esides, she had had bitter experience with these
noisy, careless fellows when they worked on her ranch. Her foreman was
such a type grown to middle-age. Indeed her anger at the whole species
called "cowpuncher" now focused to a burning-point on him of the gilded
spurs.

The measuring was finished; he stepped back.

"Fifteen one and a quarter," he announced. "You win, Dad!"

Marianne wanted to cheer.

"You win, confound it! And where'll I get the mates of this pair? You
win and I'm the underdog."

"A poor loser, too," thought Marianne. She was beginning to round her
conception of the man; and everything she added to the picture made her
dislike him the more cordially.

He had dropped on one knee in the dust and was busily loosening the
spurs, paying no attention to the faint protests of the winner that he
"didn't have no use for the darned things no ways." And finally he
drowned the protests by breaking into song in a wide-ringing baritone
and tossing the spurs at the feet of the others. He rose--laughing--and
Marianne, with a mental wrest, rearranged one part of her
preconception, yet this carelessness was only another form of the curse
of the West and Westerners--extravagance.

He turned now to a tousle-headed three-year-old boy who was wandering
near, drawn by the brilliance of the stranger.

"Keep away from those heels, kiddie. Look out, now!"

The yellow-haired boy, however, dazed by this sudden centering of
attention on him, stared up at the speaker with his thumb in his mouth;
and with great, frightened eyes--he headed straight for the heels of the
grey!

"Take the hoss--" began the rider to the stable-boy. But the
stable-boy's sudden reaching for the reins made the grey toss its
head and lurch back towards the child. Marianne caught her breath as
the stranger, with mouth drawn to a thin, grim line, leaped for the
youngster. The grey lashed out with vicious haste, but that very haste
spoiled his aim. His heels whipped over the shoulder of his master as
the latter scooped up the child and sprang away. Marianne, grown sick,
steadied herself against the side of the window; she had seen the
brightness of steel on the driving hoofs.

A hasty group formed. The stable boy was guiltily leading the horse
through the door and around the gaudy rider came the old man, and a
woman who had run from a neighboring porch, and a long-moustached giant.
But all that Marianne distinctly saw was the white, set face of the