ft, away from Dry
Fork, across the angle above its junction with Plum Creek. They were
now coming up over the divide between the two streams. Ashton failed
to locate the haystack until its two mates and the long, half-open
shelter-sheds came into view.

A moment later he was looking at the horse corral and the group of log
ranch houses. Below and beyond them the scattered groves of Plum Creek
stretched away up across the mesa--green bouquets on the slender
silver ribbon of the creek's midsummer rill.

"Well?" she asked. "What do you think of my home?"

"Your summer home," he suggested.

"No, my real home," she insisted. "Auntie couldn't be nicer or fonder
than she is; but her house is a residence, not a home, even to her.
Anyway, here, where I have Daddy and Kid--I do so hope you and Kid
will become friends."

"Since you wish it, I shall try to do my part. But it is a matter that
might take time, and--" he smiled ruefully and concluded with seeming
irrelevance--"I have no home."

She gazed at him with the look of tender motherly sympathy that he had
been too distraught to really feel the previous day. "Do not say that,
Mr. Ashton! Though a ranch house is hardly the kind of home to which
you are accustomed, you will find that we range folks retain the
old-fashioned Western ideas of hospitality."

"My dear Miss Knowles!" he exclaimed with ardent gallantry, "the mere
thought of being under the same sky with you--"

"Don't, please," she begged. "This _is_ the blue sky we are under, not
a stuccoed ceiling."

"Well, I really meant it," he protested, greatly dashed.

"Kid often says nice things to me. But he speaks with his hands," she
remarked.

"Deaf and dumb alphabet?" he queried wonderingly.

"Hardly," she answered, dimpling under his puzzled gaze. "Actions
speak louder than words, you know."

"Ah!" he murmured, and his look indicated that she had given him food
for thought.

They were now cantering down the long easy slope towards the ranch
buildings. The girl's quick eye perceived a horseman riding towards
the ranch from one of the groves up Plum Creek.

"There's Kid coming in," she remarked. "He went out early this morning
after a big wolf that had killed a calf. He reported last evening that
he found the carcass over near the head of Plum Creek. A wolf that
gets to killing calves this time of year is a pretty costly neighbor.
Daddy told Kid to go out and try to get him."

"I'm glad you didn't let