ery last lumberman took part, chanting the marching
song to an accompaniment of well-belabored frying-pans.)

Unbidden, a band of unspeakably unwashed Digger Indians, attired in gay
and ill-assorted rags, appeared, and seated themselves on the opposite
hillside, beaming vacuously as the ox was put in the pit to roast
(together with two smaller carcasses that the camp cook winkingly
designated as wild mutton, though he was careful to bury the antlers
against the possible advent of the Forest Ranger).

The rodeo master, a megaphone-voiced blond giant, in high-heeled riding
boots and spurs that made him limp when he walked, careened up and down
the dusty field on a high-stepping bay, while two lasso men in
steel-studded belts and leather cuffs helped round the range stock into
the adjoining small corral.

An unbroken two-year-old with wild, rolling eyes tried to climb the fence
when the rope tightened on his throat, and a sleek mule kicked out in a
way that left a red mark on the flank of a lean white mare. Then one of
the bulls in a separate corral shoved his head under the lower of the two
log bars that fenced him in and lifted--lifted,--but could not break
through.

"Riding, old Scout?" Ted asked the young Spanish-Californian.

"'Fraid I'd ride the ground," admitted Pedro, with a gesture of his
plump, manicured hands.

"Yeh!--Saw-horse's HIS mount!" jollied Ace, though the pinto looked by no
means spiritless. (And to himself he added: "Likely promised his mother
not to. Gee! I'd like to cut him loose from her apron strings for about
three months and see how he'd pan out!")

"_He's_ got too much sense to risk his bones," championed the Senator, (a
heavy, florid man with a leonine mass of white curly hair and Ace's
daring black eyes).

Just then a petite young woman rode up, her bobbed curly hair and
sun-flushed cheeks topping a red silk blouse joined to her khaki riding
breeches by a fringed sash that reached half way to her elkskin boots.

"I say, Rosa, are you riding?" greeted Ace. The girl shook her head
merrily. "Dad, that's Pierre La Coste's sister,--you know, he's
fire-lookout on Red Top. Used to be one of our Scouts when we lived in
Peach Cove."

"Yeh, we used to call him Pur-r-r," supplemented the ranch boy.

"And that's the horse Ranger Radcliffe's been trying to give her," added
Ace, sotto voce. "Isn't he a beauty?"

"And she won't have him?" laughed the Senator.

"Won't have man or beast."

A