ith the three bucks. Three Indians,
Clark decided regretfully, would make a tame showing on the warpath,
however much they might lend themselves to the spirit of the joke. He
did not quite know how he was going to manage it, but he was hopeful
still. It was unthinkable that real live Indians should be permitted to
come and go upon the ranch without giving Evadna Ramsey, straight from
New Jersey, the scare of her life.

The three bucks, grunting monosyllabic greetings' climbed, in all the
dignity of their blankets, to the top rail of the corral, and roosted
there to watch the horse-breaking; and for the present Clark held his
peace.

The squaws hovered there for a moment longer, peeping through the rails.
Then Hagar--she of much flesh and more temper--grunted a word or two,
and they turned and plodded on to where the house stood hidden away
in its nest of cool green. For a space they stood outside the fence,
peering warily into the shade, instinctively cautious in their manner of
approaching a strange place, and detained also by the Indian etiquette
which demands that one wait until invited to enter a strange camp.

After a period of waiting which seemed to old Hagar sufficient, she
pulled her blanket tight across her broad hips, waddled to the
gate, pulled it open with self-conscious assurance, and led the way
soft-footedly around the house to where certain faint sounds betrayed
the presence of Phoebe Hart in her stone milk-house.

At the top of the short flight of wide stone steps they stopped and
huddled silently, until the black shadow of them warned Phoebe of their
presence. She had lived too long in the West to seem startled when she
suddenly discovered herself watched by three pair of beady black eyes,
so she merely nodded, and laid down her butter-ladle to shake hands all
around.

"How, Hagar? How, Viney? How, Lucy? Heap glad to see you. Bueno
buttermilk--mebbyso you drinkum?"

However diffident they might be when it came to announcing their
arrival, their bashfulness did not extend to accepting offers of food
or drink. Three brown hands were eagerly outstretched--though it was the
hand of Hagar which grasped first the big tin cup. They not only
drank, they guzzled, and afterward drew a fold of blanket across their
milk-white lips, and grinned in pure animal satisfaction.

"Bueno. He-e-ap bueno!" they chorused appreciatively, and squatted at
the top of the stone steps, watching Phoebe manipulate the great