in the road,
watching them. Undecided, he gazed. Then came an answer to his stubborn
self-questioning. Louise glanced back--glanced back for an instant in
mute sympathy with his loneliness.

Slowly the boy turned and entered the jail. He folded his coat over his
arm, stepped outside, and closed the door.

Before him stretched the hot gray level of El Camino Real, the road to
the beyond. From it branched a narrower road, reaching up into the
southern hills,--on, up to the mysterious Moonstone Canon with its
singing stream and its gracious shade. Somewhere beyond, higher, and in
the shadowy fastness of the great ranges lay the Moonstone Ranch ... her
home.

"I guess, steppin' up smart, I'll be there just about in time for
supper," said the boy. And whistling cheerily, he set his feet toward
the south and the Moonstone Trail.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TEST

After a week of weeding in the vegetable garden, Collie was put to work
repairing fence. There were many miles of it, inclosing some twenty
thousand acres of grazing-land, and the cross-fencing of the oat,
alfalfa, fruit, and vegetable acreage. The fence was forever in need of
repair. The heavy winter rains, torrential in the mountains, often
washed away entire hillsides, leaving a dozen or so staggering posts
held together by the wires, tangled and sagging. Cattle frequently
pulled loosened posts from the earth by kneeling under the wire and
working through, oblivious to the barbs. Again, "stock gone a little
loco" would often charge straight through the rigid and ripping wire
barriers as though their strands were of thread. Posts would split in
the sun, and staples would drop out, leaving sagging spaces which cattle
never failed to find and take advantage of. Trees uprooted by the rain
and wind would often fall across the fence.

Altogether, the maintaining of a serviceable fence-line on a
well-ordered ranch necessitates eternal vigilance.

The Moonstone Rancho was well ordered under the direct supervision of
Walter Stone's foreman, "Brand" Williams. Williams was a Wyoming cowman
of the old school; taciturn, lean, sinewy.

Some ten years before, Williams, seeking employment, had ridden over the
range with Stone. Returning, the cowman remarked disconsolately, "I like
your stock, and I'll tie to you. But, say, it's only playin' at ranchin'
on twenty thousand fenced. I was raised in Wyoming."

"All right," Stone had replied. "Play hard and we'll get along