way of greeting, and then pointed across the
plateau to a ravine leading to a still higher, smaller, shut-in valley.
Hampton galloped on and a quarter of an hour later came up with Lee.
The horse foreman was sitting still in his saddle, his eyes taking
stock of a fresh bit of pasture into which he planned turning his
horses a little later. It was one of a dozen small meadows on the
mountain creeks where the canon walls widened out into an oval-shaped
valley, less than a half-mile long, where there was much rich grass.

"Hello, Hampton," called Lee pleasantly. "What's the word?"

The perspiration streaming down Hampton's face had in no way dampened
his ardor.

"Big doings," he cried warmly. "We're cutting loose, Bud, at last and
piling up the shining ducats! You're to gather up a hundred of the
most likely cayuses you've got and shove them down to the Lower End.
We're selling pretty heavily to Doan, Rockwell & Haight."

A new flicker came into Lee's eyes. Then they went hard as polished
agate.

"I didn't quite get you, Hampton," he said softly. "You say we're
selling a hundred horses? Now?"

Hampton nodded, understanding nothing of what lay in Lee's heart.

"On the jump, just as fast as we can get them on the run," he said
triumphantly. "Judith wanted me to tell you."

"I see," answered Lee slowly.

His eyes left Hampton's flushed face and went to the distant cliffs.
It was no way of Bud's to hide his eyes from a man, and yet now he did
hide them. He did not want Hampton to see what they showed so plainly,
in spite of his attempt to master his emotion. He was hurt. Long ago
he had offended Judith, and she had waited until now to repay his rude
insult with this cool little slap in the face. She had not consulted
him, she had not mentioned a sale to him, and now she sent Hampton and
did not even come to him with a word of explanation. It was quite as
if she had said:

"You are just a servant of mine, like the rest, Bud Lee, and I treat
you accordingly."

Until Judith had come, there had been nothing that this man loved as he
did his work among his horses. He watched them as day after day they
grew into clean-blooded perfection; he appraised their values; he saw
personally to their education, helping each one of them individually to
become the true representative of the proudest species of animal life.
Had he turned his eye now to the herd down yonder he could have seen
the animal he had selected