."

Frank Kent watched Jacqueline ride out of sight, sitting on her pony as
though she had been made on it, like a figure cut from bronze, all in
soft tones of gold and brown.

It was quite dark when Jacqueline at last spied the lights of her own
ranch house twinkling at her warmly through the open windows and doors.

The broncho hurried faster, forgetting his hard day and Jacqueline
talked low in his ear.

"Home and supper, Hotspur! See the lights of home ahead. Soon they will
hear us coming. Suppose I give our call and relieve the suspense." Three
times in rapid succession, Jacqueline touched her red lips with her
slender fingers and gave a shrill, clear whistle like an Indian's call.

Instantly figures moved about in the ranch house. A dark lantern was
swung off its place over the front door and a man and two girls hurried
down the drive. Jacqueline was lifted off her horse. Her sister, Frieda,
seized her by one arm, her cousin, Jean, by the other.

"What has kept you so long?" Frieda demanded anxiously.

"If you have had an adventure and wouldn't let me go with you to-day, I
shall never get over it," Jean insisted. "Come into the house this
minute. Do tell us where you have been. Jim telephoned over to the other
side of the ranch three hours back, but the sheep herders said you
started for home long ago. We have been frightened to death ever since."

Frieda pulled at her sister's jacket. Jean, although she kept up her
scolding, got a pair of soft, red felt slippers and placed them
invitingly in front of the big, living-room fire.

Rainbow Lodge was built of pine logs. The great sitting-room was forty
feet long and two-thirds as wide and it looked like a man's room, but
the three ranch girls did not know it. The floor was covered with
buffalo robes and beautiful bright Navajo blankets made by the Indians
in the nearby villages, and the head of an elk thrusting forth giant
antlers dominated the scene from above the stone fireplace. An Andrew
Jackson table made of hewn logs, with a smooth polished top, occupied
one side of the fireplace, holding a reading lamp and some half-opened
books.

In another corner the home-made book shelves were filled with much-read
novels and books of travel. There were low, comfortable chairs about
everywhere. It was an odd room to be occupied by three young girls, but
a very noble one. The ranch girls had kept it just as their father had
left it when he died, six months before.