back again--was fleshy and beaked at
the tip; it narrowed at the level bridge and broadened again where it
joined the forehead, setting the eyes well apart. The eyes themselves
were blue, just a little faded--for the man was sixty-two--and there
were wind-puckers at the corners of them. But they were keen eyes,
steady, sparkling and merry eyes, for all that; they were deep-set and
long, and they sloped a trifle, high on the inside corners; pent in by
pepper-and-salt brows, bushy, tufted and thick, roguishly aslant from the
outer corners up to where they all but met above the Wellingtonian nose.
A merry face, a forceful face: Pete was a little man, five feet seven,
and rather slender than otherwise; but no one, in view of that face, ever
thought of him as a small man or an old one.

The faint path merged with another and another, the angles of convergence
giving the direction of the unknown water hole; they came at last to the
main trail, a trunk line swollen by feeders from every ridge and arroyo.
It bore away to the northeast, swerving, curving to pitch and climb in
faultless following of the rule of roads--the greatest progress with the
least exertion. Your cow is your best surveyor.

They came on the ranch suddenly, rounding a point into a small natural
amphitheater. A flat-roofed dugout, fronted with stone, was built into
the base of a boulder-piled hill; the door was open. Midnight perked his
black head jauntily and slanted an ear.

High overhead, a thicket of hackberry and arrow-weed overhung the
little valley. From this green tangle a pipe line on stilts broke
away and straddled down a headlong hill. Frost was unknown; the pipe
was supported by forked posts of height assorted to need, an expedient
easier than ditching that iron hillside. The water discharged into a
fenced and foursquare earthen reservoir; below it was a small corral
of cedar stakes; through the open gate, as he rode by, Pete saw a long
watering-trough with a float valve. Before the dugout stood a patriarchal
juniper, in the shade of which two saddled horses stood droop-hipped,
comfortably asleep. Waking, as Pete drew near, they adjusted their
disarray in some confusion and eyed the newcomers with bright-eyed
inquiry. Midnight, tripping by, hailed them with a civil little whinny.

A tall, heavy man upreared himself from the shade. His example was
followed by another man, short and heavy. Blankets were spread on a
tarpaulin beyond them.

"'Lig