ake a cent, and some day you'll tell me about the mental kinks
in the makeup of our Prussian friend, Conrad. He sounds interesting to
me."

Captain Pike uttered a profane and lurid word or two concerning Mr.
Conrad, and stated he'd be glad when Billie was of age. Singleton, and
therefore Conrad, would only have the management up to that time.
Billie would know horses if nothing else, and--Then he interrupted
himself and stared back the way he had come.

"I'm a forgetful old fool!" he stated with conviction. "I meandered
out to take a look around for her, and I didn't like the looks of that
little dab of a saddle Conrad had put on Pat. You didn't see anything
of her, did you?"

"What does she look like?"

"A slip of a girl who rides like an Indian, rides a black horse."

"No, I've seen no one," said the young chap truthfully enough. "But
who did you say your girl was?"

"You'll find out if you hold your job long enough for her to be of
age," said Pike darkly. "She'll be your boss instead of Conrad. It's
Billie Bernard, the owner of Granados and La Partida."

"Billie?"

"Miss Wilfreda, if you like it better."

But K. Rhodes said he didn't. Billie seemed to fit the sort of girl
who would garb herself in Pedro's shirt and whistle at him through the
bars of the little window.

CHAPTER II

THE RED GOLD LEGEND

It took less than a week for Kit Rhodes to conclude that the girl
behind the bars had a true inspiration regarding his own position on
her ranches. There was no open hostility to him, yet it was evident
that difficulties were cleverly put in his way.

Not by Philip Singleton, the colorless, kindly disposed gentleman of
Pike's description. But by various intangible methods, he was made to
feel an outsider by the manager, Conrad, and his more confidential
Mexican assistants. They were punctiliously polite, too polite for a
horse-ranch outfit. Yet again and again a group of them fell silent
when he joined them, and as his work was with the horse herds of La
Partida, that part of the great grant which spread over the border
into Sonora, he was often camped fifty miles south of the hacienda of
Granados, and saw no more of either the old prospector, or the
tantalizing girl of the voice and the whistle.

Conrad, however, motored down two or three times concerning horses for
eastern shipment, but Rhodes, the new range capitan, puzzled
considerably over those flying visits, for, after the long drive
t