tered
Ashton.

"Then it's a baby!--oh! oh! how lovely!" shrieked the girl. "And its
mamma wants to rough it! She shall have every egg and chicken on the
place--and gallons of cream! We shall take the skim milk."

Still Ashton failed to enthuse. "To them that have, shall be given,
and from him who has lost millions shall be taken all that's left!" he
gibed.

"No, we'll still have the skim milk," she bantered, refusing to notice
his cynical bitterness.

"I'm a day laborer!" he went on, still more bitterly. "I'm afraid of
losing even my skim milk--And two weeks ago I thought myself certain
of three times the millions that he will get when her father dies!"

"No use crying over spilt milk, or spilt cream, either!" she replied.

The note of sympathetic concern under her raillery brought a glimmer
of hopefulness into his moody eyes.

"If I did not think your father will drive me away!" he murmured.

"Why should he?" she asked.

"Because when Blake comes--" Ashton paused and shifted to a question.
"Will you tell your father about their coming?"

"Of course. I did not tell him about writing, because it would only
have increased his suspense. But now--Let's hurry back!"

A cut of her quirt set her pony into a lope. Rocket needed no urging.
He followed and maintained a position close behind the galloping pony
without breaking out of his rangy trot. Occasionally Isobel flung back
a gay remark over her shoulder. Ashton did not respond. He rode after
her, silent and depressed, his eyes fixed longingly on her graceful
form, ever fleeing forward before him as he advanced.

Once clear of the sagebrush, she drew rein for him to come up. They
rode side by side across Dry Fork and over the divide. When they
stopped at the corral she would have unsaddled her pony had he not
begged leave to do her the service. As reward, she waited until he
could accompany her to the house.

They found her father and Gowan resting in the cool porch after a
particularly hard day's ride. The puncher was strumming soft melodies
on a guitar. Knowles was peering at his report of the Reclamation
Service, held to windward of a belching cloud of pipe smoke. His
daughter darted to him regardless of the offending incense.

"Oh, Daddy!" she cried. "What do you think! Mr. Blake is coming to
visit us!"

"Blake?" repeated the cowman, staring blankly over his pipe.

"Yes, Mr. Blake, the engineer--the great Thomas Blake of the Zariba
Dam."

"By--Jame