of her first remarks. "I imagined
you were wedded to get-there-quick machines."

"I've just taken it up lately," was his answer. "Beginning to get
stout; you know, and had to take it off somehow."

She gave a quick sidewise glance that embraced him from head to heel,
including seat and saddle, and said:--

"But you've ridden before."

She certainly had an eye for horses and things connected with horses
was his thought, as he replied:--

"Not for many years. But I used to think I was a regular rip-snorter
when I was a youngster up in Eastern Oregon, sneaking away from camp to
ride with the cattle and break cayuses and that sort of thing."

Thus, and to his great relief, were they launched on a topic of mutual
interest. He told her about Bob's tricks, and of the whirl and his
scheme to overcome it; and she agreed that horses had to be handled
with a certain rational severity, no matter how much one loved them.
There was her Mab, which she had for eight years and which she had had
break of stall-kicking. The process had been painful for Mab, but it
had cured her.

"You've ridden a lot," Daylight said.

"I really can't remember the first time I was on a horse," she told
him. "I was born on a ranch, you know, and they couldn't keep me away
from the horses. I must have been born with the love for them. I had
my first pony, all my own, when I was six. When I was eight I knew what
it was to be all day in the saddle along with Daddy. By the time I was
eleven he was taking me on my first deer hunts. I'd be lost without a
horse. I hate indoors, and without Mab here I suppose I'd have been
sick and dead long ago."

"You like the country?" he queried, at the same moment catching his
first glimpse of a light in her eyes other than gray. "As much as I
detest the city," she answered. "But a woman can't earn a living in
the country. So I make the best of it--along with Mab."

And thereat she told him more of her ranch life in the days before her
father died. And Daylight was hugely pleased with himself. They were
getting acquainted. The conversation had not lagged in the full half
hour they had been together.

"We come pretty close from the same part of the country," he said. "I
was raised in Eastern Oregon, and that's none so far from Siskiyou."

The next moment he could have bitten out his tongue for her quick
question was:--

"How did you know I came from Siskiyou? I'm sure I never mentioned it."