eye over it approvingly.

"Either of you shoot?" he inquired.

"My sister shoots pretty well," Jessie told him, adding: "We really
must be starting, and we are a thousand times obliged to you for your
kindness."

"And particularly for buying the melons," I could not forbear saying.

Mr. Phillips laughed: "The boys will say that it was you who conferred
the obligation, when it comes to sampling those melons," he said. I
had gathered up the lines when he added, suddenly: "Wait!" I waited,
while he stepped back into the tent. He re-appeared directly, carrying
a half dozen big mallards and a couple of jack-rabbits: "You'll let
me make you a present of these, won't you?" he asked, smiling,
persuasively, as he tossed them into the wagon-box. "I was out hunting
this morning, and I had good luck, as I always do." We thanked him
heartily for his gift and drove off feeling not only a good deal
richer, but much happier than when we had started out.

CHAPTER XV

CHASED BY WOLVES

The horses trotted along briskly for a few miles, but they were tired
from two days of hard work, and, in spite of their eagerness to reach
home, their pace slackened. I did not urge them. It would be, as Mr.
Phillips had said, a moonlight night; the rays of the rising moon were
already silvering the deepening dusk. Ralph was again asleep in his
snug harbor, with Guard lying quietly beside him.

"The cows will be waiting at the corral bars when we get home," Jessie
remarked once, "but it is going to be so light that we can do the
chores nearly as well at midnight as we could at mid-day, so there is
really no need of hurrying. We've had good luck to-day, haven't we,
Leslie?"

"Yes," I answered, "we have," but I spoke absently. I was listening to
again catch a sound that had just reached my ears; faint, far off,
but welcome; it was one that we seldom heard in that mountain-guarded
valley where our days were passed.

"Did you hear that, Jessie?"

"What?"

"The whistle of a locomotive engine; there it is again! How far off it
seems!"

"Sound travels a long way over these plains; there's nothing to
intercept it--but I didn't hear it."

"Listen. It will sound again, perhaps, when the train reaches another
crossing. It must be way down on the Huerfano. There, didn't you hear
that?"

"Yes; do keep still, Guard."

Guard, aroused from his nap, was sitting up and looking around with an
occasional low growl.

"Seems to me that they mu