friend and servant, Danny was
presented to Helen. He ate sugar that she gave him; he returned bit by
bit the impulsive love which she granted him outright. In his new
trappings, to which Howard had added a saddle from his own stables,
Danny accepted his new honours like a thoroughbred.

Helen rode him the day she and her father came down from the hills for
the round-up. Longstreet out-Romaned the Romans: his spurs were the
biggest, his yell when he circled a herd was the most piercing, his
borrowed chaps struck the eye from afar; his hat was a Stetson and
amazingly tall. Now and then, when his horse swerved sharply to head
off a racing steer, he came near falling. Once he did fall and rolled
wildly through the dust of a corral; but he only continued his
occupation with the more vim and was heard to shout over and over:
'It's the life, boys! It's the life!'

Helen, often riding at Howard's side, saw how the herds were brought
down from the hills; how they were counted and graded; how the select
were driven into the fattest pasture lands. She watched the branding
of those few head that had escaped other round-ups. At first she
cringed back as she saw the hot iron and the smoke rising from the
hides and smelled the scorching hair and flesh. But she came to
understand the necessity and further she saw that little pain was
inflicted, that the victims though they struggled and bellowed were
soon grazing quietly with their fellows. And at last the time had come
when she had learned to ride. That was the supreme joy of the moment.

To Howard, no less, was it a joy. He watched her race, with whip
whirling over her head, to cut off the lunging attempt at escape made
over and over by the wilder cattle; he saw that with every hour her
seat in the saddle became more secure; he read that she was not afraid.
He looked forward to long rides, just the two of them, across the
billowing sweep of Desert Valley, in the golden time when the title
rested secure with them, in the time when at last all dreams came true.

Of any world outside their own happy valley they knew little. Sanchia
had pitched her tent near the Longstreet camp, but these days she was
left very much to herself. They did not pass through Sanchia's Town on
their way back and forth and knew and cared nothing of its activities.
The Longstreets, keenly interested in all that went forward on the
ranch, were persuaded to accept Howard's hospitality for three d