of his boot hitched in the rung. The wrinkled
coat he wore hung on him like a sack, and one leg of his trousers had
caught at the top of the high boot. The owner of the A T O was a
heavy-set, powerful man in the early fifties. Just now he was smoking a
corncob pipe.

The keen eyes of the cattleman watched lazily the young line-rider come
up the walk. Most cowboys walked badly; on horseback they might be kings
of the earth, but out of the saddle they rolled like sailors. Clint
Wadley noticed that the legs of this young fellow were straight and that
he trod the ground lightly as a buck in mating-season.

"He'll make a hand," was Wadley's verdict, one he had arrived at after
nearly a year of shrewd observation.

But no evidence of satisfaction in his employee showed itself in the
greeting of the "old man." He grunted what might pass for "Howdy!" if
one were an optimist.

Roberts explained his presence by saying: "You sent for me, Mr. Wadley."

"H'm! That durned fool York done bust his laig. Think you can take a
herd up the trail to Tascosa?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's the way all you brash young colts talk. But how many of 'em will
you lose on the way? How sorry will they look when you deliver the herd?
That's what I'd like to know."

Jack Roberts was paying no attention to the grumbling of his boss--for a
young girl had come out of the house. She was a slim little thing, with
a slender throat that carried the small head like the stem of a rose.
Dark, long-lashed eyes, eager and bubbling with laughter, were fixed on
Wadley. She had slipped out on tiptoe to surprise him. Her soft fingers
covered his eyes.

"Guess who!" she ordered.

"Quit yore foolishness," growled the cattleman. "Don't you-all see I'm
talkin' business?" But the line-rider observed that his arm encircled
the waist of the girl.

With a flash of shy eyes the girl caught sight of Roberts, who had been
half hidden from her behind the honeysuckle foliage.

"Oh! I didn't know," she cried.

The owner of the A T O introduced them. "This is Jack Roberts, one of my
trail foremen. Roberts--my daughter Ramona. I reckon you can see for
yoreself she's plumb spoiled."

A soft laugh welled from the throat of the girl. She knew that for her
at least her father was all bark and no bite.

"It's you that is spoiled, Dad," she said in the slow, sweet voice of
the South. "I've been away too long, but now I'm back I mean to bring
you up right. Now I'll leave you to