own to the cow hospital," was the answer.

"Where's Johnson, the irrigation foreman?"

"Out in the south fields."

"And Dennings?"

"Went to look the olives over."

"Send out for both of them. I'm coming right down as fast as a horse
will carry me and I want to talk with them. Wait a minute--I'll tell
you when I'm through with you. Who are you, anyway?"

"Williams, the ranch carpenter."

"What _are_ you doing to-day? Repairs needed at the office where you
are?"

"No. You see----"

"You bet I see!" she cried warmly. "The first thing I see is that I've
got more men on this job than I need. If there's no work for you to
do, call tonight for your time. If you've got anything to do, go do
it."

She clicked off again, waited a brief second and rang three for the
dairy. After she had rung several times and got no answer, she
murmured to herself:

"There's some one too busy on the ranch to be just hanging round after
all, it seems."

And she went out to Jose and the waiting horse.

As she rode the five miles down to the office at the Lower End, her
thoughts were constantly charged with an appreciation of the wonders
which had been worked about her everywhere since that day, ten years
ago, when she had first come with Luke Sanford to the original Blue
Lake ranch. Then there had been only a wild cattle-range, ten thousand
acres of brush, timber, and uncultivated open spaces. Nowhere would
one find rougher, wilder stock-land in California. But Luke Sanford
had seen possibilities and had bought the whole ten thousand acres,
counting, from the first sight of it, upon acquiring as soon as might
be those other thousands of acres which now made Blue Lake ranch one of
the biggest of Western ventures.

It was late May, and the afternoon air was sweet and warm with the
passing of spring. The girl's eager eyes travelled the length of the
sky-seeking cliff almost at the back door of the ranch-house, which
stood like some mighty barricade thrown up in that mythical day given
over to the colossal struggle of a contending race of giants, and she
found that there, alone, time had shown no change. Elsewhere,
improvements at every turn were living monuments to the tireless brain
of her father. Stock-corrals, sturdily built, out-houses spotless in
their gleaming whitewash, monster barns, fenced-off fields, bridges
across the narrow chasm of the frothing river, telephone-poles with
their wires binding into one she