nswering trumpet
call from a distant, hidden corral. She saw a herd of young horses,
twenty of them perhaps, racing wildly with flying manes and tails and
flaring nostrils; a strangely garbed man on horseback raced after them,
shot by them, heading them off, a wide loop of rope hissing above his
head. She saw the rope leap out, seeming to the last alive and endowed
with the will of the horseman; she heard the man laugh softly as the
noose tightened about the slender neck of one of the fleeing horses.

'That's Gaucho,' said Howard. 'He's my horse breaker.'

But already the girl's interests had winged another way. Within ten
steps they had come to a new view from a new vantage point. From some
trick of sweep and slope the valley seemed more spacious than before;
through a natural avenue in an oak grove they saw distinctly the still
distant walls of the ranch house; the sun touched them and they gleamed
back a spotless white. Helen was all eagerness to come to the main
building; from afar, here of late having seen others of its type, she
knew that it would be adobe and massive, old and cloaked with the
romance of another time; that even doors and windows, let into the
thick walls, would be of another period; that somewhere there would be
a trellis with a sprawling grape-vine over it; that no doubt in the
yard or along the fence would be the yellow Spanish roses.

Below the house they came to the stable. Here Howard paused to tie the
three horses, but not to unpack or unsaddle.

'I haven't anybody just hanging around to do things like this for me,'
he said lightly as he rejoined his guests. 'Not until I get the whole
thing paid off. What men I've got are jumping on the job from sun-up
to dark. I'll turn you loose in the house and then look after the
stock myself.'

They passed several smaller outbuildings, some squat and
ancient-looking adobes, others newer frame buildings, all neatly
whitewashed. And then the home itself. Quite as Helen had
provisioned, there was a low wooden fence about the garden; over the
gateway were tangled rose vines disputing possession with a gnarled
grape; the walk from the gate was outlined with the protruding ends of
white earthen bottles, so in vogue in the southland a few years ago; a
wide, coolly-dark veranda ran the length of the building; through
three-feet-thick walls the doorways invited to further coolness.
Howard stood aside for them to enter. They found underfoot a ba