he automobile swept around the beef herd and drew to a halt between it
and the noisier one beyond. In a fire of mesquite wood branding-irons
were heating. Several men were busy branding and marking the calves
dragged to them from the herd by the horsemen who were roping the
frightened little blatters.

It was a day beautiful even for Arizona. The winey air called potently
to the youth in the girl. Such a sky, such atmosphere, so much life
and color! She could not sit still any longer. With a movement of her
wrist she opened the door and stepped down from the car.

A man sitting beside the chauffeur turned in his seat. "You'd better
stay where you are, honey." He had an idea that this was not exactly
the scene a girl of seventeen ought to see at close range.

"I want to get the kinks out of my muscles, Dad," the girl called back.
"I'll not go far."

She walked along a ridge that ran from the mesa into the valley like an
outstretched tongue. Her hands were in the pockets of her fawn-colored
coat. There was a touch of unstudied jauntiness in the way the tips of
her golden curls escaped from beneath the little brown toque she wore.
A young man guarding the beef herd watched her curiously. She moved
with the untamed, joyous freedom of a sun-worshiper just emerging from
the morning of the world. Something in the poise of the light, boyish
figure struck a spark from his imagination.

A _vaquero_ was cantering toward the fire with a calf in his wake.
Another cowpuncher dropped the loop of his lariat on the ground, gave
it a little upward twist as the calf passed over it, jerked taut the
_riata_, and caught the animal by the hind leg. In a moment the victim
lay stretched on the ground. In the gathering gloom the girl could not
quite make out what the men were doing. To her sensitive nostrils
drifted an acrid odor of burnt hair and flesh, the wail of an animal in
pain. One of the men was using his knife on the ears of the helpless
creature. She heard another say something about a crop and an
underbit. Then she turned away, faint and indignant. Three big men
torturing a month-old calf--was this the brave outdoor West she had
read about and remembered from her childhood days? Tears of pity and
resentment blurred her sight.

As she stood on the spit of the ridge, a slim, light figure silhouetted
against the skyline, the young man guarding the beef herd called
something to her that was lost in the bawling of