ime; for I left my
gun on my saddle-horn.'

"Old Mac laughs, and he says to me: 'Pumpin' lead into the best ranch-
boss in West Texas don't seem to me good business policy. I don't know
where I could get as good a one. It's the son-in-law idea, Webb, that
makes me admire for to use you as a target. You ain't my idea for a
member of the family. But I can use you on the Nopalito if you'll keep
outside of a radius with the ranch-house in the middle of it. You go
upstairs and lay down on a cot, and when you get some sleep we'll talk
it over.'"

Baldy Woods pulled down his hat, and uncurled his leg from his saddle-
horn. Webb shortened his rein, and his pony danced, anxious to be off.
The two men shook hands with Western ceremony.

"/Adios/, Baldy," said Webb, "I'm glad I seen you and had this talk."

With a pounding rush that sounded like the rise of a covey of quail,
the riders sped away toward different points of the compass. A hundred
yards on his route Baldy reined in on the top of a bare knoll, and
emitted a yell. He swayed on his horse; had he been on foot, the earth
would have risen and conquered him; but in the saddle he was a master
of equilibrium, and laughed at whisky, and despised the centre of
gravity.

Webb turned in his saddle at the signal.

"If I was you," came Baldy's strident and perverting tones, "I'd be
king!"

At eight o'clock on the following morning Bud Turner rolled from his
saddle in front of the Nopalito ranch-house, and stumbled with
whizzing rowels toward the gallery. Bud was in charge of the bunch of
beef-cattle that was to strike the trail that morning for San Antonio.
Mrs. Yeager was on the gallery watering a cluster of hyacinths growing
in a red earthenware jar.

"King" McAllister had bequeathed to his daughter many of his strong
characteristics--his resolution, his gay courage, his contumacious
self-reliance, his pride as a reigning monarch of hoofs and horns.
/Allegro/ and /fortissimo/ had been McAllister's temp and tone. In
Santa they survived, transposed to the feminine key. Substantially,
she preserved the image of the mother who had been summoned to wander
in other and less finite green pastures long before the waxing herds
of kine had conferred royalty upon the house. She had her mother's
slim, strong figure and grave, soft prettiness that relieved in her
the severity of the imperious McAllister eye and the McAllister air of
royal independence.

Webb stood on one end of t