Is that so?" queried Helen. "That's a place I want to see before long."

"Well, you'll be disappointed," remarked the other. "My name is Dudley
Stone, and I was born and brought up in New York and have lived there all
my life until I got away for this trip West. But, believe me, if I didn't
have to I would never go back!"

"Why do you have to go back?" asked Helen, simply.

"Business. Necessity of earning one's living. I'm in the way of being a
lawyer--when my days of studying, and all, are over. And then, I've got a
sister who might not fit into the mosaic of this freer country, either."

"Well, Dudley Stone," quoth the girl from Sunset Ranch, "we'd better not
stay talking here. It's getting darker every minute. And I reckon your
foot needs attention."

"I hate to move it," confessed the young Easterner.

"You can't stay here, you know," insisted Helen. "Where's my rope?"

"I'm sorry. I had to hitch one end of it up above and let myself down by
it."

"Well, it might have come in handy to lash you on the pony. I don't mind
about the rope otherwise. One of the boys will bring it in for me
to-morrow. Now, let's see what we can do towards hoisting you into your
saddle."

CHAPTER III

THE MISTRESS OF SUNSET RANCH

Dudley Stone had begun to peer wonderingly at this strange girl. When he
had first sighted her riding her strawberry roan across the plateau he
supposed her to be a little girl--and really, physically, she did not seem
much different from what he had first supposed.

But she handled this situation with all the calmness and good sense of a
much older person. She spoke like the men and women he had met during his
sojourn in the West, too.

Yet, when he was close to her, he saw that she was simply a young girl
with good health, good muscles, and a rather pretty face and figure. He
called her "Miss" because it seemed to flatter her; but Dud Stone felt
himself infinitely older than this girl of Sunset Ranch.

It was she who went about getting him aboard the pony, however; he never
could have done it by himself. Nor was it so easily done as said.

In the first place, the badly trained buckskin didn't want to stand still.
And the young man was in such pain that he really was unable to aid Helen
in securing the pony.

"Here, you take Rose," commanded the girl, at length. "She'd stand for
anything. Up you come, now, sir!"

The young fellow was no weakling. But when he put one arm over the girl's