that?"

"I have told her all about how I found the people down there at
Crabtree, but she says I was there at a hotel where only people of
refinement live, and that I know nothing about the people out in the
country. I laughed at her and asked her if she knew anything about them
herself, and she retorted that everybody who read newspapers knew what
sort of people lived down there."

"Well, dear, Terry and I have come up to see if we could persuade you
and Mary to go down there with us and spend the fall and winter."

"Fred, I am perfectly willing to go anywhere that brother goes along
with us, and I will do my best to get Mrs. Hamilton's consent for Mary
to go, for she has never been down in that section of the country."

"Well, you go, anyhow," suggested Fred. "I want you to see the new
ranch. I wouldn't think of making a home at the ranch we looked at when
we went down to Crabtree. The one that we afterwards bought as an
investment is the one I mean. I believe that we can, eventually, build
up a little place of resort about that big, bold mineral spring just a
mile from the railroad track, and I intend to have the water analyzed.
The physicians claim down there that it has been partially analyzed and
is said to be the finest water in the South, but I am going to send a
bottle of the water to a chemist in New York or Philadelphia who has an
established reputation and have him analyze it.

"I do hope, though," he added, "that you will plead with Mrs. Hamilton
for her consent to let Mary go down and see the country."

That evening the two boys spent with their sweethearts at their
respective homes.

Terry then told Mary what he wanted her to do, saying that Evelyn was
going down with him and Fred to see their Texas ranch, and he wanted her
to go, too.

"Mary," said he, "it is the richest ranch I ever saw in my life. We
thought the one in Colorado was a grand one, and so it was, but the
grass there was never so abundant or so nutritious as at our new ranch.
It grows much taller, keeps fresh and green longer, and the soil itself
is several degrees richer than the Colorado ranch. You never so many
quail in your life as you can see there every day in the week all the
year round. There are prairie chickens, and there are ten jack-rabbits
there to one in Colorado."

"But, Terry, last winter you wrote me about some bad Mexican and
American cowboys who had made trouble for you."

"Yes, but didn't we have the same tro