a pool, answering
every mood in wind and sky, yet always with their own true light. Her
cheeks glowed with the fresh color which her father's still retained,
and she had inherited his generous nature, too; but in mind and
stature she took after her dainty mother, whose exquisite grace and
beauty had made her one of the elect. Perhaps it was this quality of
the petite in her which appealed to him--for a little man cannot
endure to be laughed at for his size, even in secret--or perhaps it
was only the intuitive response to a something which in his
prepossession he only vaguely sensed, but Rufus Hardy felt his heart
go out to her in a moment and his voice sank once more to the
caressing fulness which she most loved to hear.

"Ah, Lucy," he said, "you need never try to be a man in order to ride
with me. It would be hard luck if a woman like you had to ask twice
for anything. Will you go out with me every day? No? Then I shall ask
you every day, and you shall go whenever you please! But you know how
it is. The sheepmen are hiding along the river waiting for a chance
to sneak across, and if I should stay in camp for a single day they
might make a break--and then we would have a war. Your father doesn't
understand that, but I do; and I know that Jeff will never submit to
being sheeped out without a fight. Can't you see how it is? I should
like to stay here and entertain you, and yet I must protect your
father's cattle, and I must protect Jeff. But if you will ride out
with me when it is not too hot, I--it--well, you'll go to-morrow,
won't you?"

He rose and took her hand impulsively, and then as quickly dropped it
and turned away. The muffled _chuck, chuck,_ of a horse's feet
stepping past the door smote upon his ear, and a moment later a clear
voice hailed them.

"What _are_ you children chattering about in there?" cried Kitty
Bonnair, and Hardy, after a guilty silence, replied:

"The ways of the weary world. Won't you come in and have the last
word?"

He stepped out and held Pinto by the head, and Kitty dropped off and
sank wearily into a rawhide chair.

"Oh, I'm too tired to talk, riding around trying to find those
cattle--and just as I was tired out we saw them coming, away out on
The Rolls. Lucy, do put on your riding habit and go back on
Pinto--you haven't been out of the house to-day!"

As half an hour later Lucy Ware trotted obediently away, riding up the
canyon toward the distant bawling of cattle, Kitty tur