazin' strange about Gene. Its got me locoed.
He arrived in El Cajon a week or so ago. He was trained down
like as if he'd been ridin' the range all winter. He hed plenty
of money--Mex, they said. An' all the Greasers was crazy about
him. Called him El Capitan. He got drunk an' went roarin' round
fer Pat Hawe. You remember that Greaser who was plugged last
October--the night Miss Majesty arrived? Wal, he's daid. He's
daid, an' people says thet Pat is a-goin' to lay thet killin'
onto Gene. I reckon thet's jest talk, though Pat is mean enough
to do it, if he hed the nerve. Anyway, if he was in El Cajon he
kept mighty much to hisself. Gene walked up an' down, up an'
down, all day an' night, lookin' fer Pat. But he didn't find
him. An', of course, he kept gettin' drunker. He jest got plumb
bad. He made lots of trouble, but there wasn't no gun-play.
Mebbe thet made him sore, so he went an' licked Flo's
brother-in-law. Thet wasn't so bad. Jack sure needed a good
lickin'. Wal, then Gene met Danny an' tried to get Danny drunk.
An' he couldn't! What do you think of that? Danny hedn't been
drinkin'--wouldn't touch a drop. I'm sure glad of thet, but it's
amazin' strange. Why, Danny was a fish fer red liquor. I guess
he an' Gene had some pretty hard words, though I'm not sure about
thet. Anyway, Gene went down to the railroad an' he got on an
engine, an' he was in the engine when it pulled out. Lord, I
hope he doesn't hold up the train! If he gets gay over in
Arizona he'll go to the pen at Yuma. An' thet pen is a graveyard
fer cowboys. I wired to agents along the railroad to look out
fer Stewart, an' to wire back to me if he's located."

"Suppose you do find him, Stillwell, what can you do?" inquired
Alfred.

The old man nodded gloomily.

"I straightened him up once. Mebbe I can do it again." Then,
brightening somewhat, be turned to Madeline. "I jest hed an
idee, Miss Majesty. If I can get him, Gene Steward is the cowboy
I want fer my foreman. He can manage this bunch of cow-punchers
thet are drivin' me dotty. What's more, since he's fought fer
the rebels an' got that name El Capitan, all the Greasers in the
country will kneel to him. Now, Miss Majesty, we hevn't got rid
of Don Carlos an' his vaqueros yet. To be sure, he sold you his
house an' ranch an' stock. But you remember nothin' was put in
black and white about when he should get out. An' Don Carlos
ain't gettin' out. I don't like the looks of things a little
bit. I'll tell you now thet Don Carlos knows somethin' about the
cattle I lost, an' thet you've been losin' right along. Thet
Greaser is hand an' glove with the rebels. I'm willin' to gamble
thet when he does get out he an' his vaqueros will make another
one of the bands of guerrillas thet are harassin' the border.
This revolution ain't over' yet. It's jest commenced. An' all
these gangs of outlaws are goin' to take advantage of it. We'll
see some old times, mebbe. Wal, I need Gene Stewart. I need him
bad. Will you let me hire him, Miss Majesty, if I can get him
straightened up?"

The old cattleman ended huskily.

"Stillwell, by all means find Stewart, and do not wait to
straighten him up. Bring him to the ranch," replied Madeline.

Thanking her, Stillwell led his horse away.

"Strange how he loves that cowboy!" murmured Madeline.

"Not so strange, Majesty," replied her brother. "Not when you
know. Stewart has been with Stillwell on some hard trips into
the desert alone. There's no middle course of feeling between
men facing death in the desert. Either hey hate each other or
love each other. I don't know, but I imagine Stewart did
something for Stillwell--saved us life, perhaps. Besides,
Stewart's a lovable chap when he's going straight. I hope
Stillwell brings him back. We do need him, Majesty. He's a born
leader. Once I saw him ride into a bunch of Mexicans whom we
suspected of rustling. It was fine to see him. Well, I'm sorry
to tell you that we are worried about Don Carlos. Some of his
vaqueros came into my yard the other day when I had left Flo
alone. She had a bad scare. These vaqueros have been different
since Don Carlos sold the ranch. For that matter, I never would
have trusted a white woman alone with them. But they are bolder
now. Something's in the wind. They've got assurance. They can
ride off any night and cross the border."

During the succeeding week Madeline discovered that a good deal
of her sympathy for Stillwell in his hunt for the reckless
Stewart had insensibly grown to be sympathy for the cowboy. It
was rather a paradox, she thought, that opposed to the continual
reports of Stewart's wildness as he caroused from town to town
were the continual expressions of good will and faith and hope
universally given out by those near her at the ranch. Stillwell
loved the cowboy; Florence was fond of him; Alfred liked and
admired him, pitied him; the cowboys swore their regard for him
the more he disgraced himself. The Mexicans called him El Gran
Capitan. Madeline's personal opinion of Stewart had not changed
in the least since the night it had been formed. But certain
attributes of his, not clearly defined in her mind, and the gift
of his beautiful horse, his valor with the fighting rebels, and
all this strange regard for him, especially that of her brother,
made her exceedingly regret the cowboy's present behavior.

Meanwhile Stillwell was so earnest and zealous that one not
familiar with the situation would have believed he was trying to
find and reclaim his own son. He made several trips to little
stations in the valley, and from these he returned with a gloomy
face. Madeline got the details from Alfred. Stewart was going
from bad to worse--drunk, disorderly, savage, sure to land in the
penitentiary. Then came a report that hurried Stillwell off to
Rodeo. He returned on the third day, a crushed man. He bad been
so bitterly hurt that no one, not even Madeline, could get out of
him what had happened. He admitted finding Stewart, failing to
influence him; and when the old cattleman got so far he turned
purple in the face and talked to himself, as if dazed: "But Gene
was drunk. He was drunk, or he couldn't hev treated old Bill
like thet!"

Madeline was stirred with an anger toward the brutal cowboy that
was as strong as her sorrow for the loyal old cattleman. And it
was when Stillwell gave up that she resolved to take a hand. The
persistent faith of Stillwell, his pathetic excuses in the face
of what must have been Stewart's violence, perhaps baseness,
actuated her powerfully, gave her new insight into human nature.
She honored a faith that remained unshaken. And the strange
thought came to her that Stewart must somehow be worthy of such a
faith, or he never could have inspired it. Madeline discovered
that she wanted to believe that somewhere deep down in the most
depraved and sinful wretch upon earth there was some grain of
good. She yearned to have the faith in human nature that
Stillwell had in Stewart.

She sent Nels, mounted upon his own horse, and leading Majesty,
to Rodeo in search of Stewart. Nels had instructions to bring
Stewart back to the ranch. In due time Nels returned, leading
the roan without a rider.

"Yep, I shore found him," replied Nels, when questioned. "Found
him half sobered up. He'd been in a scrap, an' somebody hed put
him to sleep, I guess. Wal, when he seen thet roan hoss he let
out a yell an' grabbed him round the neck. The hoss knowed him,
all right. Then Gene hugged the hoss an' cried--cried like--I
never seen no one who cried like he did. I waited awhile, an'
was jest goin' to say somethin' to him when he turned on me
red-eyed, mad as fire. 'Nels,' he said, 'I care a hell of a lot
fer thet boss, an' I liked you pretty well, but if you don't take
him away quick I'll shoot you both.'  Wal, I lit out. I didn't
even git to say howdy to him."

Nels, you think it useless--any attempt to see him--persuade
him?" asked Madeline.

"I shore do, Miss Hammond," replied Nels, gravely. "I've seen a
few sun-blinded an' locoed an' snake-poisoned an' skunk-bitten
cow-punchers in my day, but Gene Stewart beats 'em all. He's
shore runnin' wild fer the divide."

Madeline dismissed Nels, but before he got out of earshot she
heard him speak to Stillwell, who awaited him on the porch.

"Bill, put this in your pipe an' smoke it--none of them scraps
Gene has hed was over a woman! It used to be thet when he was
drank he'd scrap over every pretty Greaser girl he'd run across.
Thet's why Pat Hawe thinks Gene plugged the strange vaquero who
was with little Bonita thet night last fall. Wal, Gene's
scrappin' now jest to git shot up hisself, for some reason thet
only God Almighty knows."

Nels's story of how Stewart wept over his horse influenced
Madeline powerfully. Her next move was to persuade Alfred to see
if he could not do better with this doggedly bent cowboy. Alfred
needed only a word of persuasion, for he said he had considered
going to Rodeo of his own accord. He went, and returned alone.

"Majesty, I can't explain Stewart's singular actions," said
Alfred. "I saw him, talked with him. He knew me, but nothing I
said appeared to get to him. He has changed terribly. I fancy
his once magnificent strength is breaking. It--it actually hurt
me to look at him. I couldn't have fetched him back here--not as
he is now. I heard all about him, and if he isn't downright out
of his mind he's hell-bent, as Bill says, on getting killed.
Some of his escapades are--are not for your ears. Bill did all
any man could do for another. We've all done our best for
Stewart. If you'd been given a chance perhaps you could have
saved him. But it's too late. Put it out of mind now, dear."

Madeline, however, did not forget nor give it up. If she had
forgotten or surrendered, she felt that she would have been
relinquishing infinitely more than hope to aid one ruined man.
But she was at a loss to know what further steps to take. Days
passed, and each one brought additional gossip of Stewart's
headlong career toward the Yuma penitentiary. For he had crossed
the line into Cochise County, Arizona, where sheriffs kept a
stricter observance of law. Finally a letter came from a friend
of Nels's in Chiricahua saying that Stewart had been hurt in a
brawl there. His hurt was not serious, but it would probably
keep him quiet long enough to get sober, and this opportunity,
Nels's informant said, would be a good one for Stewart's friends
to take him home before he got locked up. This epistle inclosed a
letter to Stewart from his sister. Evidently, it had been found
upon him. It told a story of illness and made an appeal for aid.
Nels's friend forwarded this letter without Stewart's knowledge,
thinking Stillwell might care to help Stewart's family. Stewart
had no money, he said.

The sister's letter found its way to Madeline. She read it,
tears in her eyes. It told Madeline much more than its brief
story of illness and poverty and wonder why Gene had not written
home for so long. It told of motherly love, sisterly love,
brotherly love--dear family ties that had not been broken. It
spoke of pride in this El Capitan brother who had become famous.
It was signed "your loving sister Letty."

Not improbably, Madeline revolved in mind, this letter was one
reason for Stewart's headstrong, long-continued abasement. It
had been received too late--after he had squandered the money
that would have meant so much to mother and sister. Be that as
it might, Madeline immediately sent a bank-draft to Stewart's
sister with a letter explaining that the money was drawn in
advance on Stewart's salary. This done, she impulsively
determined to go to Chiricahua herself.

The horseback-rides Madeline had taken to this little Arizona
hamlet had tried her endurance to the utmost; but the journey by
automobile, except for some rocky bits of road and sandy
stretches, was comfortable, and a matter of only a few hours.
The big touring-car was still a kind of seventh wonder to the
Mexicans and cowboys; not that automobiles were very new and
strange, but because this one was such an enormous machine and
capable of greater speed than an express-train. The chauffeur
who had arrived with the car found his situation among the
jealous cowboys somewhat far removed from a bed of roses. He had
been induced to remain long enough to teach the operating and
mechanical technique of the car. And choice fell upon Link
Stevens, for the simple reason that of all the cowboys he was the
only one with any knack for mechanics. Now Link had been a
hard-riding, hard-driving cowboy, and that winter he had
sustained an injury to his leg, caused by a bad fall, and was
unable to sit his horse. This had been gall and wormwood to him.
But when the big white automobile came and he was elected to
drive it, life was once more worth living for him. But all the
other cowboys regarded Link and his machine as some correlated
species of demon. They were deathly afraid of both.

It was for this reason that Nels, when Madeline asked him to
accompany her to Chiricahua, replied, reluctantly, that he would
rather follow on his horse. However, she prevailed over his
hesitancy, and with Florence also in the car they set out. For
miles and miles the valley road was smooth, hard-packed, and
slightly downhill. And when speeding was perfectly safe,
Madeline was not averse to it. The grassy plain sailed backward
in gray sheets, and the little dot in the valley grew larger and
larger. From time to time Link glanced round at unhappy Nels,
whose eyes were wild and whose hands clutched his seat. While
the car was crossing the sandy and rocky places, going slowly,
Nels appeared to breathe easier. And when it stopped in the wide,
dusty street of Chiricahua Nels gladly tumbled out.

"Nels, we shall wait here in the car while you find Stewart,"
said Madeline.

"Miss Hammond, I reckon Gene'll run when he sees us, if he's able
to run," replied Nels. "Wal, I'll go find him an' make up my
mind then what we'd better do."

Nels crossed the railroad track and disappeared behind the low,
flat houses. After a little time he reappeared and hurried up to
the car. Madeline felt his gray gaze searching her face.

"Miss Hammond, I found him," said Nels. "He was sleepin'. I
woke him. He's sober an' not bad hurt; but I don't believe you
ought to see him. Mebbe Florence -"

"Nels, I want to see him myself. Why not? What did he say when
you told him I was here?"

"Shore I didn't tell him that. I jest says, 'Hullo, Gene!' an'
he says, 'My Gawd! Nels! mebbe I ain't glad to see a human
bein'.'  He asked me who was with me, an' I told him Link an'
some friends. I said I'd fetch them in. He hollered at thet.
But I went, anyway. Now, if you really will see him, Miss
Hammond, it's a good chance. But shore it's a touchy matter, an'
you'll be some sick at sight of him. He's layin' in a Greaser
hole over here. Likely the Greasers hev been kind to him. But
they're shore a poor lot."

Madeline did not hesitate a moment.

"Thank you, Nels. Take me at once. Come, Florence."

They left the car, now surrounded by gaping-eyed Mexican
children, and crossed the dusty space to a narrow lane between
red adobe walls. Passing by several houses, Nels stopped at the
door of what appeared to be an alleyway leading back. I was
filthy.

"He's in there, around thet first corner. It's a patio, open an'
sunny. An', Miss Hammond, if you don't mind, I'll wait here for
you. I reckon Gene wouldn't like any fellers around when he sees
you girls."

It was that which made Madeline hesitate then and go forward
slowly. She had given no thought at all to what Stewart might
feel when suddenly surprised by her presence.

"Florence, you wait also," said Madeline, at the doorway, and
turned in alone.

And she had stepped into a broken-down patio littered with
alfalfa straw and debris, all clear in the sunlight. Upon a
bench, back toward her, sat a man looking out through the rents
in the broken wall. He had not heard her. The place was not
quite so filthy and stifling as the passages Madeline had come
through to get there. Then she saw that it had been used as a
corral. A rat ran boldly across the dirt floor. The air swarmed
with flies, which the man brushed at with weary hand. Madeline
did not recognize Stewart. The side of his face exposed to her
gaze was black, bruised, bearded. His clothes were ragged and
soiled. There were bits of alfalfa in his hair. His shoulders
sagged. He made a wretched and hopeless figure sitting there.
Madeline divined something of why Nels shrank from being present.

"Mr. Stewart. It is I, Miss Hammond, come to see you," she said.

He grew suddenly perfectly motionless, as if he had been changed
to stone. She repeated her greeting.

His body jerked. He moved violently as if instinctively to turn
and face this intruder; but a more violent movement checked him.

Madeline waited. How singular that this ruined cowboy had pride
which kept him from showing his face! And was it not shame more
than pride?

"Mr. Stewart, I have come to talk with you, if you will let me."

"Go away," he muttered.

"Mr. Stewart!" she began, with involuntary hauteur. But instantly
she corrected herself, became deliberate and cool, for she saw
that she might fail to be even heard by this man. "I have come
to help you. Will you let me?"

"For God's sake! You--you--" he choked over the words. "Go
away!"

"Stewart, perhaps it was for God's sake that I came," said
Madeline, gently. "Surely it was for yours--and your sister's -"
Madeline bit her tongue, for she had not meant to betray her
knowledge of Letty.

He groaned, and, staggering up to the broken wall, he leaned
there with his face hidden. Madeline reflected that perhaps the
slip of speech had been well.

"Stewart, please let me say what I have to say?"

He was silent. And she gathered courage and inspiration.

"Stillwell is deeply hurt, deeply grieved that he could not turn
you back from this--this fatal course. My brother is also. They
wanted to help you. And so do I. I have come, thinking somehow
I might succeed where they have failed. Nels brought your
sister's letter. I--I read it. I was only the more determined
to try to help you, and indirectly help your mother and Letty.
Stewart, we want you to come to the ranch. Stillwell needs you
for his foreman. The position is open to you, and you can name
your salary. Both Al and Stillwell are worried about Don Carlos,
the vaqueros, and the raids down along the border. My cowboys
are without a capable leader. Will you come?"

"No," he answered.

"But Stillwell wants you so badly."

"No."

"Stewart, I want you to come."

"No."

His replies had been hoarse, loud, furious. They disconcerted
Madeline, and she paused, trying to think of a way to proceed.
Stewart staggered away from the wall, and, falling upon the
bench, he hid his face in his hands. All his motions, like his
speech, had been violent.

"Will you please go away?" he asked.

"Stewart, certainly I cannot remain here longer if you insist
upon my going. But why not listen to me when I want so much to
help you? Why?"

"I'm a damned blackguard," he burst out. "But I was a gentleman
once, and I'm not so low that I can stand for you seeing me
here."

"When I made up my mind to help you I made it up to see you
wherever you were. Stewart, come away, come back with us to the
ranch. You are in a bad condition now. Everything looks black
to you. But that will pass. When you are among friends again
you will get well. You will he your old self. The very fact that
you were once a gentleman, that you come of good family, makes
you owe so much more to yourself. Why, Stewart, think how young
you are! It is a shame to waste your life. Come back with me."

"Miss Hammond, this was my last plunge," he replied,
despondently. "It's too late."

"Oh no, it is not so bad as that."

"It's too late."

"At least make an effort, Stewart. Try!"

"No. There's no use. I'm done for. Please leave me--thank you
for -"

He had been savage, then sullen, and now he was grim. Madeline
all but lost power to resist his strange, deadly, cold finality.
No doubt he knew he was doomed. Yet something halted her--held
her even as she took a backward step. And she became conscious
of a subtle change in her own feeling. She had come into that
squalid hole, Madeline Hammond, earnest enough, kind enough in
her own intentions; but she had been almost imperious--a woman
habitually, proudly used to being obeyed. She divined that all
the pride, blue blood, wealth, culture, distinction, all the
impersonal condescending persuasion, all the fatuous philanthropy
on earth would not avail to turn this man a single hair's-breadth
from his downward career to destruction. Her coming had terribly
augmented his bitter hate of himself. She was going to fail to
help him. She experienced a sensation of impotence that amounted
almost to distress.  The situation assumed a tragic keenness.
She had set forth to reverse the tide of a wild cowboy's
fortunes; she faced the swift wasting of his life, the damnation
of his soul. The subtle consciousness of change in her was the
birth of that faith she had revered in Stillwell. And all at once
she became merely a woman, brave and sweet and indomitable.

"Stewart, look at me," she said.

He shuddered. She advanced and laid a hand on his bent shoulder.
Under the light touch he appeared to sink.

"Look at me," she repeated.

But he could not lift his head. He was abject, crushed. He
dared not show his swollen, blackened face. His fierce, cramped
posture revealed more than his features might have shown; it
betrayed the torturing shame of a man of pride and passion, a man
who had been confronted in his degradation by the woman he had
dared to enshrine in his heart. It betrayed his love.

"Listen, then," went on Madeline, and her voice was unsteady.
"Listen to me, Stewart. The greatest men are those who have
fallen deepest into the mire, sinned most, suffered most, and
then have fought their evil natures and conquered. I think you
can shake off this desperate mood and be a man."

"No!" he cried.

"Listen to me again. Somehow I know you're worthy of Stillwell's
love. Will you come back with us--for his sake?"

"No. It's too late, I tell you."

"Stewart, the best thing in life is faith in human nature. I
have faith in you. I believe yen are worth it."

"You're only kind and good--saying that. You can't mean it."

"I mean it with all my heart," she replied, a sudden rich warmth
suffusing her body as she saw the first sign of his softening.
"Will you come back--if not for your own sake or Stillwell's--
then for mine?"

"What am I to such a woman as you?"

"A man in trouble, Stewart. But I have come to help you, to show
my faith in you."

"If I believed that I might try," he said.

"Listen," she began, softly, hurriedly. "My word is not lightly
given. Let it prove my faith in you. Look at me now and say you
will come."

He heaved up his big frame as if trying to cast off a giant's
burden, and then slowly he turned toward her. His face was a
blotched and terrible thing. The physical brutalizing marks were
there, and at that instant all that appeared human to Madeline
was the dawning in dead, furnace-like eyes of a beautiful light.

"I'll come," he whispered, huskily. "Give me a few days to
straighten up, then I'll come."

IX The New Foreman

Toward the end of the week Stillwell informed Madeline that
Stewart had arrived at the ranch and had taken up quarters with
Nels.

"Gene's sick. He looks bad," said the old cattleman. "He's so
weak an' shaky he can't lift a cup. Nels says that Gene has hed
some bad spells. A little liquor would straighten him up now.
But Nels can't force him to drink a drop, an' has hed to sneak
some liquor in his coffee. Wal, I think we'll pull Gene through.
He's forgotten a lot. I was goin' to tell him what he did to me
up at Rodeo. But I know if he'd believe it he'd be sicker than
he is. Gene's losin' his mind, or he's got somethin' powerful
strange on it."

From that time Stillwell, who evidently found Madeline his most
sympathetic listener, unburdened himself daily of his hopes and
fears and conjectures.

Stewart was really ill. It became necessary to send Link Stevens
for a physician. Then Stewart began slowly to mend and presently
was able to get up and about. Stillwell said the cowboy lacked
interest and seemed to be a broken man. This statement, however,
the old cattleman modified as Stewart continued to improve. Then
presently it was a good augury of Stewart's progress that the
cowboys once more took up the teasing relation which had been
characteristic of them before his illness. A cowboy was indeed
out of sorts when he could not vent his. peculiar humor on
somebody or something. Stewart had evidently become a broad
target for their badinage.

"Wal, the boys are sure after Gene," said Stillwell, with his
huge smile. "Joshin' him all the time about how he sits around
an' hangs around an' loafs around jest to get a glimpse of you,
Miss Majesty. Sure all the boys hev a pretty bad case over their
pretty boss, but none of them is a marker to Gene. He's got it
so bad, Miss Majesty, thet he actooly don't know they are joshin'
him. It's the amazin'est strange thing I ever seen. Why, Gene
was always a feller thet you could josh. An' he'd laugh an' get
back at you. But he was never before deaf to talk, an' there was
a certain limit no feller cared to cross with him. Now he takes
every word an' smiles dreamy like, an' jest looks an' looks.
Why, he's beginnin' to make me tired. He'll never run thet bunch
of cowboys if he doesn't wake up quick."

Madeline smiled her amusement and expressed a belief that
Stillwell wanted too much in such short time from a man who had
done body and mind a grievous injury.

It had been impossible for Madeline to fail to observe Stewart's
singular behavior. She never went out to take her customary
walks and rides without seeing him somewhere in the distance.
She was aware that he watched for her and avoided meeting her.
When she sat on the porch during the afternoon or at sunset
Stewart could always be descried at some point near. He idled
listlessly in the sun, lounged on the porch of his bunk-house,
sat whittling the top bar of the corral fence, and always it
seemed to Madeline he was watching her. Once, while going the
rounds with her gardener, she encountered Stewart and greeted him
kindly. He said little, but he was not embarrassed. She did not
recognize in his face any feature that she remembered. In fact,
on each of the few occasions when she had met Stewart he had
looked so different that she had no consistent idea of his facial
appearance. He was now pale, haggard, drawn. His eyes held a
shadow through which shone a soft, subdued light; and, once
having observed this, Madeline fancied it was like the light in
Majesty's eyes, in the dumb, worshiping eyes of her favorite
stag-hound. She told Stewart that she hoped he would soon be in
the saddle again, and passed on her way.

That Stewart loved her Madeline could not help but see. She
endeavored to think of him as one of the many who, she was glad
to know, liked her. But she could not regulate her thoughts to
fit the order her intelligence prescribed. Thought of Stewart
dissociated itself from thought of the other cowboys. When she
discovered this she felt a little surprise and annoyance. Then
she interrogated herself, and concluded that it was not that
Stewart was so different from his comrades, but that
circumstances made him stand out from them. She recalled her
meeting with him that night when he bad tried to force her to
marry him. This was unforgetable in itself. She called
subsequent mention of him, and found it had been peculiarly
memorable. The man and his actions seemed to hinge on events.
Lastly, the fact standing clear of all others in its relation to
her interest was that he had been almost ruined, almost lost, and
she had saved him. That alone was sufficient to explain why she
thought of him differently. She had befriended, uplifted the
other cowboys; she had saved Stewart's life. To be sure, he had
been a ruffian, but a woman could not save the life of even a
ruffian without remembering it with gladness. Madeline at length
decided her interest in Stewart was natural, and that her deeper
feeling was pity. Perhaps the interest had been forced from her;
however, she gave the pity as she gave everything.

Stewart recovered his strength, though not in time to ride at the
spring round-up; and Stillwell discussed with Madeline the
advisability of making the cowboy his foreman.

"Wal, Gene seems to be gettin' along," said Stillwell. "But he
ain't like his old self. I think more of him at thet. But
where's his spirit? The boys'd ride rough-shod all over him.
Mebbe I'd do best to wait longer now, as the slack season is on.
All the same, if those vaquero of Don Carlos's don't lay low I'll
send Gene over there. Thet'll wake him up."

A few days afterward Stillwell came to Madeline, rubbing his big
hands in satisfaction and wearing a grin that was enormous.

"Miss Majesty, I reckon before this I've said things was amazin'
strange. But now Gene Stewart has gone an' done it! Listen to
me. Them Greasers down on our slope hev been gettin' prosperous.
They're growin' like bad weeds. An' they got a new padre--the
little old feller from El Cajon, Padre Marcos. Wal, this was all
right, all the boys thought, except Gene. An' he got blacker 'n
thunder an' roared round like a dehorned bull. I was sure glad
to see he could get mad again. Then Gene haids down the slope fer
the church. Nels an' me follered him, thinkin' he might hev been
took sudden with a crazy spell or somethin'. He hasn't never
been jest right yet since he left off drinkin'. Wal, we run into
him comin' out of the church. We never was so dumfounded in our
lives. Gene was crazy, all right--he sure hed a spell. But it
was the kind of a spell he hed thet paralyzed us. He ran past us
like a streak, an' we follered. We couldn't ketch him. We heerd
him laugh--the strangest laugh I ever heerd! You'd thought the
feller was suddenly made a king. He was like thet feller who was
tied in a bunyin'-sack an' throwed into the sea, an' cut his way
out, an' swam to the island where the treasures was, an' stood up
yellin', 'The world is mine.'  Wal, when we got up to his
bunk-house he was gone. He didn't come back all day an' all
night. Frankie Slade, who has a sharp tongue, says Gene hed gone
crazy for liquor an' thet was his finish. Nels was some worried.
An' I was sick.

"Wal. this mawnin' I went over to Nels's bunk. Some of the
fellers was there, all speculatin' about Gene. Then big as life
Gene struts round the corner. He wasn't the same Gene. His face
was pale an' his eyes burned like fire. He had thet old mockin',
cool smile, an' somethin' besides thet I couldn't understand.
Frankie Slade up an' made a remark--no wuss than he'd been makin'
fer days--an' Gene tumbled him out of his chair, punched him
good, walked all over him. Frankie wasn't hurt so much as he was
bewildered. 'Gene,' he says, 'what the hell struck you?'  An'
Gene says, kind of sweet like, 'Frankie, you may be a nice feller
when you're alone, but your talk's offensive to a gentleman.'

"After thet what was said to Gene was with a nice smile. Now,
Miss Majesty, it's beyond me what to allow for Gene's sudden
change. First off, I thought Padre Marcos had converted him. I
actooly thought thet. But I reckon it's only Gene Stewart come
back--the old Gene Stewart an' some. Thet's all I care about.
I'm rememberin' how I once told you thet Gene was the last of the
cowboys. Perhaps I should hev said he's the last of my kind of
cowboys. Wal, Miss Majesty, you'll be apprecatin' of what I
meant from now on."

It was also beyond Madeline to account for Gene Stewart's antics,
and, making allowance for the old cattle-man's fancy, she did not
weigh his remarks very heavily. She guessed why Stewart might
have been angry at the presence of Padre Marcos. Madeline
supposed that it was rather an unusual circumstance for a cowboy
to be converted to religious belief. But it was possible. And
she knew that religious fervor often manifested itself in
extremes of feeling and action. Most likely, in Stewart's case,
his real manner had been both misunderstood and exaggerated.
However, Madeline had a curious desire, which she did not wholly
admit to herself, to see the cowboy and make her own deductions.

The opportunity did not present itself for nearly two weeks.
Stewart had taken up his duties as foreman, and his activities
were ceaseless. He was absent most of the time, ranging down
toward the Mexican line. When he returned Stillwell sent for
him.

This was late in the afternoon of a day in the middle of April.
Alfred and Florence were with Madeline on the porch. They saw the
cowboy turn his horse over to one of the Mexican boys at the
corral and then come with weary step up to the house, beating the
dust out of his gauntlets. Little streams of gray sand trickled
from his sombrero as he removed it and bowed to the women.

Madeline saw the man she remembered, but with a singularly
different aspect. His skin was brown; his eyes were piercing and
dark and steady; he carried himself erect; he seemed preoccupied,
and there was not a trace of embarrassment in his manner.

"Wal, Gene, I'm sure glad to see you," Stillwell was saying.
"Where do you hail from?"

"Guadaloupe Canon," replied the cowboy.

Stillwell whistled.

"Way down there! You don't mean you follered them hoss tracks
thet far?"

"All the way from Don Carlos's rancho across the Mexican line. I
took Nick Steele with me. Nick is the best tracker in the
outfit. This trail we were on led along the foothill valleys.
First we thought whoever made it was hunting for water. But they
passed two ranches without watering. At Seaton's Wash they dug
for water. Here they met a pack-train of burros that came down
the mountain trail. The burros were heavily loaded. Horse and
burro tracks struck south from Seaton's to the old California
emigrant road. We followed the trail through Guadelope Canon and
across the border. On the way back we stopped at Slaughter's
ranch, where the United States cavalry are camping. There we met
foresters from the Peloncillo forest reserve. If these fellows
knew anything they kept it to themselves. So we hit the trail
home."

"Wal, I reckon you know enough?" inquired Stillwell, slowly.

"I reckon," replied Stewart.

"Wal, out with it, then," said Stillwell, gruffly. "Miss Hammond
can't be kept in the dark much longer. Make your report to her."

The cowboy shifted his dark gaze to Madeline. He was cool and
slow.

"We're losing a few cattle on the open range. Night-drives by the
vaqueros. Some of these cattle are driven across the valley,
others up to the foothills. So far as I can find out no cattle
are being driven south. So this raiding is a blind to fool the
cowboys. Don Carlos is a Mexican rebel. He located his rancho
here a few years ago and pretended to raise cattle. All that
time he has been smuggling arms and ammunition across the border.
He was for Madero against Diaz. Now he is against Madero because
he and all the rebels think Madero failed to keep his promises.
There will be another revolution. And all the arms go from the
States across the border. Those burros I told about were packed
with contraband goods."

"That's a matter for the United States cavalry. They are
patrolling the border," said Alfred.

"They can't stop the smuggling of arms, not down in that wild
corner," replied Stewart.

"What is my--my duty? What has it to do with me?" inquired
Madeline, somewhat perturbed.

"Wal, Miss Majesty, I reckon it hasn't nothing to do with you,"
put in Stillwell. "Thet's my bizness an' Stewart's. But I jest
wanted you to know. There might be some trouble follerin' my
orders."

"Your orders?"

"I want to send Stewart over to fire Don Carlos an' his vaqueros
off the range. They've got to go. Don Carlos is breakin' the
law of the United States, an' doin' it on our property an' with
our hosses. Hev I your permission, Miss Hammond?"

"Why, assuredly you have! Stillwell, you know what to do.
Alfred, what do you think best?"

"It'll make trouble, Majesty, but it's got to be done," replied
Alfred. "Here you have a crowd of Eastern friends due next
month. We want the range to ourselves then. But, Stillwell, if
you drive those vaqueros off, won't they hang around in the
foothills? I declare they are a bad lot."

Stillwell's mind was not at ease. He paced the porch with a
frown clouding his brow.

"Gene, I reckon you got this Greaser deal figgered better'n me,"
said Stillwell. "Now what do you say?"

"He'll have to be forced off," replied Stewart, quietly. The
Don's pretty slick, but his vaqueros are bad actors. It's just
this way. Nels said the other day to me, 'Gene, I haven't packed
a gun for years until lately, and it feels good whenever I meet
any of those strange Greasers.'  You see, Stillwell, Don Carlos
has vaqueros coming and going all the time. They're guerrilla
bands, that's all. And they're getting uglier. There have been
several shooting-scrapes lately. A rancher named White, who
lives up the valley, was badly hurt. It's only a matter of time
till something stirs up the boys here. Stillwell, you know Nels
and Monty and Nick."

"Sure I know 'em. An' you're not mentionin' one more particular
cowboy in my outfit," said Stiliwell, with a dry chuckle and a
glance at Stewart.

Madeline divined the covert meaning, and a slight chill passed
over her, as if a cold wind had blown in from the hills.

"Stewart, I see you carry a gun," she said, pointing to a black
handle protruding from a sheath swinging low along his leather
chaps.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Why do you carry it?" she asked.

"Well," he said, "it's not a pretty gun--and it's heavy."  She
caught the inference. The gun was not an ornament. His keen,
steady, dark gaze caused her vague alarm. What had once seemed
cool and audacious about this cowboy was now cold and powerful
and mystical. Both her instinct and her intelligence realized
the steel fiber of the man's nature. As she was his employer,
she had the right to demand that he should not do what was so
chillingly manifest that he might do. But Madeline could not
demand. She felt curiously young and weak, and the five months
of Western life were as if they had never been. She now had to
do with a question involving human life. And the value she
placed upon human life and its spiritual significance was a
matter far from her cowboy's thoughts. A strange idea flashed
up. Did she place too much value upon all human life? She
checked that, wondering, almost horrified at herself. And then
her intuition told her that she possessed a far stronger power to
move these primitive men than any woman's stern rule or order.

"Stewart, I do not fully understand what you hint that Nels and
his comrades might do. Please be frank with me. Do you mean
Nels would shoot upon little provocation?"

"Miss Hammond, as far as Nels is concerned, shooting is now just
a matter of his meeting Don Carlos's vaqueros. It's wonderful
what Nels has stood from them, considering the Mexicans he's
already killed."

"Already killed! Stewart, you are not in earnest?" cried
Madeline, shocked.

"I am. Nels has seen hard life along the Arizona border. He
likes peace as well as any man. But a few years of that doesn't
change what the early days made of him. As for Nick Steele and
Monty, they're just bad men, and looking for trouble."

"How about yourself, Stewart? Stillwell's remark was not lost
upon me," said Madeline, prompted by curiosity.

Stewart did not reply. He looked at her in respectful silence.
In her keen earnestness Madeline saw beneath his cool exterior
and was all the more baffled. Was there a slight, inscrutable,
mocking light in his eyes, or was it only her imagination?
However, the cowboy's face was as hard as flint.

"Stewart, I have come to love my ranch," said Madeline, slowly,
"and I care a great deal for my--my cowboys. It would be
dreadful if they were to kill anybody, or especially if one of
them should be killed."

"Miss Hammond, you've changed things considerable out here, but
you can't change these men. All that's needed to start them is a
little trouble. And this Mexican revolution is bound to make
rough times along some of the wilder passes across the border.
We're in line, that's all. And the boys are getting stirred up."

"Very well, then, I must accept the inevitable. I am facing a
rough time. And some of my cowboys cannot be checked much
longer. But, Stewart, whatever you have been in the past, you
have changed."  She smiled at him, and her voice was singularly
sweet and rich. "Stillwell has so often referred to you as the
last of his kind of cowboy. I have just a faint idea of what a
wild life you have led. Perhaps that fits you to be a leader of
such rough men. I am no judge of what a leader should do in this
crisis. My cowboys are entailing risk in my employ; my property
is not safe; perhaps my life even might be endangered. I want to
rely upon you, since Stillwell believes, and I, too, that you are
the man for this place. I shall give you no orders. But is it
too much to ask that you be my kind of a cowboy?"

Madeline remembered Stewart's former brutality and shame and
abject worship, and she measured the great change in him by the
contrast afforded now in his dark, changeless, intent face.

"Miss Hammond, what kind of a cowboy is that?" he asked.

"I--I don't exactly know. It is that kind which I feel you might
be. But I do know that in the problem at hand I want your
actions to be governed by reason, not passion. Human life is not
for any man to sacrifice unless in self-defense or in protecting
those dependent upon him. What Stillwell and you hinted makes me
afraid of Nels and Nick Steele and Monty. Cannot they be
controlled? I want to feel that they will not go gunning for Don
Carlos's men. I want to avoid all violence. And yet when my
guests come I want to feel that they will be safe from danger or
fright or even annoyance. May I not rely wholly upon you,
Stewart? Just trust you to manage these obstreperous cowboys and
protect my property and Alfred's, and take care of us--of me,
until this revolution is ended? I have never had a day's worry
since I bought the ranch. It is not that I want to shirk my
responsibilities; it is that I like being happy. May I put so
much faith in you?"

"I hope so, Miss Hammond," replied Stewart. It was an instant
response, but none the less fraught with consciousness of
responsibility. He waited a moment, and then, as neither
Stillwell nor Madeline offered further speech, he bowed and
turned down the path, his long spurs clinking in the gravel.

"Wal, wal," exclaimed Stillwell, "thet's no little job you give
him, Miss Majesty."

"It was a woman's cunning, Stillwell," said Alfred. "My sister
used to be a wonder at getting her own way when we were kids.
Just a smile or two, a few sweet words or turns of thought, and
she had what she wanted."

"Al, what a character to give me!" protested Madeline. "Indeed, I
was deeply in earnest with Stewart. I do not understand just
why, but I trust him. He seems like iron and steel. Then I was
a little frightened at the prospect of trouble with the vaqueros.
Both you and Stillwell have influenced me to look upon Stewart as
invaluable. I thought it best to confess my utter helplessness
and to look to him for support."

"Majesty, whatever actuated you, it was a stroke of diplomacy,"
replied her brother. "Stewart has got good stuff in him. He was
down and out. Well, he's made a game fight, and it looks as if
he'd win. Trusting him, giving him responsibility, relying upon
him, was the surest way to strengthen his hold upon himself.
Then that little touch of sentiment about being your kind of
cowboy and protecting you--well, if Gene Stewart doesn't develop
into an Argus-eyed knight I'll say I don't know cowboys. But,
Majesty, remember, he's a composite of tiger breed and forked
lightning, and don't imagine he has failed you if he gets into a
fight.

"I'll sure tell you what Gene Stewart will do," said Florence.
"Don't I know cowboys? Why, they used to take me up on their
horses when I was a baby. Gene Stewart will be the kind of
cowboy your sister said he might be, whatever that is. She may
not know and we may not guess, but he knows."

"Wal, Flo, there you hit plumb center," replied the old
cattleman. "An' I couldn't be gladder if he was my own son."

X Don Carlos's Vaqueros

Early the following morning Stewart, with a company of cowboys,
departed for Don Carlos's rancho. As the day wore on without any
report from him, Stillwell appeared to grow more at ease; and at
nightfall he told Madeline that he guessed there was now no
reason for concern.

"Wal, though it's sure amazin' strange," he continued, "I've been
worryin' some about how we was goin' to fire Don Carlos. But
Gene has a way of doin' things."

Next day Stillwell and Alfred decided to ride over Don Carlos's
place, taking Madeline and Florence with them, and upon the
return trip to stop at Alfred's ranch. They started in the cool,
gray dawn, and after three hours' riding, as the sun began to get
bright, they entered a mesquite grove, surrounding corrals and
barns, and a number of low, squat buildings and a huge, rambling
structure, all built of adobe and mostly crumbling to ruin. Only
one green spot relieved the bald red of grounds and walls; and
this evidently was made by the spring which had given both value
and fame to Don Carlos's range. The approach to the house was
through a wide courtyard, bare, stony, hard packed, with
hitching-rails and watering-troughs in front of a long porch.
Several dusty, tired horses stood with drooping heads and bridles
down, their wet flanks attesting to travel just ended.

"Wal, dog-gone it, Al, if there ain't Pat Hawe's hoss I'll eat
it," exclaimed Stillwell.

"What's Pat want here, anyhow?" growled Alfred.

No one was in sight; but Madeline heard loud voices coming from
the house. Stillwell dismounted at the porch and stalked in at
the door. Alfred leaped off his horse, helped Florence and
Madeline down, and, bidding them rest and wait on the porch, he
followed Stillwell.

"I hate these Greaser places," said Florence, with a grimace.
"They're so mysterious and creepy. Just watch now! They'll be
dark-skinned, beady-eyed, soft-footed Greasers slip right up out
of the ground! There'll be an ugly face in every door and window
and crack."

"It's like a huge barn with its characteristic odor permeated by
tobacco smoke," replied Madeline, sitting down beside Florence.
"I don't think very much of this end of my purchase. Florence,
isn't that Don Carlos's black horse over there in the corral?"

"It sure is. Then the Don's heah yet. I wish we hadn't been in
such a hurry to come over. There! that doesn't sound
encouraging."

From the corridor came the rattling of spurs, tramping of boots,
and loud voices. Madeline detected Alfred's quick notes when he
was annoyed: "We'll rustle back home, then," he said. The answer
came, "No!"  Madeline recognized Stewart's voice, and she quickly
straightened up. "I won't have them in here," went on Alfred.

"Outdoors or in, they've got to be with us!" replied Stewart,
sharply. "Listen, Al," came the boom of Stillwell's big voice,
"now that we've butted in over hyar with the girls, you let
Stewart run things."

Then a crowd of men tramped pell-mell out upon the porch.
Stewart, dark-browed and somber, was in the lad. Nels hung close
to him, and Madeline's quick glance saw that Nels had undergone
some indescribable change. The grinning, brilliant-eyed Don
Carlos came jostling out beside a gaunt, sharp-featured man
wearing a silver shield. This, no doubt, was Pat Hawe. In the
background behind Stillwell and Alfred stood Nick Steele, head
and shoulders over a number of vaqueros and cowboys.

"Miss Hammond, I'm sorry you came," said Stewart, bluntly.
"We're in a muddle here. I've insisted that you and Flo be kept
close to us. I'll explain later. If you can't stop your ears I
beg you to overlook rough talk."

With that he turned to the men behind him: "Nick, take Booly, go
back to Monty and the boys. Fetch out that stuff. All of it.
Rustle, now!"

Stillwell and Alfred disengaged themselves from the crowd to take
up positions in front of Madeline and Florence. Pat Hawe leaned
against a post and insolently ogled Madeline and then Florence.
Don Carlos pressed forward. His whole figure filled Madeline's
reluctant but fascinated eyes. He wore tight velveteen breeches,
with a heavy fold down the outside seam, which was ornamented
with silver buttons. Round his waist was a sash, and a belt with
fringed holster, from which protruded a pearl-handled gun. A
vest or waistcoat, richly embroidered, partly concealed a blouse
of silk and wholly revealed a silken scarf round his neck. His
swarthy face showed dark lines, like cords, under the surface.
His little eyes were exceedingly prominent and glittering. To
Madeline his face seemed to be a bold, handsome mask through
which his eyes piercingly betrayed the evil nature of the man.

He bowed low with elaborate and sinuous grace. His smile
revealed brilliant teeth, enhanced the brillance of his eyes. He
slowly spread deprecatory hands.

"Senoritas, I beg a thousand pardons," he said. How strange it
was for Madeline to hear English spoken in a soft, whiningly
sweet accent! "The gracious hospitality of Don Carlos has passed
with his house."

Stewart stepped forward and, thrusting Don Carlos aside, he
called, "Make way, there!"

The crowd fell back to the tramp of heavy boots. Cowboys appeared
staggering out of the corridor with long boxes. These they
placed side by side upon the floor of the porch.

"Now, Hawe, we'll proceed with our business," said Stewart. "You
see these boxes, don't you?"

"I reckon I see a good many things round hyar," replied Hawe,
meaningly.

"Well, do you intend to open these boxes upon my say-so?"

"No!" retorted Hawe. "It's not my place to meddle with property
as come by express an' all accounted fer regular."

"You call yourself a sheriff!" exclaimed Stewart, scornfully.

"Mebbe you'll think so before long," rejoined Hawe, sullenly.

"I'll open them. Here, one of you boys, knock the tops off these
boxes," ordered Stewart. "No, not you, Monty. You use your
eyes. Let Booly handle the ax. Rustle, now!"

Monty Price had jumped out of the crowd into the middle of the
porch. The manner in which he gave way to Booly and faced the
vaqueros was not significant of friendliness or trust.

"Stewart, you're dead wrong to bust open them boxes. Thet's
ag'in' the law," protested Hawe, trying to interfere.

Stewart pushed him back. Then Don Carlos, who had been stunned
by the appearance of the boxes, suddenly became active in speech
and person. Stewart thrust him back also. The Mexican's
excitement increased. He wildly gesticulated; he exclaimed
shrilly in Spanish. When, however, the lids were wrenched open
and an inside packing torn away he grew rigid and silent.
Madeline raised herself behind Stillwell to see that the boxes
were full of rifles and ammunition.

"There, Hawe! What did I tell you?" demanded Stewart. "I came
over here to take charge of this ranch. I found these boxes
hidden in an unused room. I suspected what they were. Contraband
goods!"

"Wal, supposin' they are? I don't see any call fer sech
all-fired fuss as you're makin'. Stewart, I calkilate you're
some stuck on your new job an' want to make a big show before -"

"Hawe, stop slinging that kind of talk," interrupted Stewart.
"You got too free with your mouth once before! Now here, I'm
supposed to be consulting an officer of the law. Will you take
charge of these contraband goods?"

"Say, you're holdin' on high an' mighty," replied Hawe, in
astonishment that was plainly pretended. "What 're you drivin'
at?"

Stewart muttered an imprecation. He took several swift strides
across the porch; he held out his hands to Stillwell as if to
indicate the hopelessness of intelligent and reasonable
arbitration; he looked at Madeline with a glance eloquent of his
regret that he could not handle the situation to please her.
Then as he wheeled he came face to face with Nels, who had
slipped forward out of the crowd.

Madeline gathered serious import from the steel-blue meaning
flash of eyes whereby Nels communicated something to Stewart.
Whatever that something was, it dispelled Stewart's impatience.
A slight movement of his hand brought Monty Price forward with a
jump. In these sudden jumps of Monty's there was a suggestion of
restrained ferocity. Then Nels and Monty lined up behind
Stewart. It was a deliberate action, even to Madeline,
unmistakably formidable. Pat Hawe's face took on an ugly look;
his eyes had a reddish gleam. Don Carlos added a pale face and
extreme nervousness to his former expressions of agitation. The
cowboys edged away from the vaqueros and the bronzed, bearded
horsemen who were evidently Hawe's assistants.

"I'm driving at this," spoke up Stewart, presently; and now he
was slow and caustic. "Here's contraband of war! Hawe, do you
get that? Arms and ammunition for the rebels across the border!
I charge you as an officer to confiscate these goods and to
arrest the smuggler--Don Carlos."

These words of Stewart's precipitated a riot among Don Carlos and
his followers, and they surged wildly around the sheriff. There
was an upflinging of brown, clenching hands, a shrill, jabbering
babel of Mexican voices. The crowd around Don Carlos grew louder
and denser with the addition of armed vaqueros and barefooted
stable-boys and dusty-booted herdsmen and blanketed Mexicans, the
last of whom suddenly slipped from doors and windows and round
comers. It was a motley assemblage. The laced, fringed,
ornamented vaqueros presented a sharp contrast to the
bare-legged, sandal-footed boys and the ragged herders. Shrill
cries, evidently from Don Carlos, somewhat quieted the commotion.
Then Don Carlos could be heard addressing Sheriff Hawe in an
exhortation of mingled English and Spanish. He denied, he
avowed, he proclaimed, and all in rapid, passionate utterance.
He tossed his black hair in his vehemence; he waved his fists and
stamped the floor; he rolled his glittering eyes; he twisted his
thin lips into a hundred different shapes, and like a cornered
wolf showed snarling white teeth.

It seemed to Madeline that Don Carlos denied knowledge of the
boxes of contraband goods, then knowledge of their real contents,
then knowledge of their destination, and, finally, everything
except that they were there in sight, damning witnesses to
somebody's complicity in the breaking of neutrality laws.
Passionate as had been his denial of all this, it was as nothing
compared to his denunciation of Stewart.

"Senor Stewart, he keel my Vaquero!" shouted Don Carlos, as,
sweating and spent, he concluded his arraignment of the cowboy.
"Him you must arrest! Senor Stewart a bad man! He keel my
vaquero!"

"Do you hear thet?" yelled Hawe. "The Don's got you figgered fer
thet little job at El Cajon last fall."

The clamor burst into a roar. Hawe began shaking his finger in
Stewart's face and hoarsely shouting. Then a lithe young
vaquero, swift as an Indian, glided under Hawe's uplifted arm.
Whatever the action he intended, he was too late for its
execution. Stewart lunged out, struck the vaquero, and knocked
him off the porch. As he fell a dagger glittered in the sunlight
and rolled clinking over the stones. The man went down hard and
did not move. With the same abrupt violence, and a manner of
contempt, Stewart threw Hawe off the porch, then Don Carlos, who,
being less supple, fell heavily. Then the mob backed before
Stewart's rush until all were down in the courtyard.

The shuffling of feet ceased, the clanking of spurs, and the
shouting. Nels and Monty, now reinforced by Nick Steele, were as
shadows of Stewart, so closely did they follow him. Stewart
waved them back and stepped down into the yard. He was absolutely
fearless; but what struck Madeline so keenly was his magnificent
disdain. Manifestly, he knew the nature of the men with whom he
was dealing. From the look of him it was natural for Madeline to
expect them to give way before him, which they did, even Hawe and
his attendants sullenly retreating.

Don Carlos got up to confront Stewart. The prostrate vaquero
stirred and moaned, but did not rise.

"You needn't jibber Spanish to me," said Stewart. "You can talk
American, and you can understand American. If you start a
rough-house here you and your Greasers will be cleaned up.
You've got to leave this ranch. You can have the stock, the
packs and traps in the second corral. There's grub, too. Saddle
up and hit the trail. Don Carlos, I'm dealing more than square
with you. You're lying about these boxes of guns and cartridges.
You're breaking the laws of my country, and you're doing it on
property in my charge. If I let smuggling go on here I'd be
implicated myself. Now you get off the range. If you don't I'll
have the United States cavalry here in six hours, and you can
gamble they'll get what my cowboys leave of you."

Don Carlos was either a capital actor and gratefully relieved at
Stewart's leniency or else he was thoroughly cowed by references
to the troops. "Si, Senor! Gracias, Senor!" he exclaimed; and
then, turning away, he called to his men. They hurried after
him, while the fallen vaquero got to his feet with Stewart's help
and staggered across the courtyard. In a moment they were gone,
leaving Hawe and his several comrades behind.

Hawe was spitefully ejecting a wad of tobacco from his mouth and
swearing in an undertone about "white-livered Greasers."  He
cocked his red eye speculatively at Stewart.

"Wal, I reckon as you're so hell-bent on doin' it up brown thet
you'll try to fire me off'n the range, too?"

"If I ever do, Pat, you'll need to be carried off," replied
Stewart. "Just now I'm politely inviting you and your deputy
sheriffs to leave."

"We'll go; but we're comin' back one of these days, an' when we
do we'll put you in irons."

"Hawe, if you've got it in that bad for me, come over here in the
corral and let's fight it out."

"I'm an officer, an' I don't fight outlaws an' sich except when I
hev to make arrests."

"Officer! You're a disgrace to the county. If you ever did get
irons on me you'd take me some place out of sight, shoot me, and
then swear you killed me in self-defense. It wouldn't be the
first time you pulled that trick, Pat Hawe."

"Ho, ho!" laughed Hawe, derisively. Then he started toward the
horses.

Stewart's long arm shot out, his hand clapped on Hawe's shoulder,
spinning him round like a top.

"You're leaving, Pat, but before you leave you'll come out with
your play or you'll crawl," said Stewart. "You've got it in for
me, man to man. Speak up now and prove you're not the cowardly
skunk I've always thought you. I've called your hand."

Pat Hawe's face turned a blackish-purple hue.

"You can jest bet thet I've got it in fer you," he shouted,
hoarsely. "You're only a low-down cow-puncher. You never hed a
dollar or a decent job till you was mixed up with thet Hammond
woman -"

Stewart's hand flashed out and hit Hawe's face in a ringing slap.
The sheriff's head jerked back, his sombrero fell to the ground.
As he bent over to reach it his hand shook, his arm shook, his
whole body shook.

Monty Price jumped straight forward and crouched down with a
strange, low cry.

Stewart seemed all at once rigid, bending a little.

"Say Miss Hammond, if there's occasion to use her name," said
Stewart, in a voice that seemed coolly pleasant, yet had a deadly
undernote.

Hawe did a moment's battle with strangling fury, which he
conquered in some measure.

"I said you was a low-down, drunken cow-puncher, a tough as damn
near a desperado as we ever hed on the border," went on Hawe,
deliberately. His speech appeared to be addressed to Stewart,
although his flame-pointed eyes were riveted upon Monty Price.
"I know you plugged that vaquero last fall, an' when I git my
proof I'm comin' after you."

"That's all right, Hawe. You can call me what you like, and you
can come after me when you like," replied Stewart. "But you're
going to get in bad with me. You're in bad now with Monty and
Nels. Pretty soon you'll queer yourself with all the cowboys and
the ranchers, too. If that don't put sense into you-- Here,
listen to this. You knew what these boxes contained. You know
Don Carlos has been smuggling arms and ammunition across the
border. You know he is hand and glove with the rebels. You've
been wearing blinders, and it has been to your interest. Take a
hunch from me. That's all. Light out now, and the less we see of
your handsome mug the better we'll like you."

Muttering, cursing, pallid of face, Hawe climbed astride his
horse. His comrades followed suit. Certain it appeared that the
sheriff was contending with more than fear and wrath. He must
have had an irresistible impulse to fling more invective and
threat upon Stewart, but he was speechless. Savagely he spurred
his horse, and as it snorted and leaped he turned in his saddle,
shaking his fist. His comrades led the way, with their horses
clattering into a canter. They disappeared through the gate.

When, later in the day, Madeline and Florence, accompanied by
Alfred and Stillwell, left Don Carlos's ranch it was not any too
soon for Madeline. The inside of the Mexican's home was more
unprepossessing and uncomfortable than the outside. The halls
were dark, the rooms huge, empty, and musty; and there was an air
of silence and secrecy and mystery about them most fitting to the
character Florence had bestowed upon the place.

On the other hand, Alfred's ranch-house, where the party halted
to spend the night, was picturesquely located, small and cozy,
camplike in its arrangement, and altogether agreeable to
Madeline.

The day's long rides and the exciting events had wearied her.
She rested while Florence and the two men got supper. During the
meal Stillwell expressed satisfaction over the good riddance of
the vaqueros, and with his usual optimism trusted he had seen the
last of them. Alfred, too, took a decidedly favorable view of
the day's proceedings. However, it was not lost upon Madeline
that Florence appeared unusually quiet and thoughtful. Madeline
wondered a little at the cause. She remembered that Stewart had
wanted to come with them, or detail a few cowboys to accompany
them, but Alfred had laughed at the idea and would have none of
it.

After supper Alfred monopolized the conversation by describing
what he wanted to do to improve his home before he and Florence
were married.

Then at an early hour they all retired.

Madeline's deep slumbers were disturbed by a pounding upon the
wall, and then by Florence's crying out in answer to a call:

"Get up! Throw some clothes on and come out!"

It was Alfred's voice.

"What's the matter?" asked Florence, as she slipped out of bed.

"Alfred, is there anything wrong?" added Madeline, sitting up.

The room was dark as pitch, but a faint glow seemed to mark the
position of the window.

"Oh, nothing much," replied Alfred. "Only Don Carlos's rancho
going up in smoke."

"Fire!" cried Florence, sharply.

"You'll think so when you see it. Hurry out. Majesty, old girl,
now you won't have to tear down that heap of adobe, as you
threatened. I don't believe a wall will stand after that fire."

"Well, I'm glad of it," said Madeline. "A good healthy fire will
purify the atmosphere over there and save me expense. Ugh! that
haunted rancho got on my nerves! Florence, I do believe you've
appropriated part of my riding-habit. Doesn't Alfred have lights
in this house?"

Florence laughingly helped Madeline to dress. Then they
hurriedly stumbled over chairs, and, passing through the
dining-room, went out upon the porch.

Away to the westward, low down along the horizon, she saw leaping
red flames and wind-swept columns of smoke.

Stillwell appeared greatly perturbed.

"Al, I'm lookin' fer that ammunition to blow up," he said.
"There was enough of it to blow the roof off the rancho."

"Bill, surely the cowboys would get that stuff out the first
thing," replied Alfred, anxiously.

"I reckon so. But all the same, I'm worryin'. Mebbe there
wasn't time. Supposin' thet powder went off as the boys was
goin' fer it or carryin' it out! We'll know soon. If the
explosion doesn't come quick now we can figger the boys got the
boxes out."

For the next few moments there was a silence of sustained and
painful suspense. Florence gripped Madeline's arm. Madeline
felt a fullness in her throat and a rapid beating of her heart.
Presently she was relieved with the others when Stillwell
declared the danger of an explosion needed to be feared no
longer.

"Sure you can gamble on Gene Stewart," he added.

The night happened to be partly cloudy, with broken rifts showing
the moon, and the wind blew unusually strong. The brightness of
the fire seemed subdued. It was like a huge bonfire smothered by
some great covering, penetrated by different, widely separated
points of flame. These corners of flame flew up, curling in the
wind, and then died down. Thus the scene was constantly changing
from dull light to dark. There came a moment when a blacker shade
overspread the wide area of flickering gleams and then
obliterated them. Night enfolded the scene. The moon peeped a
curved yellow rim from under broken clouds. To all appearances
the fire had burned itself out. But suddenly a pinpoint of light
showed where all had been dense black. It grew and became long
and sharp. It moved. It had life. It leaped up. Its color
warmed from white to red. Then from all about it burst flame on
flame, to leap into a great changing pillar of fire that climbed
high and higher. Huge funnels of smoke, yellow, black, white,
all tinged with the color of fire, slanted skyward, drifting away
on the wind.

"Wal, I reckon we won't hev the good of them two thousand tons of
alfalfa we was figgerin' on," remarked Stillwell.

"Ah! Then that last outbreak of fire was burning hay," said
Madeline. "I do not regret the rancho. But it's too bad to lose
such a quantity of good feed for the stock."

"It's lost, an' no mistake. The fire's dyin' as quick as she
flared up. Wal, I hope none of the boys got risky to save a
saddle or blanket. Monty--he's hell on runnin' the gantlet of
fire. He's like a boss that's jest been dragged out of a burnin'
stable an' runs back sure locoed. There! She's smolderin' down
now. Reckon we-all might jest as well turn in again. It's only
three o'clock."

"I wonder how the fire originated?" remarked Alfred. "Some
careless cowboy's cigarette, I'll bet."

Stillwell rolled out his laugh.

"Al, you sure are a free-hearted, trustin' feller. I'm some
doubtin' the cigarette idee; but you can gamble if it was a
cigarette it belonged to a cunnin' vaquero, an' wasn't dropped
accident-like."

"Now, Bill, you don't mean Don Carlos burned the rancho?"
ejaculatcd Alfred, in mingled amaze and anger.

Again the old cattleman laughed.

"Powerful strange to say, my friend, ole Bill means jest thet."

"Of course Don Carlos set that fire," put in Florence, with
spirit. "Al, if you live out heah a hundred years you'll never
learn that Greasers are treacherous. I know Gene Stewart
suspected something underhand. That's why he wanted us to hurry
away. That's why he put me on the black horse of Don Carlos's.
He wants that horse for himself, and feared the Don would steal
or shoot him. And you, Bill Stillwell, you're as bad as Al. You
never distrust anybody till it's too late. You've been singing
ever since Stewart ordered the vaqueros off the range. But you
sure haven't been thinking."

"Wal, now, Flo, you needn't pitch into me jest because I hev a
natural Christian spirit," replied Stillwell, much aggrieved. "I
reckon I've hed enough trouble in my life so's not to go lookin'
fer more. Wal, I'm sorry about the hay burnin'. But mebbe the
boys saved the stock. An' as fer that ole adobe house of dark
holes an' under-ground passages, so long's Miss Majesty doesn't
mind, I'm darn glad it burned. Come, let's all turn in again.
Somebody'll ride over early an' tell us what's what."

Madeline awakened early, but not so early as the others, who were
up and had breakfast ready when she went into the dining-room.
Stillwell was not in an amiable frame of mind. The furrows of
worry lined his broad brow and he continually glanced at his
watch, and growled because the cowboys were so late in riding
over with the news. He gulped his breakfast, and while Madeline
and the others ate theirs he tramped up and down the porch.
Madeline noted that Alfred grew nervous and restless. Presently
he left the table to join Stillwell outside.

"They'll slope off to Don Carlos's rancho and leave us to ride
home alone," observed Florence.

"Do you mind?" questioned Madeline.

"No, I don't exactly mind; we've got the fastest horses in this
country. I'd like to run that big black devil off his legs. No,
I don't mind; but I've no hankering for a situation Gene Stewart
thinks--"

Florence began disconnectedly, and she ended evasively. Madeline
did not press the point, although she had some sense of
misgiving. Stillwell tramped in, shaking the floor with his huge
boots; Alfred followed him, carrying a field-glass.

"Not a hoss in sight," complained Stillwell. "Some-thin' wrong
over Don Carlos's way. Miss Majesty, it'll be jest as well fer
you an' Flo to hit the home trail. We can telephone over an' see
that the boys know you're comin'."

Alfred, standing in the door, swept the gray valley with his
field-glass.

"Bill, I see running stock-horses or cattle; I can't make out
which. I guess we'd better rustle over there."

Both men hurried out, and while the horses were being brought up
and saddled Madeline and Florence put away the breakfast-dishes,
then speedily donned spurs, sombreros, and gauntlets.

"Here are the horses ready," called Alfred. "Flo, that black
Mexican horse is a prince."

The girls went out in time to hear Stillwell's good-by as he
mounted and spurred away. Alfred went through the motions of
assisting Madeline and Florence to mount, which assistance they
always flouted, and then he, too, swung up astride.

"I guess it's all right," he said, rather dubiously. "You really
must not go over toward Don Carlos's. It's only a few miles
home."

"Sure it's all right. We can ride, can't we?" retorted Florence.
"Better have a care for yourself, going off over there to mix in
goodness knows what."

Alfred said good-by, spurred his horse, and rode away.

"If Bill didn't forget to telephone!" exclaimed Florence. "I
declare he and Al were sure rattled."

Florence dismounted and went into the house. She left the door
open. Madeline had some difficulty in holding Majesty. It
struck Madeline that Florence stayed rather long indoors.
Presently she came out with sober face and rather tight lips.

"I couldn't get anybody on the 'phone. No answer. I tried a
dozen times."

"Why, Florence!"  Madeline was more concerned by the girl's looks
than by the information she imparted.

"The wire's been cut," said Florence. Her gray glance swept
swiftly after Alfred, who was now far out of earshot. "I don't
like this a little bit. Heah's where I've got to 'figger,' as
Bill says."

She pondered a moment, then hurried into the house, to return
presently with the field-glass that Alfred had used. With this
she took a survey of the valley, particularly in the direction of
Madeline's ranch-house. This was hidden by low, rolling ridges
which were quite close by.

"Anyway, nobody in that direction can see us leave heah," she
mused. "There's mesquite on the ridges. We've got cover long
enough to save us till we can see what's ahead."

"Florence, what--what do you expect?" asked Madeline, nervously.

"I don't know. There's never any telling about Greasers. I wish
Bill and Al hadn't left us. Still, come to think of that, they
couldn't help us much in case of a chase. We'd run right away
from them. Besides, they'd shoot. I guess I'm as well as
satisfied that we've got the job of getting home on our own
hands. We don't dare follow Al toward Don Carlos's ranch. We
know there's trouble over there. So all that's left is to hit
the trail for home. Come, let's ride. You stick like a Spanish
needle to me."

A heavy growth of mesquite covered the top of the first ridge,
and the trail went through it. Florence took the lead,
proceeding cautiously, and as soon as she could see over the
summit she used the field-glass. Then she went on. Madeline,
following closely, saw down the slope of the ridge to a bare,
wide, grassy hollow, and onward to more rolling land, thick with
cactus and mesquite. Florence appeared cautious, deliberate, yet
she lost no time. She was ominously silent. Madeline's
misgivings took definite shape in the fear of vaqueros in ambush.

Upon the ascent of the third ridge, which Madeline remembered was
the last uneven ground between the point she had reached and
home, Florence exercised even more guarded care in advancing.
Before she reached the top of this ridge she dismounted, looped
her bridle round a dead snag, and, motioning Madeline to wait,
she slipped ahead through the mesquite out of sight. Madeline
waited, anxiously listening and watching. Certain it was that she
could not see or hear anything alarming. The sun began to have a
touch of heat; the morning breeze rustled the thin mesquite
foliage; the deep magenta of a cactus flower caught her eye; a
long-tailed, cruel-beaked, brown bird sailed so close to her she
could have touched it with her whip. But she was only vaguely
aware of these things. She was watching for Florence, listening
for some sound fraught with untoward meaning. All of a sudden
she saw Majesty's ears were held straight up. Then Florence's
face, now strangely white, showed round the turn of the trail.

" 'S-s-s-sh!" whispered Florence, holding up a warning finger.
She reached the black horse and petted him, evidently to still an
uneasiness he manifested. "We're in for it," she went on. "A
whole bunch of vaqueros hiding among the mesquite over the ridge!
They've not seen or heard us yet. We'd better risk riding ahead,
cut off the trail, and beat them to the ranch. Madeline, you're
white as death! Don't faint now!"

"I shall not faint. But you frighten me. Is there danger? What
shall we do?"

"There's danger. Madeline, I wouldn't deceive you," went on
Florence, in an earnest whisper. "Things have turned out just as
Gene Stewart hinted. Oh, we should--Al should have listened to
Gene! I believe--I'm afraid Gene knew!"

"Knew what?" asked Madeline.

"Never mind now. Listen. We daren't take the back trail. We'll
go on. I've a scheme to fool that grinning Don Carlos. Get
down, Madeline--hurry."

Madeline dismounted.

"Give me your white sweater. Take it off--And that white hat!
Hurry, Madeline."

"Florence, what on earth do you mean?" cried Madeline.

"Not so loud," whispered the other. Her gray eyes snapped. She
had divested herself of sombrero and jacket, which she held out
to Madeline. "Heah. Take these. Give me yours. Then get up on
the black. I'll ride Majesty. Rustle now, Madeline. This is no
time to talk."

"But, dear, why--why do you want--? Ah! You're going to make
the vaqueros take you for me!"

"You guessed it. Will you--"

"I shall not allow you to do anything of the kind," returned
Madeline.

It was then that Florence's face, changing, took on the hard,
stern sharpness so typical of a cowboy's. Madeline had caught
glimpses of that expression in Alfred's face, and on Stewart's
when he was silent, and on Stillwell's always. It was a look of
iron and fire--unchangeable, unquenchable will. There was even
much of violence in the swift action whereby Florence compelled
Madeline to the change of apparel.

"It 'd been my idea, anyhow, if Stewart hadn't told me to do it,"
said Florence, her words as swift as her hands. "Don Carlos is
after you--you, Miss Madeline Hammond! He wouldn't ambush a
trail for any one else. He's not killing cowboys these days. He
wants you for some reason. So Gene thought, and now I believe
him. Well, we'll know for sure in five minutes. You ride the
black; I'll ride Majesty. We'll slip round through the brush,
out of sight and sound, till we can break out into the open.
Then we'll split. You make straight for the ranch. I'll cut
loose for the valley where Gene said positively the cowboys were
with the cattle. The vaqueros will take me for you. They all
know those striking white things you wear. They'll chase me.
They'll never get anywhere near me. And you'll be on a fast
horse. He can take you home ahead of any vaqueros. But you
won't be chased. I'm staking all on that. Trust me, Madeline.
If it were only my calculation, maybe I'd--It's because I
remember Stewart. That cowboy knows things. Come, this heah's
the safest and smartest way to fool Don Carlos."  Madeline felt
herself more forced than persuaded into acquiescence. She
mounted the black and took up the bridle. In another moment she
was guiding her horse off the trail in the tracks of Majesty.
Florence led off at right angles, threading a slow passage
through the mesquite. She favored sandy patches and open aisles
between the trees, and was careful not to break a branch. Often
she stopped to listen. This detour of perhaps half a mile
brought Madeline to where she could see open ground, the
ranch-house only a few miles off, and the cattle dotting the
valley. She had not lost her courage, but it was certain that
these familiar sights somewhat lightened the pressure upon her
breast. Excitement gripped her. The shrill whistle of a horse
made both the black and Majesty jump. Florence quickened the
gait down the slope. Soon Madeline saw the edge of the brush, the
gray-bleached grass and level ground.

Florence waited at the opening between the low trees. She gave
Madeline a quick, bright glance.

"All over but the ride! That'll sure be easy. Bolt now and keep
your nerve!"

When Florence wheeled the fiery roan and screamed in his ear
Madeline seemed suddenly to grow lax and helpless. The big horse
leaped into thundering action. This was memorable of Bonita of
the flying hair and the wild night ride. Florence's hair
streamed on the wind and shone gold in the sunlight. Yet
Madeline saw her with the same thrill with which she had seen the
wild-riding Bonita. Then hoarse shouts unclamped Madeline's
power of movement, and she spurred the black into the open.

He wanted to run and he was swift. Madeline loosened the reins--
laid them loose upon his neck. His action was strange to her.
He was hard to ride. But he was fast, and she cared for nothing
else. Madeline knew horses well enough to realize that the black
had found he was free and carrying a light weight. A few times
she took up the bridle and pulled to right or left, trying to
guide him. He kept a straight course, however, and crashed
through small patches of mesquite and jumped the cracks and
washes. Uneven ground offered no perceptible obstacle to his
running. To Madeline there was now a thrilling difference in the
lash of wind and the flash of the gray ground underneath. She
was running away from something; what that was she did not know.
But she remembered Florence, and she wanted to look back, yet
hated to do so for fear of the nameless danger Florence had
mentioned.

Madeline listened for the pounding of pursuing hoofs in her rear.
Involuntarily she glanced back. On the mile or more of gray
level between her and the ridge there was not a horse, a man, or
anything living. She wheeled to look back on the other side,
down the valley slope.

The sight of Florence riding Majesty in zigzag flight before a
whole troop of vaqueros blanched Madeline's cheek and made her
grip the pommel of her saddle in terror. That strange gait of
her roan was not his wonderful stride. Could Majesty be running
wild? Madeline saw one vaquero draw closer, whirling his lasso
round his head, but he did not get near enough to throw. So it
seemed to Madeline. Another vaquero swept across in front of the
first one. Then, when Madeline gasped in breathless expectancy,
the roan swerved to elude the attack. It flashed over Madeline
that Florence was putting the horse to some such awkward flight
as might have been expected of an Eastern girl frightened out of
her wits. Madeline made sure of this when, after looking again,
she saw that Florence, in spite of the horse's breaking gait and
the irregular course, was drawing slowly and surely down the
valley.

Madeline had not lost her head to the extent of forgetting her
own mount and the nature of the ground in front. When, presently,
she turned again to watch Florence, uncertainty ceased in her
mind. The strange features of that race between girl and
vaqueros were no longer in evidence. Majesty was in his
beautiful, wonderful stride, low down along the ground,
stretching, with his nose level and straight for the valley.
Between him and the lean horses in pursuit lay an ever-increasing
space. He was running away from the vaqueros. Florence was
indeed "riding the wind," as Stewart had aptly expressed his idea
of flight upon the fleet roan.

A dimness came over Madeline's eyes, and it was not all owing to
the sting of the wind. She rubbed it away, seeing Florence as a
flying dot in a strange blur. What a daring, intrepid girl!
This kind of strength--and aye, splendid thought for a weaker
sister--was what the West inculcated in a woman.

The next time Madeline looked back Florence was far ahead of her
pursuers and going out of sight behind a low knoll. Assured of
Florence's safety, Madeline put her mind to her own ride and the
possibilities awaiting at the ranch. She remembered the failure
to get any of her servants or cowboys on the telephone. To be
sure, a wind-storm had once broken the wire. But she had little
real hope of such being the case in this instance. She rode on,
pulling the black as she neared the ranch. Her approach was from
the south and off the usual trail, so that she went up the long
slope of the knoll toward the back of the house. Under these
circumstances she could not consider it out of the ordinary that
she did not see any one about the grounds.

It was perhaps fortunate for her, she thought, that the climb up
the slope cut the black's speed so she could manage him. He was
not very hard to stop. The moment she dismounted, however, he
jumped and trotted off. At the edge of the slope, facing the
corrals, he halted to lift his head and shoot up his ears. Then
he let out a piercing whistle and dashed down the lane.

Madeline, prepared by that warning whistle, tried to fortify
herself for a new and unexpected situation; but as she espied an
unfamiliar company of horsemen rapidly riding down a hollow
leading from the foothills she felt the return of fears gripping
at her like cold hands, and she fled precipitously into the
house.

IX A Band of Guerrillas

Madeline bolted the door, and, flying into the kitchen, she told
the scared servants to shut themselves in. Then she ran to her
own rooms. It was only a matter of a few moments for her to
close and bar the heavy shutters, yet even as she was fastening
the last one in the room she used as an office a clattering roar
of hoofs seemed to swell up to the front of the house. She
caught a glimpse of wild, shaggy horses and ragged, dusty men.
She had never seen any vaqueros that resembled these horsemen.
Vaqueros had grace and style; they were fond of lace and glitter
and fringe; they dressed their horses in silvered trappings. But
the riders now trampling into the driveway were uncouth. lean,
savage. They were guerrillas, a band of the raiders who had been
harassing the border since the beginning of the revolution. A
second glimpse assured Madeline that they were not all Mexicans.

The presence of outlaws in that band brought home to Madeline her
real danger. She remembered what Stillwell had told her about
recent outlaw raids along the Rio Grande. These flying bands,
operating under the excitement of the revolution, appeared here
and there, everywhere, in remote places, and were gone as quickly
as they came. Mostly they wanted money and arms, but they would
steal anything, and unprotected women had suffered at their
hands.

Madeline, hurriedly collecting her securities and the
considerable money she had in her desk, ran out, closed and
locked the door, crossed the patio to the opposite side of the
house, and, entering again, went down a long corridor, trying to
decide which of the many unused rooms would be best to hide in.
And before she made up her mind she came to the last room. Just
then a battering on door or window in the direction of the
kitchen and shrill screams from the servant women increased
Madeline's alarm.

She entered the last room. There was no lock or bar upon the
door. But the room was large and dark, and it was half full of
bales of alfalfa hay. Probably it was the safest place in the
house; at least time would be necessary to find any one hidden
there. She dropped her valuables in a dark corner and covered
them with loose hay. That done, she felt her way down a narrow
aisle between the piled-up bales and presently crouched in a
niche.

With the necessity of action over for the immediate present,
Madeline became conscious that she was quivering and almost
breathless. Her skin felt tight and cold. There was a weight on
her chest; her mouth was dry, and she had a strange tendency to
swallow. Her listening faculty seemed most acute. Dull sounds
came from parts of the house remote from her. In the intervals
of silence between these sounds she heard the squeaking and
rustling of mice in the hay. A mouse ran over her hand.

She listened, waiting, hoping yet dreading to hear the clattering
approach of her cowboys. There would he fighting--blood--men
injured, perhaps killed. Even the thought of violence of any
kind hurt her. But perhaps the guerrillas would run in time to
avoid a clash with her men. She hoped for that, prayed for it.
Through her mind flitted what she knew of Nels, of Monty, of Nick
Steele; and she experienced a sensation that left her somewhat
chilled and sick. Then she thought of the dark-browed, fire-eyed
Stewart. She felt a thrill drive away the cold nausea. And her
excitement augmented.

Waiting, listening increased all her emotions. Nothing appeared
to be happening. Yet hours seemed to pass while she crouched
there. Had Florence been overtaken? Could any of those lean
horses outrun Majesty? She doubted it; she knew it could not be
true. Nevertheless, the strain of uncertainty was torturing.

Suddenly the bang of the corridor door pierced her through and
through with the dread of uncertainty. Some of the guerrillas
had entered the east wing of the house. She heard a babel of
jabbering voices, the shuffling of boots and clinking of spurs,
the slamming of doors and ransacking of rooms.

Madeline lost faith in her hiding-place. Morever, she found it
impossible to take the chance. The idea of being caught in that
dark room by those ruffians filled her with horror. She must get
out into the light. Swiftly she rose and went to the window. It
was rather more of a door than window, being a large aperture
closed by two wooden doors on hinges. The iron hook yielded
readily to her grasp, and one door stuck fast, while the other
opened a few inches. She looked out upon a green slope covered
with flowers and bunches of sage and bushes. Neither man nor
horse showed in the narrow field of her vision. She believed she
would be safer hidden out there in the shrubbery than in the
house. The jump from the window would be easy for her. And with
her quick decision came a rush and stir of spirit that warded off
her weakness.

She pulled at the door. It did not budge. It had caught at the
bottom. Pulling with all her might proved to be in vain.
Pausing, with palms hot and bruised, she heard a louder, closer
approach of the invaders of her home. Fear, wrath, and impotence
contested for supremacy over her and drove her to desperation.
She was alone here, and she must rely on herself. And as she
strained every muscle to move that obstinate door and heard the
quick, harsh voices of men and the sounds of a hurried search she
suddenly felt sure that they were hunting for her. She knew it.
She did not wonder at it. But she wondered if she were really
Madeline Hammond, and if it were possible that brutal men would
harm her. Then the tramping of heavy feet on the floor of the
adjoining room lent her the last strength of fear. Pushing with
hands and shoulders, she moved the door far enough to permit the
passage of her body. Then she stepped up on the sill and slipped
through the aperture. She saw no one. Lightly she jumped down
and ran in among the bushes. But these did not afford her the
cover she needed. She stole from one clump to another, finding
too late that she had chosen with poor judgment. The position of
the bushes had drawn her closer to the front of the house rather
than away from it, and just before her were horses, and beyond a
group of excited men. With her heart in her throat Madeline
crouched down.

A shrill yell, followed by running and mounting guerrillas,
roused her hope. They had sighted the cowboys and were in
flight. Rapid thumping of boots on the porch told of men
hurrying from the house. Several horses dashed past her, not ten
feet distant. One rider saw her, for he turned to shout back.
This drove Madeline into a panic. Hardly knowing what she did,
she began to run away from the house. Her feet seemed leaden.
She felt the same horrible powerlessness that sometimes came over
her when she dreamed of being pursued. Horses with shouting
riders streaked past her in the shrubbery. There was a thunder of
hoofs behind her. She turned aside, but the thundering grew
nearer. She was being run down.

As Madeline shut her eyes and, staggering, was about to fall,
apparently right under pounding hoofs, a rude, powerful hand
clapped round her waist, clutched deep and strong, and swung her
aloft. She felt a heavy blow when the shoulder of the horse
struck her, and then a wrenching of her arm as she was dragged
up. A sudden blighting pain made sight and feeling fade from
her.

But she did not become unconscious to the extent that she lost
the sense of being rapidly borne away. She seemed to hold that
for a long time. When her faculties began to return the motion
of the horse was no longer violent. For a few moments she could
not determine her position. Apparently she was upside down.
Then she saw that she was facing the ground, and must be lying
across a saddle with her head hanging down. She could not move a
hand; she could not tell where her hands were. Then she felt the
touch of soft leather. She saw a high-topped Mexican boot,
wearing a huge silver spur, and the reeking flank and legs of a
horse, and a dusty, narrow trail. Soon a kind of red darkness
veiled her eyes, her head swam, and she felt motion and pain only
dully.

After what seemed a thousand weary hours some one lifted her from
the horse and laid her upon the ground, where, gradually, as the
blood left her head and she could see, she began to get the right
relation of things.

She lay in a sparse grove of firs, and the shadows told of late
afternoon. She smelled wood smoke, and she heard the sharp
crunch of horses' teeth nipping grass. Voices caused her to turn
her face. A group of men stood and sat round a camp-fire eating
like wolves. The looks of her captors made Madeline close her
eyes, and the fascination, the fear they roused in her made her
open them again. Mostly they were thin-bodied, thin-bearded
Mexicans, black and haggard and starved. Whatever they might be,
they surely were hunger-stricken and squalid. Not one had a
coat. A few had scarfs. Some wore belts in which were scattered
cartridges. Only a few had guns, and these were of diverse
patterns. Madeline could see no packs, no blankets, and only a
few cooking-utensils, all battered and blackened. Her eyes
fastened upon men she believed were white men; but it was from
their features and not their color that she judged. Once she had
seen a band of nomad robbers in the Sahara, and somehow was
reminded of them by this motley outlaw troop.

They divided attention between the satisfying of ravenous
appetites and a vigilant watching down the forest aisles. They
expected some one, Madeline thought, and, manifestly, if it were
a pursuing posse, they did not show anxiety. She could not
understand more than a word here and there that they uttered.
Presently, however, the name of Don Carlos revived keen curiosity
in her and realization of her situation, and then once more dread
possessed her breast.

A low exclamation and a sweep of arm from one of the guerrillas
caused the whole band to wheel and concentrate their attention in
the opposite direction. They heard something. They saw some one.
Grimy hands sought weapons, and then every man stiffened.
Madeline saw what hunted men looked like at the moment of
discovery, and the sight was terrible. She closed her eyes, sick
with what she saw, fearful of the moment when the guns would leap
out.

There were muttered curses, a short period of silence followed by
whisperings, and then a clear voice rang out, "El Capitan!"

A strong shock vibrated through Madeline, and her eyelids swept
open. Instantly she associated the name El Capitan with Stewart
and experienced a sensation of strange regret. It was not
pursuit or rescue she thought of then, but death. These men
would kill Stewart. But surely he had not come alone. The lean,
dark faces, corded and rigid, told her in what direction to look.
She heard the slow, heavy thump of hoofs. Soon into the wide
aisle between the trees moved the form of a man, arms flung high
over his head. Then Madeline saw the horse, and she recognized
Majesty, and she knew it was really Stewart who rode the roan.
When doubt was no longer possible she felt a suffocating sense of
gladness and fear and wonder.

Many of the guerrillas leaped up with drawn weapons. Still
Stewart approached with his hands high, and he rode right into
the camp-fire circle. Then a guerrilla, evidently the chief,
waved down the threatening men and strode up to Stewart. He
greeted him. There was amaze and pleasure and respect in the
greeting. Madeline could tell that, though she did not know what
was said. At the moment Stewart appeared to her as cool and
careless as if he were dismounting at her porch steps. But when
he got down she saw that his face was white. He shook hands with
the guerrilla, and then his glittering eyes roved over the men
and around the glade until they rested upon Madeline. Without
moving from his tracks he seemed to leap, as if a powerful
current had shocked him. Madeline tried to smile to assure him
she was alive and well; but the intent in his eyes, the power of
his controlled spirit telling her of her peril and his, froze the
smile on her lips.

With that he faced the chief and spoke rapidly in the Mexican
jargon Madeline had always found so difficult to translate. The
chief answered, spreading wide his hands, one of which indicated
Madeline as she lay there. Stewart drew the fellow a little
aside and said something for his ear alone. The chief's hands
swept up in a gesture of surprise and acquiescence. Again
Stewart spoke swiftly. His hearer then turned to address the
band. Madeline caught the words "Don Carlos" and "pesos."  There
was a brief muttering protest which the chief thundered down.
Madeline guessed her release had been given by this guerrilla and
bought from the others of the band.

Stewart strode to her side, leading the roan. Majesty reared and
snorted when he saw his mistress prostrate. Stewart knelt, still
holding the bridle.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I think so," she replied, essaying a laugh that was rather a
failure. "My feet are tied."

Dark blood blotted out all the white from his face, and lightning
shot from his eyes. She felt his hands, like steel tongs,
loosening the bonds round her ankles. Without a word he lifted
her upright and then upon Majesty. Madeline reeled a little in
the saddle, held hard to the pommel with one band, and tried to
lean on Stewart's shoulder with the other.

"Don't give up," he said.

She saw him gaze furtively into the forest on all sides. And it
surprised her to see the guerrillas riding away. Putting the two
facts together, Madeline formed an idea that neither Stewart nor
the others desired to meet with some one evidently due shortly in
the glade. Stewart guided the roan off to the right and walked
beside Madeline, steadying her in the saddle. At first Madeline
was so weak and dizzy that she could scarcely retain her seat.
The dizziness left her presently, and then she made an effort to
ride without help. Her weakness, however, and a pain in her
wrenched arm made the task laborsome.

Stewart had struck off the trail, if there were one, and was
keeping to denser parts of the forest. The sun sank low, and the
shafts of gold fell with a long slant among the firs. Majesty's
hoofs made no sound on the soft ground, and Stewart strode on
without speaking. Neither his hurry nor vigilance relaxed until
at least two miles had been covered. Then he held to a straighter
course and did not send so many glances into the darkening woods.
The level of the forest began to be cut up by little hollows, all
of which sloped and widened. Presently the soft ground gave
place to bare, rocky soil. The horse snorted and tossed his
head. A sound of splashing water broke the silence. The hollow
opened into a wider one through which a little brook murmured its
way over the stones. Majesty snorted again and stopped and bent
his head.

"He wants a drink," said Madeline. "I'm thirsty, too, and very
tired."

Stewart lifted her out of the saddle, and as their hands parted
she felt something moist and warm. Blood was running down her
arm and into the palm of her hand.

"I'm--bleeding," she said, a little unsteadily. "Oh, I remember.
My arm was hurt."

She held it out, the blood making her conscious of her weakness.
Stewart's fingers felt so firm and sure. Swiftly he ripped the
wet sleeve. Her forearm had been cut or scratched. He washed off
the blood.

"Why, Stewart, it's nothing. I was only a little nervous. I
guess that's the first time I ever saw my own blood."

He made no reply as he tore her handkerchief into strips and
bound her arm. His swift motions and his silence gave her a hint
of how he might meet a more serious emergency. She felt safe.
And because of that impression, when he lifted his head and she
saw that he was pale and shaking, she was surprised. He stood
before her folding his scarf, which was still wet, and from which
he made no effort to remove the red stains.

"Miss Hammond," he said, hoarsely, "it was a man's hands--a
Greaser's finger-nails--that cut your arm. I know who he was. I
could have killed him. But I mightn't have got your freedom.
You understand? I didn't dare."

Madeline gazed at Stewart, astounded more by his speech than his
excessive emotion.

"My dear boy!" she exclaimed. And then she paused. She could not
find words.

He was making an apology to her for not killing a man who had
laid a rough hand upon her person. He was ashamed and seemed to
be in a torture that she would not understand why he had not
killed the man. There seemed to be something of passionate scorn
in him that he had not been able to avenge her as well as free
her.

"Stewart, I understand. You were being my kind of cowboy. I
thank you."

But she did not understand so much as she implied. She had heard
many stories of this man's cool indifference to peril and death.
He had always seemed as hard as granite. Why should the sight of
a little blood upon her arm pale his cheek and shake his hand and
thicken his voice? What was there in his nature to make him
implore her to see the only reason he could not kill an outlaw?
The answer to the first question was that he loved her. It was
beyond her to answer the second. But the secret of it lay in the
same strength from which his love sprang--an intensity of feeling
which seemed characteristic of these Western men of simple,
lonely, elemental lives. All at once over Madeline rushed a tide
of realization of how greatly it was possible for such a man as
Stewart to love her. The thought came to her in all its singular
power. All her Eastern lovers who had the graces that made them
her equals in the sight of the world were without the only great
essential that a lonely, hard life had given to Stewart. Nature
here struck a just balance. Something deep and dim in the
future, an unknown voice, called to Madeline and disturbed her.
And because it was not a voice to her intelligence she deadened
the ears of her warm and throbbing life and decided never to
listen.

"Is it safe to rest a little?" she asked. "I am so tired.
Perhaps I'll be stronger if I rest."

"We're all right now," he said. "The horse will be better, too.
I ran him out. And uphill, at that."

"Where are we?"

"Up in the mountains, ten miles and more from the ranch. There's
a trail just below here. I can get you home by midnight.
They'll be some worried down there."

"What happened?"

"Nothing much to any one but you. That's the--the hard luck of
it. Florence caught us out on the slope. We were returning from
the fire. We were dead beat. But we got to the ranch before any
damage was done. We sure had trouble in finding a trace of you.
Nick spotted the prints of your heels under the window. And then
we knew. I had to fight the boys. If they'd come after you we'd
never have gotten you without a fight. I didn't want that. Old
Bill came out packing a dozen guns. He was crazy. I had to rope
Monty. Honest, I tied him to the porch. Nels and Nick promised
to stay and hold him till morning. That was the best I could do.
I was sure lucky to come up with the band so soon. I had figured
right. I knew that guerrilla chief. He's a bandit in Mexico.
It's a business with him. But he fought for Madero, and I was
with him a good deal. He may be a Greaser, but he's white."

"How did you effect my release?"

"I offered them money. That's what the rebels all want. They
need money. They're a lot of poor, hungry devils."

"I gathered that you offered to pay ransom. How much?"

"Two thousand dollars Mex. I gave my word. I'll have to take
the money. I told them when and where I'd meet them."

"Certainly. I'm glad I've got the money."  Madeline laughed.
"What a strange thing to happen to me! I wonder what dad would
say to that? Stewart, I'm afraid he'd say two thousand dollars
is more than I'm worth. But tell me. That rebel chieftain did
not demand money?"

"No. The money is for his men."

"What did you say to him? I saw you whisper in his ear."

Stewart dropped his head, averting her direct gaze.

"We were comrades before Juarez. One day I dragged him out of a
ditch. I reminded him. Then I--I told him something I--I
thought--"

"Stewart, I know from the way he looked at me that you spoke of
me."

Her companion did not offer a reply to this, and Madeline did not
press the point.

"I heard Don Carlos's name several times. That interests me.
What have Don Carlos and his vaqueros to do with this?"

"That Greaser has all to do with it," replied Stewart, grimly.
"He burned his ranch and corrals to keep us from getting them.
But he also did it to draw all the boys away from your home.
They had a deep plot, all right. I left orders for some one to
stay with you. But Al and Stillwell, who're both hot-headed,
rode off this morning. Then the guerrillas came down."

"Well, what was the idea--the plot--as you call it?"

"To get you," he said, bluntly.

"Me! Stewart, you do not mean my capture--whatever you call it--
was anything more than mere accident?"

"I do mean that. But Stillwell and your brother think the
guerrillas wanted money and arms, and they just happened to make
off with you because you ran under a horse's nose."

"You do not incline to that point of view?"

"I don't. Neither does Nels nor Nick Steele. And we know Don
Carlos and the Greasers. Look how the vaqueros chased Flo for
you!"

"What do you think, then?"

"I'd rather not say."

"But, Stewart, I would like to know. If it is about me, surely I
ought to know," protested Madeline. "What reason have Nels and
Nick to suspect Don Carlos of plotting to abduct me?"

"I suppose they've no reason you'd take. Once I heard Nels say
he'd seen the Greaser look at you, and if he ever saw him do it
again he'd shoot him."

"Why, Stewart, that is ridiculous. To shoot a man for looking at
a woman! This is a civilized country."

"Well, maybe it would be ridiculous in a civilized country.
There's some things about civilization I don't care for."

"What, for instance?"

"For one thing, I can't stand for the way men let other men treat
women."

"But, Stewart, this is strange talk from you, who, that night I
came--"

She broke off, sorry that she had spoken. His shame was not
pleasant to see. Suddenly he lifted his head, and she felt
scorched by flaming eyes.

"Suppose I was drunk. Suppose I had met some ordinary girl.
Suppose I had really made her marry me. Don't you think I would
have stopped being a drunkard and have been good to her?"

"Stewart, I do not know what to think about you," replied
Madeline.

Then followed a short silence. Madeline saw the last bright rays
of the setting sun glide up over a distant crag. Stewart
rebridled the horse and looked at the saddle-girths.

"I got off the trail. About Don Carlos I'll say right out, not
what Nels and Nick think, but what I know. Don Carlos hoped to
make off with you for himself, the same as if you had been a poor
peon slave-girl down in Sonora. Maybe he had a deeper plot than
my rebel friend told me. Maybe he even went so far as to hope
for American troops to chase him. The rebels are trying to stir
up the United States. They'd welcome intervention. But, however
that may be, the Greaser meant evil to you, and has meant it ever
since he saw you first. That's all."

"Stewart, you have done me and my family a service we can never
hope to repay."

"I've done the service. Only don't mention pay to me. But
there's one thing I'd like you to know, and I find it hard to
say. It's prompted, maybe, by what I know you think of me and
what I imagine your family and friends would think if they knew.
It's not prompted by pride or conceit. And it's this: Such a
woman as you should never have come to this God-forsaken country
unless she meant to forget herself. But as you did come, and as
you were dragged away by those devils, I want you to know that
all your wealth and position and influence--all that power behind
you--would never have saved you from hell to-night. Only such a
man as Nels or Nick Steele or I could have done that."

Madeline Hammond felt the great leveling force of the truth.
Whatever the difference between her and Stewart, or whatever the
imagined difference set up by false standards of class and
culture, the truth was that here on this wild mountain-side she
was only a woman and he was simply a man. It was a man that she
needed, and if her choice could have been considered in this
extremity it would have fallen upon him who had just faced her in
quiet, bitter speech. Here was food for thought.

"I reckon we'd better start now," he said, and drew the horse
close to a large rock. "Come."

Madeline's will greatly exceeded her strength. For the first
time she acknowledged to herself that she had been hurt. Still,
she did not feel much pain except when she moved her shoulder.
Once in the saddle, where Stewart lifted her, she drooped weakly.
The way was rough; every step the horse took hurt her; and the
slope of the ground threw her forward on the pommel. Presently,
as the slope grew rockier and her discomfort increased, she
forgot everything except that she was suffering.

"Here is the trail," said Stewart, at length.

Not far from that point Madeline swayed, and but for Stewart's
support would have fallen from the saddle. She heard him swear
under his breath.

"Here, this won't do," he said. "Throw your leg over the pommel.
The other one--there."

Then, mounting, he slipped behind her and lifted and turned her,
and then held her with his left arm so that she lay across the
saddle and his knees, her head against his shoulder.

As the horse started into a rapid walk Madeline gradually lost
all pain and discomfort when she relaxed her muscles. Presently
she let herself go and lay inert, greatly to her relief. For a
little while she seemed to be half drunk with the gentle swaying
of a hammock. Her mind became at once dreamy and active, as if
it thoughtfully recorded the slow, soft impressions pouring in
from all her senses.

A red glow faded in the west. She could see out over the
foothills, where twilight was settling gray on the crests, dark
in the hollows. Cedar and pinon trees lined the trail, and there
were no more firs. At intervals huge drab-colored rocks loomed
over her. The sky was clear and steely. A faint star twinkled.
And lastly, close to her, she saw Stewart's face, once more dark
and impassive, with the inscrutable eyes fixed on the trail.

His arm, like a band of iron, held her, yet it was flexible and
yielded her to the motion of the horse. One instant she felt the
brawn, the bone, heavy and powerful; the next the stretch and
ripple, the elasticity of muscles. He held her as easily as if
she were a child. The roughness of his flannel shirt rubbed her
cheek, and beneath that she felt the dampness of the scarf he had
used to bathe her arm, and deeper still the regular pound of his
heart. Against her ear, filling it with strong, vibrant beat,
his heart seemed a mighty engine deep within a great cavern. Her
head had never before rested on a man's breast, and she had no
liking for it there; but she felt more than the physical contact.
The position was mysterious and fascinating, and something
natural in it made her think of life. Then as the cool wind blew
down from the heights, loosening her tumbled hair, she was
compelled to see strands of it curl softly into Stewart's face,
before his eyes, across his lips. She was unable to reach it
with her free hand, and therefore could not refasten it. And
when she shut her eyes she felt those loosened strands playing
against his cheeks.

In the keener press of such sensations she caught the smell of
dust and a faint, wild, sweet tang on the air. There was a low,
rustling sigh of wind in the brush along the trail. Suddenly the
silence ripped apart to the sharp bark of a coyote, and then,
from far away, came a long wail. And then Majesty's metal-rimmed
hoof rang on a stone.

These later things lent probability to that ride for Madeline.
Otherwise it would have seemed like a dream. Even so it was hard
to believe. Again she wondered if this woman who had begun to
think and feel so much was Madeline Hammond. Nothing had ever
happened to her. And here, playing about her like her hair
played about Stewart's face, was adventure, perhaps death, and
surely life. She could not believe the evidence of the day's
happenings. Would any of her people, her friends, ever believe
it? Could she tell it? How impossible to think that a cunning
Mexican might have used her to further the interests of a forlorn
revolution. She remembered the ghoulish visages of those starved
rebels, and marveled at her blessed fortune in escaping them.
She was safe, and now self-preservation had some meaning for her.
Stewart's arrival in the glade, the courage with which he had
faced the outlawed men, grew as real to her now as the iron arm
that clasped her. Had it been an instinct which had importuned
her to save this man when he lay ill and hopeless in the shack at
Chiricahua? In helping him had she hedged round her forces that
had just operated to save her life, or if not that, more than
life was to her? She believed so.

Madeline opened her eyes after a while and found that night had
fallen. The sky was a dark, velvety blue blazing with white
stars. The cool wind tugged at her hair, and through waving
strands she saw Stewart's profile, bold and sharp against the
sky.

Then, as her mind succumbed to her bodily fatigue, again her
situation became unreal and wild. A heavy languor, like a
blanket, began to steal upon her. She wavered and drifted. With
the last half-conscious sense of a muffled throb at her ear, a
something intangibly sweet, deep-toned, and strange, like a
distant calling bell, she fell asleep with her head on Stewart's
breast.

XII Friends from the East

Three days after her return to the ranch Madeline could not
discover any physical discomfort as a reminder of her adventurous
experiences. This surprised her, but not nearly so much as the
fact that after a few weeks she found she scarcely remembered the
adventures at all. If it had not been for the quiet and
persistent guardianship of her cowboys she might almost have
forgotten Don Carlos and the raiders. Madeline was assured of
the splendid physical fitness to which this ranch life had
developed her, and that she was assimilating something of the
Western disregard of danger. A hard ride, an accident, a day in
the sun and dust, an adventure with outlaws--these might once
have been matters of large import, but now for Madeline they were
in order with all the rest of her changed life.

There was never a day that something interesting was not brought
to her notice. Stillwell, who had ceaselessly reproached himself
for riding away the morning Madeline was captured, grew more like
an anxious parent than a faithful superintendent. He was never
at ease regarding her unless he was near the ranch or had left
Stewart there, or else Nels and Nick Steele. Naturally, he
trusted more to Stewart than to any one else.

"Miss Majesty, it's sure amazin' strange about Gene," said the
old cattleman, as he tramped into Madeline's office.

"What's the matter now?" she inquired.

"Wal, Gene has rustled off into the mountains again."

"Again? I did not know he had gone. I gave him money for that
band of guerrillas. Perhaps he went to take it to them."

"No. He took that a day or so after he fetched you back home.
Then in about a week he went a second time. An' he packed some
stuff with him. Now he's sneaked off, an' Nels, who was down to
the lower trail, saw him meet somebody that looked like Padre
Marcos. Wal, I went down to the church, and, sure enough, Padre
Marcos is gone. What do you think of that, Miss Majesty?"

"Maybe Stewart is getting religious," laughed Madeline. You told
me so once.

Stillwell puffed and wiped his red face.

"If you'd heerd him cuss Monty this mawnin' you'd never guess it
was religion. Monty an' Nels hev been givin' Gene a lot of
trouble lately. They're both sore an' in fightin' mood ever
since Don Carlos hed you kidnapped. Sure they're goin' to break
soon, an' then we'll hev a couple of wild Texas steers ridin' the
range. I've a heap to worry me."

"Let Stewart take his mysterious trips into the mountains. Here,
Stillwell, I have news for you that may give you reason for
worry. I have letters from home. And my sister, with a party of
friends, is coming out to visit me. They are society folk, and
one of them is an English lord."

"Wal, Miss Majesty, I reckon we'll all be glad to see them," said
Stillwell. "Onless they pack you off back East."

"That isn't likely," replied Madeline, thoughtfully. "I must go
back some time, though. Well, let me read you a few extracts
from my mail."

Madeline took up her sister's letter with a strange sensation of
how easily sight of a crested monogram and scent of delicately
perfumed paper could recall the brilliant life she had given up.
She scanned the pages of beautiful handwriting. Helen's letter
was in turn gay and brilliant and lazy, just as she was herself;
but Madeline detected more of curiosity in it than of real
longing to see the sister and brother in the Far West. Much of
what Helen wrote was enthusiastic anticipation of the fun she
expected to have with bashful cowboys. Helen seldom wrote
letters, and she never read anything, not even popular novels of
the day. She was as absolutely ignorant of the West as the
Englishman, who, she said, expected to hunt buffalo and fight
Indians. Moreover, there was a satiric note in the letter that
Madeline did not like, and which roused her spirit. Manifestly,
Helen was reveling in the prospect of new sensation.

When she finished reading aloud a few paragraphs the old
cattleman snorted and his face grew redder.

"Did your sister write that?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Wal, I--I beg pawdin, Miss Majesty. But it doesn't seem like
you. Does she think we're a lot of wild men from Borneo?"

"Evidently she does. I rather think she is in for a surprise.
Now, Stillwell, you are clever and you can see the situation. I
want my guests to enjoy their stay here, but I do not want that
to be at the expense of the feelings of all of us, or even any
one. Helen will bring a lively crowd. They'll crave excitement-
-the unusual. Let us see that they are not disappointed. You
take the boys into your confidence. Tell them what to expect,
and tell them how to meet it. I shall help you in that. I want
the boys to be on dress-parade when they are off duty. I want
them to be on their most elegant behavior. I do not care what
they do, what measures they take to protect themselves, what
tricks they contrive, so long as they do not overstep the limit
of kindness and courtesy. I want them to play their parts
seriously, naturally, as if they had lived no other way. My
guests expect to have fun. Let us meet them with fun. Now what
do you say?"

Stillwell rose, his great bulk towering, his huge face beaming.

"Wal, I say it's the most amazin' fine idee I ever heerd in my
life."

"Indeed, I am glad you like it," went on Madeline.

"Come to me again, Stillwell, after you have spoken to the boys.
But, now that I have suggested it, I am a little afraid. You
know what cowboy fun is. Perhaps--"

"Don't you go back on that idee," interrupted Stillwell. He was
assuring and bland, but his hurry to convince Madeline betrayed
him. "Leave the boys to me. Why, don't they all swear by you,
same as the Mexicans do to the Virgin? They won't disgrace you,
Miss Majesty. They'll be simply immense. It'll beat any show
you ever seen."

"I believe it will," replied Madeline. She was still doubtful of
her plan, but the enthusiasm of the old cattleman was infectious
and irresistible. "Very well, we will consider it settled. My
guests will arrive on May ninth. Meanwhile let us get Her
Majesty's Rancho in shape for this invasion."

On the afternoon of the ninth of May, perhaps half an hour after
Madeline had received a telephone message from Link Stevens
announcing the arrival of her guests at El Cajon, Florence called
her out upon the porch. Stillwell was there with his face
wrinkled by his wonderful smile and his eagle eyes riveted upon
the distant valley. Far away, perhaps twenty miles, a thin
streak of white dust rose from the valley floor and slanted
skyward.

"Look!" said Florence, excitedly.

"What is that?" asked Madeline.

"Link Stevens and the automobile!"

"Oh no! Why, it's only a few minutes since he telephoned saying
the party had just arrived."

"Take a look with the glasses," said Florence.

One glance through the powerful binoculars convinced Madeline
that Florence was right. And another glance at Stillwell told
her that he was speechless with delight. She remembered a little
conversation she had had with Link Stevens a short while
previous.

"Stevens, I hope the car is in good shape," she had said. "Now,
Miss Hammond, she's as right as the best-trained hoss I ever
rode," he had replied.

"The valley road is perfect," she had gone on, musingly. "I
never saw such a beautiful road, even in France. No fences, no
ditches, no rocks, no vehicles. Just a lonely road on the
desert."

"Shore, it's lonely," Stevens had answered, with slowly
brightening eyes. "An' safe, Miss Hammond."

"My sister used to like fast riding. If I remember correctly,
all of my guests were a little afflicted with the speed mania.
It is a common disease with New-Yorkers. I hope, Stevens, that
you will not give them reason to think we are altogether steeped
in the slow, dreamy manana languor of the Southwest."

Link doubtfully eyed her, and then his bronze face changed its
dark aspect and seemed to shine.

"Beggin' your pardon, Miss Hammond, thet's shore tall talk fer
Link Stevens to savvy. You mean--as long as I drive careful an'
safe I can run away from my dust, so to say, an' get here in
somethin' less than the Greaser's to-morrow?"

Madeline had laughed her assent. And now, as she watched the
thin streak of dust, at that distance moving with snail pace, she
reproached herself. She trusted Stevens; she had never known so
skilful, daring, and iron-nerved a driver as he was. If she had
been in the car herself she would have had no anxiety. But,
imagining what Stevens would do on forty miles and more of that
desert road, Madeline suffered a prick of conscience.

"Oh, Stillwell!" she exclaimed. "I am afraid I will go back on
my wonderful idea. What made me do it?"

"Your sister wanted the real thing, didn't she? Said they all
wanted it. Wal, I reckon they've begun gettin' it," replied
Stillwell.

That statement from the cattleman allayed Madeline's pangs of
conscience. She understood just what she felt, though she could
not have put it in words. She was hungry for a sight of
well-remembered faces; she longed to hear the soft laughter and
gay repartee of old friends; she was eager for gossipy first-hand
news of her old world. Nevertheless, something in her sister's
letter, in messages from the others who were coming, had touched
Madeline's pride. In one sense the expected guests were hostile,
inasmuch as they were scornful and curious about the West that
had claimed her. She imagined what they would expect in a
Western ranch. They would surely get the real thing, too, as
Stillwell said; and in that certainty was satisfaction for a
small grain of something within Madeline which approached
resentment. She wistfully wondered, however, if her sister or
friends would come to see the West even a little as she saw it.
That, perhaps, would he hoping too much. She resolved once for
all to do her best to give them the sensation their senses
craved, and equally to show them the sweetness and beauty and
wholesomeness and strength of life in the Southwest.

"Wal, as Nels says, I wouldn't be in that there ottomobile right
now for a million pesos," remarked Stillwell.

"Why? Is Stevens driving fast?"

"Good Lord! Fast? Miss Majesty, there hain't ever been anythin'
except a streak of lightnin' run so fast in this country. I'll
bet Link for once is in heaven. I can jest see him now, the
grim, crooked-legged little devil, hunchin' down over that wheel
as if it was a hoss's neck."

"I told him not to let the ride be hot or dusty," remarked
Madeline.

"Haw, haw!" roared Stillwell. "Wal, I'll be goin'. I reckon I'd
like to be hyar when Link drives up, but I want to be with the
boys down by the bunks. It'll be some fun to see Nels an' Monty
when Link comes flyin' along."

"I wish Al had stayed to meet them," said Madeline.

Her brother had rather hurried a shipment of cattle to
California: and it was Madeline's supposition that he had
welcomed the opportunity to absent himself from the ranch.

"I am sorry he wouldn't stay," replied Florence. "But Al's all
business now. And he's doing finely. It's just as well,
perhaps."

"Surely. That was my pride speaking. I would like to have all
my family and all my old friends see what a man Al has become.
Well, Link Stevens is running like the wind. The car will be
here before we know it. Florence, we've only a few moments to
dress. But first I want to order many and various and
exceedingly cold refreshments for that approaching party."

Less than a half-hour later Madeline went again to the porch and
found Florence there.

"Oh, you look just lovely!" exclaimed Florence, impulsively, as
she gazed wide-eyed up at Madeline. "And somehow so different!"

Madeline smiled a little sadly. Perhaps when she had put on that
exquisite white gown something had come to her of the manner
which befitted the wearing of it. She could not resist the
desire to look fair once more in the eyes of these hypercritical
friends. The sad smile had been for the days that were gone.
For she knew that what society had once been pleased to call her
beauty had trebled since it had last been seen in a drawing-room.
Madeline wore no jewels, but at her waist she had pinned two
great crimson roses. Against the dead white they had the life
and fire and redness of the desert.

"Link's hit the old round-up trail," said Florence, "and oh,
isn't he riding that car!"

With Florence, as with most of the cowboys, the car was never
driven, but ridden.

A white spot with a long trail of dust showed low down in the
valley. It was now headed almost straight for the ranch.
Madeline watched it growing larger moment by moment, and her
pleasurable emotion grew accordingly. Then the rapid beat of a
horse's hoofs caused her to turn.

Stewart was riding in on his black horse. He had been absent on
an important mission, and his duty had taken him to the
international boundary-line. His presence home long before he was
expected was particularly gratifying to Madeline, for it meant
that his mission had been brought to a successful issue. Once
more, for the hundredth time, the man's reliability struck
Madeline. He was a doer of things. The black horse halted
wearily without the usual pound of hoofs on the gravel, and the
dusty rider dismounted wearily. Both horse and rider showed the
heat and dust and wind of many miles.

Madeline advanced to the porch steps. And Stewart, after taking
a parcel of papers from a saddle-bag, turned toward her.

"Stewart, you are the best of couriers," she said. "I am
pleased."

Dust streamed from his sombrero as he doffed it. His dark face
seemed to rise as he straightened weary shoulders.

"Here are the reports, Miss Hammond," he replied.

As he looked up to see her standing there, dressed to receive her
Eastern guests, he checked his advance with a violent action
which recalled to Madeline the one he had made on the night she
had met him, when she disclosed her identity. It was not fear nor
embarrassment nor awkwardness. And it was only momentary. Yet,
slight as had been his pause, Madeline received from it an
impression of some strong halting force. A man struck by a
bullet might have had an instant jerk of muscular control such as
convulsed Stewart. In that instant, as her keen gaze searched
his dust-caked face, she met the full, free look of his eyes.
Her own did not fall, though she felt a warmth steal to her
cheeks. Madeline very seldom blushed. And now, conscious of her
sudden color a genuine blush flamed on her face. It was
irritating because it was incomprehensible. She received the
papers from Stewart and thanked him. He bowed, then led the
black down the path toward the corrals.

"When Stewart looks like that he's been riding," said Florence.
"But when his horse looks like that he's sure been burning the
wind."

Madeline watched the weary horse and rider limp down the path.
What had made her thoughtful? Mostly it was something new or
sudden or inexplicable that stirred her mind to quick analysis.
In this instance the thing that had struck Madeline was Stewart's
glance. He had looked at her, and the old burning, inscrutable
fire, the darkness, had left his eyes. Suddenly they had been
beautiful. The look had not been one of surprise or admiration;
nor had it been one of love. She was familiar, too familiar with
all three. It had not been a gaze of passion, for there was
nothing beautiful in that. Madeline pondered. And presently she
realized that Stewart's eyes had expressed a strange joy of
pride. That expression Madeline had never before encountered in
the look of any man. Probably its strangeness had made her notice
it and accounted for her blushing. The longer she lived among
these outdoor men the more they surprised her. Particularly, how
incomprehensible was this cowboy Stewart! Why should he have
pride or joy at sight of her?

Florence's exclamation made Madeline once more attend to the
approaching automobile. It was on the slope now, some miles down
the long gradual slant. Two yellow funnel-shaped clouds of dust
seemed to shoot out from behind the car and roll aloft to join
the column that stretched down the valley.

"I wonder what riding a mile a minute would be like," said
Florence. "I'll sure make Link take me. Oh, but look at him
come!"

The giant car resembled a white demon, and but for the dust would
have appeared to be sailing in the air. Its motion was steadily
forward, holding to the road as if on rails. And its velocity
was astounding. Long, gray veils, like pennants, streamed in the
wind. A low rushing sound became perceptible, and it grew
louder, became a roar. The car shot like an arrow past the
alfalfa-field, by the bunk-houses, where the cowboys waved and
cheered. The horses and burros in the corrals began to snort and
tramp and race in fright. At the base of the long slope of the
foothill Link cut the speed more than half. Yet the car roared
up, rolling the dust, flying capes and veils and ulsters, and
crashed and cracked to a halt in the yard before the porch.

Madeline descried a gray, disheveled mass of humanity packed
inside the car. Besides the driver there were seven occupants,
and for a moment they appeared to be coming to life, moving and
exclaiming under the veils and wraps and dust-shields.

Link Stevens stepped out and, removing helmet and goggles, coolly
looked at his watch.

"An hour an' a quarter, Miss Hammond," he said. "It's
sixty-three miles by the valley road, an' you know there's a
couple of bad hills. I reckon we made fair time, considerin' you
wanted me to drive slow an' safe."

From the mass of dusty-veiled humanity in the car came low
exclamations and plaintive feminine wails.

Madeline stepped to the front of the porch. Then the deep voices
of men and softer voices of women united in one glad outburst, as
much a thanksgiving as a greeting, "MAJESTY!"

Helen Hammond was three years younger than Madeline, and a
slender, pretty girl. She did not resemble her sister, except in
whiteness and fineness of skin, being more of a brown-eyed,
brown-haired type. Having recovered her breath soon after
Madeline took her to her room, she began to talk.

"Majesty, old girl, I'm here; but you can bet I would never have
gotten here if I had known about that ride from the railroad.
You never wrote that you had a car. I thought this was out West-
-stage-coach, and all that sort of thing. Such a tremendous car!
And the road! And that terrible little man with the leather
trousers! What kind of a chauffeur is he?"

"He's a cowboy. He was crippled by falling under his horse, so I
had him instructed to run the car. He can drive, don't you
think?"

"Drive? Good gracious! He scared us to death, except Castleton.
Nothing could scare that cold-blooded little Englishman. I am
dizzy yet. Do you know, Majesty, I was delighted when I saw the
car. Then your cowboy driver met us at the platform. What a
queer-looking individual! He had a big pistol strapped to those
leather trousers. That made me nervous. When he piled us all in
with our grips, he put me in the seat beside him, whether I liked
it or not. I was fool enough to tell him I loved to travel fast.
What do you think he said? Well, he eyed me in a rather cool and
speculative way and said, with a smile, 'Miss, I reckon anything
you love an' want bad will be coming to you out here!'  I didn't
know whether it was delightful candor or impudence. Then he said
to all of us: 'Shore you had better wrap up in the veils an'
dusters. It's a long, slow, hot, dusty ride to the ranch, an'
Miss Hammond's order was to drive safe.'  He got our baggage
checks and gave them to a man with a huge wagon and a four-horse
team. Then he cranked the car, jumped in, wrapped his arms round
the wheel, and sank down low in his seat. There was a crack, a
jerk, a kind of flash around us, and that dirty little town was
somewhere on the map behind. For about five minutes I had a
lovely time. Then the wind began to tear me to pieces. I
couldn't hear anything but the rush of wind and roar of the car.
I could see only straight ahead. What a road! I never saw a
road in my life till to-day. Miles and miles and miles ahead,
with not even a post or tree. That big car seemed to leap at the
miles. It hummed and sang. I was fascinated, then terrified.
We went so fast I couldn't catch my breath. The wind went through
me, and I expected to be disrobed by it any minute. I was afraid
I couldn't hold any clothes on. Presently all I could see was a
flashing gray wall with a white line in the middle. Then my eyes
blurred. My face burned. My ears grew full of a hundred thousand
howling devils. I was about ready to die when the car stopped.
I looked and looked, and when I could see, there you stood!"

"Helen, I thought you were fond of speeding," said Madeline, with
a laugh.

"I was. But I assure you I never before was in a fast car; I
never saw a road; I never met a driver."

"Perhaps I may have a few surprises for you out here in the wild
and woolly West."

Helen's dark eyes showed a sister's memory of possibilities.

"You've started well," she said. "I am simply stunned. I expected
to find you old and dowdy. Majesty, you're the handsomest thing
I ever laid eyes on. You're so splendid and strong, and your
skin is like white gold. What's happened to you? What's changed
you? This beautiful room, those glorious roses out there, the
cool, dark sweetness of this wonderful house! I know you,
Majesty, and, though you never wrote it, I believe you have made
a home out here. That's the most stunning surprise of all.
Come, confess. I know I've always been selfish and not much of a
sister; but if you are happy out here I am glad. You were not
happy at home. Tell me about yourself and about Alfred. Then I
shall give you all the messages and news from the East."

It afforded Madeline exceeding pleasure to have from one and all
of her guests varied encomiums of her beautiful home, and a real
and warm interest in what promised to be a delightful and
memorable visit.

Of them all Castleton was the only one who failed to show
surprise. He greeted her precisely as be had when he had last
seen her in London. Madeline, rather to her astonishment, found
meeting him again pleasurable. She discovered she liked this
imperturbable Englishman. Manifestly her capacity for liking any
one had immeasurably enlarged. Quite unexpectedly her old
girlish love for her younger sister sprang into life, and with it
interest in these half-forgotten friends, and a warm regard for
Edith Wayne, a chum of college days.

Helen's party was smaller than Madeline had expected it to be.
Helen had been careful to select a company of good friends, all
of whom were well known to Madeline. Edith Wayne was a patrician
brunette, a serious, soft-voiced woman, sweet and kindly, despite
a rather bitter experience that had left her worldly wise. Mrs.
Carrollton Beck, a plain, lively person, had chaperoned the
party. The fourth and last of the feminine contingent was Miss
Dorothy Coombs--Dot, as they called her--a young woman of
attractive blond prettiness.

For a man Castleton was of very small stature. He had a
pink-and-white complexion, a small golden mustache, and his heavy
eyelids, always drooping, made him look dull. His attire, cut to
what appeared to be an exaggerated English style, attracted
attention to his diminutive size. He was immaculate and
fastidious. Robert Weede was a rather large florid young man,
remarkable only for his good nature. Counting Boyd Harvey, a
handsome, pale-faced fellow, with the careless smile of the man
for whom life had been easy and pleasant, the party was complete.

Dinner was a happy hour, especially for the Mexican women who
served it and who could not fail to note its success. The
mingling of low voices and laughter, the old, gay, superficial
talk, the graciousness of a class which lived for the pleasure of
things and to make time pass pleasurably for others--all took
Madeline far back into the past. She did not care to return to
it, but she saw that it was well she had not wholly cut herself
off from her people and friends.

When the party adjourned to the porch the heat had markedly
decreased and the red sun was sinking over the red desert. An
absence of spoken praise, a gradually deepening silence, attested
to the impression on the visitors of that noble sunset. Just as
the last curve of red rim vanished beyond the dim Sierra Madres
and the golden lightning began to flare brighter Helen broke the
silence with an exclamation.

"It wants only life. Ah, there's a horse climbing the hill!
See, he's up! He has a rider!"

Madeline knew before she looked the identity of the man riding up
the mesa. But she did not know until that moment how the habit
of watching for him at this hour had grown upon her. He rode
along the rim of the mesa and out to the point, where, against
the golden background, horse and rider stood silhouetted in bold
relief.

"What's he doing there? Who is he?" inquired the curious Helen.

"That is Stewart, my right-hand man," replied Madeline. "Every
day when he is at the ranch he rides up there at sunset. I think
he likes the ride and the scene; but he goes to take a look at
the cattle in the valley."

"Is he a cowboy?" asked Helen.

"Indeed yes!" replied Madeline, with a little laugh. "You will
think so when Stillwell gets hold of you and begins to talk."

Madeline found it necessary to explain who Stillwell was, and
what he thought of Stewart, and, while she was about it, of her
own accord she added a few details of Stewart's fame.

"El Capitan. How interesting!" mused Helen. "What does he look
like?"

"He is superb."

Florence handed the field-glass to Helen and bade her look.

"Oh, thank you!" said Helen, as she complied. "There. I see him.
Indeed, he is superb. What a magnificent horse! How still he
stands! Why, he seems carved in stone."

"Let me look?" said Dorothy Coombs, eagerly.

Helen gave her the glass.

"You can look, Dot, but that's all. He's mine. I saw him
first."

Whereupon Madeline's feminine guests held a spirited contest over
the field-glass, and three of them made gay, bantering boasts not
to consider Helen's self-asserted rights. Madeline laughed with
the others while she watched the dark figure of Stewart and his
black outline against the sky. There came over her a thought not
by any means new or strange--she wondered what was in Stewart's
mind as he stood there in the solitude and faced the desert and
the darkening west. Some day she meant to ask him. Presently he
turned the horse and rode down into the shadow creeping up the
mesa.

"Majesty, have you planned any fun, any excitement for us?" asked
Helen. She was restless, nervous, and did not seem to be able to
sit still a moment.

"You will think so when I get through with you," replied
Madeline.

"What, for instance?" inquired Helen and Dot and Mrs. Beck, in
unison. Edith Wayne smiled her interest.

"Well, I am not counting rides and climbs and golf; but these are
necessary to train you for trips over into Arizona. I want to
show you the desert and the Aravaipa Canon. We have to go on
horseback and pack our outfit. If any of you are alive after
those trips and want more we shall go up into the mountains. I
should like very much to know what you each want particularly."

"I'll tell you," replied Helen, promptly. "Dot will be the same
out here as she was in the East. She wants to look bashfully
down at her hand--a hand imprisoned in another, by the way--and
listen to a man talk poetry about her eyes. If cowboys don't
make love that way Dot's visit will be a failure. Now Elsie Beck
wants solely to be revenged upon us for dragging her out here.
She wants some dreadful thing to happen to us. I don't know
what's in Edith's head, but it isn't fun. Bobby wants to be near
Elsie, and no more. Boyd wants what he has always wanted--the
only thing he ever wanted that he didn't get. Castleton has a
horrible bloodthirsty desire to kill something."

"I declare now, I want to ride and camp out, also," protested
Castleton.

"As for myself," went on Helen, "I want-- Oh, if I only knew what
it is that I want! Well, I know I want to be outdoors, to get
into the open, to feel sun and wind, to burn some color into my
white face. I want some flesh and blood and life. I am tired
out. Beyond all that I don't know very well. I'll try to keep
Dot from attaching all the cowboys to her train."

"What a diversity of wants!" said Madeline.

"Above all, Majesty, we want something to happen," concluded
Helen, with passionate finality.

"My dear sister, maybe you will have your wish fulfilled,"
replied Madeline, soberly. "Edith, Helen has made me curious
about your especial yearning."

"Majesty, it is only that I wanted to be with you for a while,"
replied this old friend.

There was in the wistful reply, accompanied by a dark and
eloquent glance of eyes, what told Madeline of Edith's
understanding, of her sympathy, and perhaps a betrayal of her own
unquiet soul. It saddened Madeline. How many women might there
not be who had the longing to break down the bars of their cage,
but had not the spirit!

XIII Cowboy Golf

In the whirl of the succeeding days it was a mooted question
whether Madeline's guests or her cowboys or herself got the
keenest enjoyment out of the flying time. Considering the
sameness of the cowboys' ordinary life, she was inclined to think
they made the most of the present. Stillwell and Stewart,
however, had found the situation trying. The work of the ranch
had to go on, and some of it got sadly neglected. Stillwell could
not resist the ladies any more than he could resist the fun in
the extraordinary goings-on of the cowboys. Stewart alone kept
the business of cattle-raising from a serious setback. Early and
late he was in the saddle, driving the lazy Mexicans whom he had
hired to relieve the cowboys.

One morning in June Madeline was sitting on the porch with her
merry friends when Stillwell appeared on the corral path. He had
not come to consult Madeline for several days--an omission so
unusual as to be remarked.

"Here comes Bill--in trouble," laughed Florence.

Indeed, he bore some faint resemblance to a thundercloud as he
approached the porch; but the greetings he got from Madeline's
party, especially from Helen and Dorothy, chased away the
blackness from his face and brought the wonderful wrinkling
smile.

"Miss Majesty, sure I'm a sad demoralized old cattleman," he
said, presently. "An' I'm in need of a heap of help."

"What's wrong now?" asked Madeline, with her encouraging smile.

"Wal, it's so amazin' strange what cowboys will do. I jest am
about to give up. Why, you might say my cowboys were all on
strike for vacations. What do you think of that? We've changed
the shifts, shortened hours, let one an' another off duty, hired
Greasers, an', in fact, done everythin' that could be thought of.
But this vacation idee growed worse. When Stewart set his foot
down, then the boys begin to get sick. Never in my born days as a
cattleman have I heerd of so many diseases. An' you ought to see
how lame an' crippled an' weak many of the boys have got all of a
sudden. The idee of a cowboy comin' to me with a sore finger an'
askin' to be let off for a day! There's Booly. Now I've knowed
a hoss to fall all over him, an' onct he rolled down a canon.
Never bothered him at all. He's got a blister on his heel, a
ridin' blister, an' he says it's goin' to blood-poisonin' if he
doesn't rest. There's Jim Bell. He's developed what he says is
spinal mengalootis, or some such like. There's Frankie Slade.
He swore he had scarlet fever because his face burnt so red, I
guess, an' when I hollered that scarlet fever was contagious an'
he must be put away somewhere, he up an' says he guessed it
wasn't that. But he was sure awful sick an' needed to loaf
around an' be amused. Why, even Nels doesn't want to work these
days. If it wasn't for Stewart, who's had Greasers with the
cattle, I don't know what I'd do."

"Why all this sudden illness and idleness?" asked Madeline.

"Wal, you see, the truth is every blamed cowboy on the range
except Stewart thinks it's his bounden duty to entertain the
ladies."

"I think that is just fine!" exclaimed Dorothy Coombs; and she
joined in the general laugh.

"Stewart, then, doesn't care to help entertain us?" inquired
Helen, in curious interest. "Wal, Miss Helen, Stewart is sure
different from the other cowboys," replied Stillwell. "Yet he
used to be like them. There never was a cowboy fuller of the
devil than Gene. But he's changed. He's foreman here, an' that
must be it. All the responsibility rests on him. He sure has no
time for amusin' the ladies."

"I imagine that is our loss," said Edith Wayne, in her earnest
way. "I admire him."

"Stillwell, you need not be so distressed with what is only
gallantry in the boys, even if it does make a temporary confusion
in the work," said Madeline.

"Miss Majesty, all I said is not the half, nor the quarter, nor
nuthin' of what's troublin' me," answered he, sadly.

"Very well; unburden yourself."

"Wal, the cowboys, exceptin' Gene, have gone plumb batty, jest
plain crazy over this heah game of gol-lof."

A merry peal of mirth greeted Stillwell's solemn assertion.

"Oh, Stillwell, you are in fun," replied Madeline.

"I hope to die if I'm not in daid earnest," declared the
cattleman. "It's an amazin' strange fact. Ask Flo. She'll tell
you. She knows cowboys, an' how if they ever start on somethin'
they ride it as they ride a hoss."

Florence being appealed to, and evidently feeling all eyes upon
her, modestly replied that Stillwell had scarcely misstated the
situation.

"Cowboys play like they work or fight," she added. "They give
their whole souls to it. They are great big simple boys."

"Indeed they are," said Madeline. "Oh, I'm glad if they like the
game of golf. They have so little play."

"Wal, somethin's got to be did if we're to go on raisin' cattle
at Her Majesty's Rancho," replied Stillwell. He appeared both
deliberate and resigned.

Madeline remembered that despite Stillwell's simplicity he was as
deep as any of his cowboys, and there was absolutely no gaging
him where possibilities of fun were concerned. Madeline fancied
that his exaggerated talk about the cowboys' sudden craze for
golf was in line with certain other remarkable tales that had
lately emanated from him. Some very strange things had occurred
of late, and it was impossible to tell whether or not they were
accidents, mere coincidents, or deep-laid, skilfully worked-out
designs of the fun-loving cowboys. Certainly there had been
great fun, and at the expense of her guests, particularly
Castleton. So Madeline was at a loss to know what to think about
Stillwell's latest elaboration. From mere force of habit she
sympathized with him and found difficulty in doubting his
apparent sincerity.

"To go back a ways," went on Stillwell, as Madeline looked up
expectantly, "you recollect what pride the boys took in fixin' up
that gol-lof course out on the mesa? Wal, they worked on that
job, an' though I never seen any other course, I'll gamble yours
can't be beat. The boys was sure curious about that game. You
recollect also how they all wanted to see you an' your brother
play, an' be caddies for you? Wal, whenever you'd quit they'd go
to work tryin' to play the game. Monty Price, he was the leadin'
spirit. Old as I am, Miss Majesty, an' used as I am to cowboy
excentrikities, I nearly dropped daid when I heered that little
hobble-footed, burned-up Montana cow-puncher say there wasn't any
game too swell for him, an' gol-lof was just his speed. Serious
as a preacher, mind you, he was. An' he was always practisin'.
When Stewart gave him charge of the course an' the club-house an'
all them funny sticks, why, Monty was tickled to death. You see,
Monty is sensitive that he ain't much good any more for cowboy
work. He was glad to have a job that he didn't feel he was
hangin' to by kindness. Wal, he practised the game, an' he read
the books in the club-house, an' he got the boys to doin' the
same. That wasn't very hard, I reckon. They played early an'
late an' in the moonlight. For a while Monty was coach, an' the
boys stood it. But pretty soon Frankie Slade got puffed on his
game, an' he had to have it out with Monty. Wal, Monty beat him
bad. Then one after another the other boys tackled Monty. He
beat them all. After that they split up an' begin to play
matches, two on a side. For a spell this worked fine. But
cowboys can't never be satisfied long onless they win all the
time. Monty an' Link Stevens, both cripples, you might say,
joined forces an' elected to beat all comers. Wal, they did, an'
that's the trouble. Long an' patient the other cowboys tried to
beat them two game legs, an' hevn't done it. Mebbe if Monty an'
Link was perfectly sound in their legs like the other cowboys
there wouldn't hev been such a holler. But no sound cowboys'll
ever stand for a disgrace like that. Why, down at the bunks in
the evenin's it's some mortifyin' the way Monty an' Link crow
over the rest of the outfit. They've taken on superior airs.
You couldn't reach up to Monty with a trimmed spruce pole. An'
Link--wal, he's just amazin' scornful.

"'It's a swell game, ain't it?' says Link, powerful sarcastic.
'Wal, what's hurtin' you low-down common cowmen? You keep harpin'
on Monty's game leg an' on my game leg. If we hed good legs we'd
beat you all the wuss. It's brains that wins in gol-lof. Brains
an' airstoocratik blood, which of the same you fellers sure hev
little.'

"An' then Monty he blows smoke powerful careless an' superior,
an' he says:

"'Sure it's a swell game. You cow-headed gents think beef an'
brawn ought to hev the call over skill an' gray matter. You'll
all hev to back up an' get down. Go out an' learn the game. You
don't know a baffy from a Chinee sandwich. All you can do is
waggle with a club an' fozzle the ball.'

"Whenever Monty gets to usin' them queer names the boys go round
kind of dotty. Monty an' Link hev got the books an' directions
of the game, an' they won't let the other boys see them. They
show the rules, but that's all. An', of course, every game ends
in a row almost before it's started. The boys are all turrible
in earnest about this gol-lof. An' I want to say, for the good
of ranchin', not to mention a possible fight, that Monty an' Link
hev got to be beat. There'll be no peace round this ranch till
that's done."

Madeline's guests were much amused. As for herself, in spite of
her scarcely considered doubt, Stillwell's tale of woe occasioned
her anxiety. However, she could hardly control her mirth.

"What in the world can I do?"

"Wal, I reckon I couldn't say. I only come to you for advice.
It seems that a queer kind of game has locoed my cowboys, an' for
the time bein' ranchin' is at a standstill. Sounds ridiculous, I
know, but cowboys are as strange as wild cattle. All I'm sure of
is that the conceit has got to be taken out of Monty an' Link.
Onct, just onct, will square it, an' then we can resoome our
work."

"Stillwell, listen," said Madeline, brightly. "We'll arrange a
match game, a foursome, between Monty and Link and your best
picked team. Castleton, who is an expert golfer, will umpire.
My sister, and friends, and I will take turns as caddies for your
team. That will be fair, considering yours is the weaker.
Caddies may coach, and perhaps expert advice is all that is
necessary for your team to defeat Monty's."

"A grand idee," declared Stillwell, with instant decision. "When
can we have this match game?"

"Why, to-day--this afternoon. We'll all ride out to the links."

"Wal, I reckon I'll be some indebted to you, Miss Majesty, an'
all your guests," replied Stillwell, warmly. He rose with
sombrero in hand, and a twinkle in his eye that again prompted
Madeline to wonder. "An' now I'll be goin' to fix up for the
game of cowboy gol-lof. Adios."

The idea was as enthusiastically received by Madeline's guests as
it had been by Stillwell. They were highly amused and
speculative to the point of taking sides and making wagers on
their choice. Moreover, this situation so frankly revealed by
Stillwell had completed their deep mystification. They were now
absolutely nonplussed by the singular character of American
cowboys. Madeline was pleased to note how seriously they had
taken the old cattleman's story. She had a little throb of wild
expectancy that made her both fear and delight in the afternoon's
prospect.

The June days had set in warm; in fact, hot during the noon
hours: and this had inculcated in her insatiable visitors a
tendency to profit by the experience of those used to the
Southwest. They indulged in the restful siesta during the heated
term of the day.

Madeline was awakened by Majesty's well-known whistle and
pounding on the gravel. Then she heard the other horses. When
she went out she found her party assembled in gala golf attire,
and with spirits to match their costumes. Castleton, especially,
appeared resplendent in a golf coat that beggared description.
Madeline had faint misgivings when she reflected on what Monty
and Nels and Nick might do under the influence of that blazing
garment.

"Oh. Majesty," cried Helen, as Madeline went up to her horse,
"don't make him kneel! Try that flying mount. We all want to
see it. It's so stunning."

"But that way, too, I must have him kneel," said Madeline, "or I
can't reach the stirrup. He's so tremendously high."

Madeline had to yield to the laughing insistence of her friends,
and after all of them except Florence were up she made Majesty go
down on one knee. Then she stood on his left side, facing back,
and took a good firm grip on the bridle and pommel and his mane.
After she had slipped the toe of her boot firmly into the stirrup
she called to Majesty. He jumped and swung her up into the
saddle.

"Now just to see how it ought to be done watch Florence," said
Madeline.

The Western girl was at her best in riding-habit and with her
horse. It was beautiful to see the ease and grace with which she
accomplished the cowboys' flying mount. Then she led the party
down the slope and across the flat to climb the mesa.

Madeline never saw a group of her cowboys without looking them
over, almost unconsciously, for her foreman, Gene Stewart. This
afternoon, as usual, he was not present. However, she now had a
sense--of which she was wholly conscious--that she was both
disappointed and irritated. He had really not been attentive to
her guests, and he, of all her cowboys, was the one of whom they
wanted most to see something. Helen, particularly, had asked to
have him attend the match. But Stewart was with the cattle.
Madeline thought of his faithfulness, and was ashamed of her
momentary lapse into that old imperious habit of desiring things
irrespective of reason.

Stewart, however, immediately slipped out of her mind as she
surveyed the group of cowboys on the links. By actual count
there were sixteen, not including Stillwell. And the same number
of splendid horses, all shiny and clean, grazed on the rim in the
care of Mexican lads. The cowboys were on dress-parade, looking
very different in Madeline's eyes, at least, from the way cowboys
usually appeared. But they were real and natural to her guests;
and they were so picturesque that they might have been stage
cowboys instead of real ones. Sombreros with silver buckles and
horsehair bands were in evidence; and bright silk scarfs,
embroidered vests, fringed and ornamented chaps, huge swinging
guns, and clinking silver spurs lent a festive appearance.