riding costume, was waiting while her father exchanged a few parting
words with the hotel manager.

"Guess you're right. It's been a darn good week this year. The best
in my memory. I'd say the Conference was a heap better attended, an'
the weather's been just great. We got through a deal o' legislation,
too. Guess things are goin' to hum, with the Obars at the head of 'em
this year. Our big play is to be dealin' with rustlers. We got a hell
of a piece o' leeway to make up. Four years ago we guessed we'd got
'em fixed where we wanted 'em. But they hatched out since like a brood
o' wolf cubs. So long."

"Mr. Masters is stopping on for a while," the manager observed, with
that intimate touch which he always practiced with his more influential
customers of the cattle world.

"Why, yes." Bud's eyes were watching Nan as she mounted her pony,
carefully held by a solicitous barn-hand. Under other circumstances
the man's attention would have afforded him amusement. Just now he was
regretting the manager's remark. "Y'see, ther's a deal to fix. Seein'
he's president this year, why, I guess it's up to him to kep his ladle
busy in the soup."

He moved off the stoop and took his horse from the waiting man. He
swung himself into the saddle with an agility which belied his years.

He waved one great hand in response to the manager's deferential bow,
and turned his horse away. In a moment Bud and Nan were riding side by
side down the wide Avenue.

It was a long time before either attempted to break the silence between
them. They had even reached the outskirts of the city before Nan
broached the subject from which her father admittedly shrank.

"I'm glad Jeff didn't get up to see us off," she said imply. Then she
laughed softly. "Y'see, Daddy, there's times for most things; and
'good-byes' in the early morning are a bit like cold baths in winter."

Bud eyed his daughter with a quick sidelong glance, and then continued
his survey of the trail ahead as it lifted over a gentle grassy slope.
They were passing the last houses of the town, and ahead lay the tawny
fields which made the country one of the greatest pastures in the world.

"Ther'd been no sort o' sense his turning out around sun-up to see us
folks off. It ain't goin' to be weeks before he gets back home."

"No."

Nan's smile remained, and Bud, for all his avoidance of it, was aware
that was so. It was a smile that cut him to the heart, and yet he