this broad
acreage; Carr had owned the outfit and managed it personally for a
dozen years, and now was selling to Alan Howard. It further devolved
that Barbee had long been one of Carr's best horsemen, hence a
favourite of Carr, who loved good horses, and that he had accompanied
his employer merely to help drive over to the ranch a small herd of
colts which had been included in the sale but had not until now been
delivered. Carr was a great deal with Howard, and Howard managed to
see a great deal of the Longstreets; as for Barbee, Helen met his
insolent young eyes only at mealtimes.

'My business is over,' Carr confessed to Helen in the _patio_ the next
morning. 'There's no red tape and legal nonsense between Al and me.
To sell a ranch like this, when you know the other chap, is like
selling a horse. But,' and his eyes roved from his cigar to a glimpse
through an open door of wide rolling meadows and grazing stock, 'I
guess I'm sort of homesick for it. If it was to do over I don't know
that I'd sell it this morning.'

Helen had rested well last night; this morning she had thrilled anew to
the world about her. She thought that she had never seen such a
sunrise; the day appeared almost to come leaping and shouting up out of
the desert; the air of the morning, before the heat came, was nothing
less than glorious. Her eyes were bright; there was the flush of
joyousness in her cheeks.

'How a man could own this,' she said slowly, 'and then could sell
it----' She shook her head and looked at him half wonderingly. 'I
don't see how you could do it.'

'You feel that way about it, too?' He brought his eyes back soberly to
his cigar.

Howard, whose swinging stride Helen had learned to know already, came
out from the living-room, hat in hand, carrying a pair of spurs he had
been tinkering with.

'What are you talking about?' he laughed. 'Somebody dead?'

'Miss Longstreet was saying,' Carr said quietly, his eyes still grave,
'that she couldn't understand a man selling an outfit like this, once
he had called it his own.'

'Good for you, Miss Helen,' cried Howard heartily. 'I am with you on
that. John, there, must have been out of his senses when he let me
talk him out of Desert Valley.'

'I don't know but that I was,' said Carr.

Howard looked at him swiftly, and swiftly the light in his eyes
altered. For Carr had spoken thoughtfully and soberly, and there was
no hint of jest in the man.

'You don't mea