try; they lowered the price
of cattle and set men to riding the range restlessly. For the drought
is a visitation of God, to be accepted and endured, but sheep may be
turned back.

As he rode rapidly along the river trail, halting on each ridge to
search the landscape for sheep, Hardy's conscience smote him for the
single day he had spent in camp, dallying within sight of Kitty or
talking with Lucy Ware. One such day, if the sheepmen were prepared,
and Bronco Mesa would be a desert. Threats, violence, strategy, would
be of no avail, once the evil was done; the sheep must be turned back
at the river or they would swarm in upon the whole upper range. One
man could turn them there, for it was the dead line; but once across
they would scatter like quail before a hawk, crouching and hiding in
the gulches, refusing to move, yet creeping with brutish stubbornness
toward the north and leaving a clean swath behind. There were four
passes that cut their way down from the southern mountains to the
banks of the river, old trails of Apaches and wild game, and to quiet
his mind Hardy looked for tracks at every crossing before he turned
Chapuli's head toward camp.

The smoke was drifting from the chimney when, late in the afternoon,
he rode past the door and saw Lucy Ware inside, struggling with an
iron kettle before the fireplace. Poor Lucy, she had undertaken a hard
problem, for there is as much difference between camp cooking and home
cooking as there is between a Dutch oven and a steel range, and a
cooking-school graduate has to forget a whole lot before she can catch
the knack of the open fire. For the second time that day Rufus Hardy's
conscience, so lately exercised over his neglect of the sheep, rose up
and rebuked him. Throwing Chapuli into the corral he kicked off his
spurs and shaps and gave Lucy her first lesson in frontier cookery;
taught her by the force of his example how to waste her wood and save
her back; and at the end of the short demonstration he sat down
without ceremony, and fell to eating.

"Excuse me," he said, "if I seem to be greedy, but I had my breakfast
before sun-up. Where's your father, and Kitty?"

"Oh, they had the Mexican boy catch their horses for them and have
ridden up the valley to watch for the cattle. I stayed behind to
make my first water color, and then--I thought you would be coming
back soon, so I tried to cook supper instead. I'm a pretty good
housekeeper--at home," she said apologeti