For the finale of that whirl of the two striking, staggering, cursing men, was unexpectedly dramatic. They had surged out into the open, but Conrad, little by little and step by step, or rather stagger by stagger, had given way before the mallet-like precision of the younger man’s fists until Kit’s final blow seemed actually to lift him off his feet and land him–standing–against the adobe wall. An instant he quivered there, and then fell forward, glassy eyed and limp.

Singleton’s car came whirling down the lane. Billie leaped from it before it stopped, and ran in horror to the prone figure. One of the older Mexicans tried to ward her off from the sight.

“No good, señorita, it is the death of him,” he said gently. “One stroke like that on the heart and it is–

adios

!”

“What in the name of God–” began Singleton, and Kit wiped the blood from his eyes and faced him, staggering and breathless.

“Get him water! Get busy!” he ordered. “I don’t think he’s done for, not unless he has some mighty weak spot he should have had labelled before he waded into this.”

The blood was still trickling from the cut in his head made by the wrench, and he presented an unholy appearance as they stared at him.

“I’ll explain, Singleton, for I reckon you are white. I’ll–after while–”

“You’ll explain nothing to me!” retorted Singleton “If the man dies you’ll explain to a jury and a judge; otherwise you’d better take yourself out of this country.”

Kit blinked at those who were lifting Conrad and listening to his heart, which evidently had not stopped permanently.

“But give me a chance, man!” persisted Rhodes. “I need some mending done on this head of mine,–then I’ll clear it up. Why, the evidence is right here–powdered glass for the stock at the far end of the trail–Herrara knows–Conrad’s game–and–”

He did not know why words were difficult and the faces moved in circles about him. The blood soaking his shirt and blouse, and dripping off his sleeve was cause enough, but he did not even know that.

“Take him away, Captain Pike,” said Singleton coldly. “He is not wanted any longer on either of the ranches. It’s the last man I hire, Conrad can do it in future.”

“Conrad, eh?” grunted Kit weakly, “you’re a nice easy mark for the frankfurter game,–you and your pacifist bunch of near-traitors! Why man–”

But Singleton waved him away, and followed the men who were carrying Conrad to the bunk house.

“All right,

all

right! But take care you don’t meet with a nastier accident than that before you are done with this game!” he said shaking his fist warningly after Singleton, and then he staggered to his horse where Pike was waiting for him.

He got in the saddle, and reeled there a moment, conscious of hostile, watchful eyes,–and one girl’s face all alone in the blur.

“Say,” he said, “I heard you scream. You thought it was you I swore at. You’re wrong there. But you are some little prophetess,–

you

are! The job’s gone, and Herrara’s got away with the evidence, and the jig’s up! But it wasn’t you I cussed at–not–at–all! Come on, Pike. This new ventilator in my head is playing hell its own way. Come on–let’s go by-bye!”

CHAPTER IV

IN THE ADOBE OF PEDRO VIJIL

“There ain’t no such animal,” decided Kit Rhodes seated on the edge of the bed in Pedro Vigil’s adobe. His head was bandaged, his face a trifle pale and the odor of medicaments in the shadowy room of the one deep-barred window. “No, Captain, no man, free, white and twenty-one

could

be such a fool. Can’t Singleton see that if Conrad’s story was true he’d have the constable after me for assault with intent to kill? He’s that sort!”

“Well, Singleton thinks Conrad would be justified in having you prosecuted, and jailed, and fined, and a few other things, but for the reputation of Granados they let you down easy. You know it’s

the

dovery for the Pass-up-the-fists of this section, and what the Arizona papers would do would be comic if they ever got hold of the fact that Singleton picked a new bird for the dove cage, and the dratted thing changed before their eyes to a fractious game rooster swinging a right like the hind leg of a mule! No, Bub, we’re orderly, peaceable folks around here, so for the sake of our reputation Singleton has prevailed on his manager to be merciful to you, and Conrad has in true pacifist spirit let himself be prevailed upon.”

“Which means,” grinned Kit, “that I’m to be put off my guard, and done for nicely and quietly some moonless night when I take the trail! And he reports me either drunk or temporarily insane, does he? Well, when the next time comes I’ll change that gentleman’s mind.”

“Shucks, Bub! Thank a fool’s luck that your skull was only scratched, and don’t go planning future wars. I tell you we are peace doves around here, and you are a stray broncho kicking up an undesirable dust in our front yard. Here is your coin. Singleton turned it over to me and I receipted for it, and we have enough between us to hit the Sonora trail, and there’s not a bit of use in your hanging around here. You have no evidence. You are a stranger who ambled in, heard a sensational newspaper report of anti-ally criminal intent, and on the spot accused the highly respectable Granados rancho of indulging in that same variety of hellishness! Now there is your case in a nutshell, Bub, and you wouldn’t get the authorities to believe you in a thousand years!”

“What about you?”

“Oh, I have just little enough sense to believe your hunch is right, but that won’t get you anywhere. They think I’m loco too! I’ve an idea there is a lot more and rottener activities down south of the line with which our Teutonic peace arbitrator is mixed up. But he’s been on this job five years, all the trails are his, and an outsider can’t get a look-in! Now Miguel Herrara has been doing gun-running across the border for someone, and Miguel was not only arrested by the customs officer, but Miguel was killed two nights ago–shot with his own gun so that it looks like suicide. Suicide nothing! His chief, whoever he is, was afraid Miguel would blunder or weaken under government persuasion, so Miguel was let out of the game. That case is closed, and no evidence against anyone. I reckon everyone knows that the guns and ammunition sneaked over is headed for Rancho Soledad. The owner of Soledad, José Perez, is the valued friend of our nice little Conrad, and it happens that Conrad left Granados this morning for that direction, ostensibly to negotiate with the political powers of Sonora concerning a military guard for La Partida in case revolutionary stragglers should ride north for fresh saddle-horses. All appeals to the neutral chair warmers at Washington wins us no protection from that source;–they only have guns and men enough to guard some cherished spots in Texas.”

“Well, if the Teuton is able for a trail I reckon he got nothing worse in the scrap than I, even if he did look like a job for the undertaker. That fellow travels on the strength of his belly and not the strength of his heart.”

“So you say,” observed Pike, grinning, “but then again there are others of us who travel on nerve and gall and never get any further! Just put this in your pipe, Bub, and don’t forget it: Conrad is

organised

for whatever deviltry he is up to! There is no ‘happen so’ in his schemes. He is a cog in some political wheel, and it’s a fifty-fifty gamble as to whether the wheel is German or Mexican, but it is no little thing, and is not to be despised.”

“But I can’t see how Singleton, if Singleton is square even–”

“Singleton is a narrow gauge disciple of Universal Peace by decree–which, translated, means plain damn fool. Lord, boy, if a pack of prairie wolves had a man surrounded, would he fold his hands with the hope that his peaceful attitude would appeal to their better instincts or would he reach for a gun and give them protective pills? The man of sense never goes without his gun in wolf land, but Singleton–well, in peace times he could have lived a long lifetime, and no one ever guessed what a weak sister he was, but he’s sure out of place on the border.”

“I’m tired wearing this halo,” observed Rhodes, referring to the white handkerchief around his head. “Also some of the dope you gave me seems to be evaporating from my system, and I feel like hitting the Piman breeze. Can we strike trail tomorrow?”

“We cannot. Doña Luz has been dosing out the dope for you–Mexican women are natural doctors with their own sort of herbs–and she says three days before you go in the sun. I’ve a notion she sort of let the Mexicans think that you were likely to cash in, and you bled so like a stuck pig that it was easy enough to believe the worst.”

“Perhaps that’s why Conrad felt safe in leaving me outside of jail. With Doña Luz as doctor, and a non-professional like you as assistant, I reckon he thought my chance of surviving that monkey wrench assault was slim, mighty slim!”

“Y–yes,” agreed Pike, “under ordinary conditions he might have been justified in such surmise, but that would be figuring on the normal thickness of the normal civilized skull, but yours–why, Bub, all I’m puzzling over now is how it happens that the monkey wrench was only twisted a mite, not broke at all!”

“You scandalous old varmint!” grinned Kit. “Go on with your weak-minded amusements, taking advantage of a poor lone cripple,–refused by the army, and a victim of the latest German atrocity! I suppose–I suppose,”–he continued darkly, “everyone on and around Granados agrees that I was the villain in the assault?”

“I couldn’t say as to that,” returned Pike judicially. “Doña Luz would dose you, and plaster you, just the same if you had killed a half dozen instead of knocking the wind out of one. She’s pretty fine and all woman, but naturally since they regard you as my

companero

they are shy about expressing themselves when I’m around–all except Singleton–and you heard him.”

“Good and plenty,” agreed Kit. “Say, I’m going to catch up on sleep while I’ve a chance, and you rustle along and get any tag ends of things needed for the trail. I’m going to strike for Mesa Blanca, as that will take us up into the country of that Alisal mine. If we go broke there is Mesa Blanca ranch work to fall back on for a grub stake, but from what I hear we can dry wash enough to buy corn and flour, and the hills are full of burro meat. We’ll browse around until we either strike it rich, or get fed up with trying. Anyway,

Companero

, we will be in a quiet, peaceful pastoral land, close to nature, and out of reach of Teuton guile and monkey wrenches.

Buenas noches

, señor. I’m asleep!”

Pike closed the door, and went from the semi-dark of the adobe out into the brilliant sunshine where Billie, with a basket, was waiting under the

ramada

with Merced, and Merced looked gloomy lest Pedro should be blamed by Señor Singleton for practically turning his family out of the adobe that it might be given over to the loco Americano.

“Tomorrow, can he go?” she asked hopefully. “Me, I have a fear. Not before is the adobe here watched by hidden men at night, and that is very bad! Because that he is friend to you I say to everybody that I think the Americano is dying in our house, but today he talks, also he is laughing. No more sick?”

“No more sick, sure not, but it will be one more day. A man does not bleed like a gored bull and ride the next day under a sky hot enough to fry eggs. The tea of Doña Luz drove off the fever, and he only sleeps and talks, and sleeps again, but sick? Not a bit!”

“Nor–nor sorry, I reckon?” ventured Billie.

“Why, no child, not that I could notice. That scalawag doesn’t seem to have much conscience concerning his behavior.”

“Or his language!” she added.

“Sure, that was some invocation he offered up! But just between pals, Billie, you ought to have been in hearing.”

“I–I don’t suppose he even remembers that I was,” she remarked, and then after a silence, “or–or even mentioned–us?”

“Why, no, Billie. You made the right guess when you sized him up and thought he couldn’t hold the job. He certainly doesn’t belong, Billie, for this ranch is the homing nest of the peace doves, and he’s just an ungainly young game rooster starting out with a dare against the world, and only himself for a backer. Honest,–if that misguided youth had been landed in jail, I don’t reckon there’s anyone in Arizona with little enough sense to bail him out.”

“Likely not,” said Billie. “Well, there’s the basket from Tia Luz, and I might as well go home.”

CHAPTER V

AN “ADIOS”–AND AFTER

Two days later in the blue clear air of the Arizona morning a sage hen slipped with her young through the coarse grass by the irrigation ditch, and a flock of quail raised and fluttered before the quick rhythmic beat of a loping horse along the trail in the mesquite thicket.

The slender gallant figure of his rider leaned forward looking, listening at every turn, and at the forks of the trail where a clump of squat mesquite and giant sahuarro made a screen, she checked the horse, and held her breath.

“Good Pat, good horse!” she whispered. “They’ve got nothing that can run away from us. We’ll show them!”

Then a man’s quavering old voice came to her through the winding trail of the arroya. It was lifted tunefully insistent in an old-time song of the mining camps:

Oh, Mexico! we’re coming, Mexico!

Our six mule team,

Will soon be seen,

On the trail to Mexico!

“We made it, Pat!” confided the girl grimly. “We made it. Quiet now–quiet!”

She peered out through the green mesquite as Captain Pike emerged from the west arroya on a gray burro, herding two other pack animals ahead of him into the south trail.

He rode jauntily, his old sombrero at a rakish angle, his eyes bright with enthusiasm supplied by that which he designated as a morning “bracer,” and his long gray locks bobbed in the breeze as he swayed in the saddle and droned his cheerful epic of the trail:

A–and when we’ve been there long enough,

And back we wish to go,

We’ll fill our pockets with the shining dust

And then leave Mexico!

Oh–Mexico!

Good-bye my Mexico!

Our six mule team will then be seen

On the trail from Mexico.

“Hi there! you Balaam–get into the road and keep a-going, you ornery little rat-tailed son-of-a-gun! Pick up your feet and travel, or I’ll yank out your back bone and make a quirt out of it! For–”

My name was Captain Kidd as I sailed

As I sailed,

My name was Captain Kidd,

As I sailed!

My name was Captain Kidd

And most wickedly I di-i-id

All holy laws forbid

As I sailed!

The confessor of superlative wickedness droned his avowal in diminishing volume as the burros pattered along the white dust of the valley road, then the curve to the west hid them, and all was silence but for the rustle of the wind in the mesquite and the far bay of Singleton’s hounds circling a coyote.

But Pat pricked up his ears, and lifted his head as if feeling rather than hearing the growing thud of coming hoofs. The girl waited until they were within fifty feet, when she pursed up her lips and whistled the call of the meadow lark. It sounded like a fairy bugle call across the morning, and the roan was halted quickly at the forks of the road.

“Howdy, señorita?” he called softly. “I can’t see you, but your song beats the birds. Got a flag of truce? Willing to parley with the enemy?”

Then she emerged, eyeing him sulkily.

“You were going without seeing me!” she stated with directness, and without notice of the quizzical smile of comradeship.

“Certainly was,” he agreed. “When I got through the scrap with your disciple of

kultur

, my mug didn’t strike me as the right decoration for a maiden’s bower. I rode out of the scrap with my scratches, taking joy and comfort in the fact that he had to be carried.”

“There was no reason for your being so–so brutal!” she decided austerely.

“Lord love you, child, I didn’t need a reason–I only wanted an excuse. Give me credit! I got away for fear I’d go loco and smash Singleton for interfering.”

“Papa Phil only did his duty, standing for peace.”

“Huh, let the Neutral League do it! The trouble with Singleton is he hasn’t brains enough to lubricate a balance wheel,–he can’t savvy a situation unless he has it printed in a large-type tract. Conrad was scared for fear I’d stumbled on a crooked trail of his and would tell the boss, so he beat me to it with the lurid report that I made an assault on him! This looks like it–not!” and he showed the slashes in his sombrero to make room for the blue banda around his head. “Suppose you tell that Hun of yours to carry a gun like a real hombre instead of the tools of a second-story man. The neighbors could hear a gun, and run to my rescue.”

The girl regarded his flippancy with disapproval.

“He isn’t my Hun,” she retorted. “I could worry along without him on our map,–but after all, I don’t know a single definite thing against him. Anyway, it’s decided I’ve got to go away somewhere to school and be out of the ranch squabbles. Papa Phil thinks I get in bad company out here.”

“Meaning me?”

“Well, he

said

Captain Pike was demoralizing to the youthful mind. He didn’t mention you. And Cap certainly did go the limit yesterday!”

“How so?”

“Well, he went to the Junction for his outfit stuff–”

“Yes, and never showed up at the adobe until the morning star was in the sky!”

“I know,” she confessed. “I went with him. We stayed to see a Hart picture at the theater, and had the time of our young lives. At supper I announced that I was going to adopt Cap as a grandfather,–and then of course he had to go and queer me by filling up on some rank whiskey he had smuggled in with the other food! My stars!–he was put to bed singing that he’d ‘Hang his harp on a willow tree, and be off to the wars again’–You needn’t laugh!”

But he did laugh, his blue eyes twinkling at her recital.

“You poor kid! You have a hard time with the disreputables you pick up. Sure they didn’t warn you against speaking to this reprobate?”

“Sure nothing!” was the boyish reply. “I was to be docked a month’s spending money if I dared go near Pedro Vijil’s adobe again while you were there, which was very foolish of Papa Phil!” she added judicially. “I reckon he forgot they tried that before.”

“And what happened?”

“I went down and borrowed double the amount from old Estevan, the trader at the Junction, and gave him an order against the ranch. Then Cap and I sneaked out a couple of three-year-olds and raced them down in the cottonwood flats against some colts brought down by an old Sierra Blanca Apache. We backed our nags with every peso, and that old brown murderer won! But Cap and I had a wonderful day while our coin lasted, and–and you were going away without saying good-bye!”

Kit Rhodes, who had blankly stated that he owned his horse and saddle and little beyond, looked at the spoiled plucky heiress of Granados ranches, and the laughter went out of his eyes.

She was beyond reason loveable even in her boyish disdain of restriction, and some day she would come back from the schools a very finished product, and thank the powers that be for having sent her out of knowledge of happy-go-lucky chums of the ranges.

Granados ranches had been originally an old Spanish grant reaching from a branch of the intermittent Rio Altar north into what is now Arizona, and originally was about double the size of Rhode Island. It was roughly divided into the home or hacienda ranch in Arizona, and La Partida, the cattle range portion, reaching far south into Sonora. Even the remnant of the grant, if intelligently managed, would earn an income satisfactory for a most extravagant princess royal such as its present chatelaine seemed to Rhodes.

But he had noted dubiously that the management was neither intelligent nor, he feared, square. The little rancherias scattered over it in the fertile valleys, were worked on the scratch gravel, ineffective Mexic method by the Juans and Pedros whose family could always count on mesquite beans, and

camotes

if the fields failed. There was seed to buy each year instead of raising it. There was money invested in farming machinery, and a bolt taken at will from a thresher to mend a plow or a buggy as temporarily required. The flocks of sheep on the Arizona hills were low grade. The cattle and horse outfits were south in La Partida, and the leakage was beyond reason, even in a danger zone of the border land.

All this Kit had milled around and around many times in the brief while he had ranged La Partida. A new deal was needed and needed badly, else Wilfreda Bernard would have debts instead of revenue if Singleton let things drift much longer. Her impish jest that she was a damsel in distress in need of a valiant knight was nearer to truth than she suspected. He had an idiotic hungry desire to be that knight, but his equipment of one horse, one saddle, and one sore head appeared inadequate for the office.

Thus Kit Rhodes sat his horse and looked at her, and saw things other than the red lips of the girl, and the chiding gray eyes, and the frank regret at his going.

It was more profitable not to see that regret, or let it thrill a man in that sweet warm way, especially not if the man chanced to be a drifting ranger. She was only a gallant little girl with a genius for friendships, and her loyalty to Pike extended to Pike’s chum–that was what Rhodes told himself!

“Yes,” he agreed, “I was going without any tooting of horns. No use in Cap Pike and me hanging around, and getting you in bad with your outfit.”

“As if I care!” she retorted.

“You might some day,” he said quietly. “School may make a lot of difference; that, and changed surroundings for a year or two. But some day you will be your own manager, and if I’m still on the footstool and can be of service–just whistle, señorita.”

“Sure!” she agreed cheerfully. “I’ll whistle the lark call, and you’ll know I need you, so that’s settled, and we’ll always be–be friends, Trail-hunter.”

“We’ll always be friends, Lark-child.”

“I wanted Cap Pike to let me in on this prospecting trip, wanted to put in money,” she said rather hesitant, “and he turned me down cold, except for a measly ten dollars, ‘smoke money’ he called it. I reckon he only took that to get rid of me, which I don’t call friendly, do you? And if things should go crooked with him, and he–well–sort of needs help to get out, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“Yes, if it seems best,” he agreed, “but you won’t be here; you’ll be shipped to a school,

pronto

!”

“I won’t be so far off the map that a letter can’t reach me. Cap Pike won’t ever write, but I thought maybe you–”

“Sure,” agreed Rhodes easily. “We’ll send out a long yell for help whenever we get stuck.”

She eyed him darkly and without faith.

“Wish I knew how to make that certain,” she confessed. “You’re only dodging me with any kind of a promise to keep me quiet, just as Cap did. I know! I’m jealous, too, because you’re taking a trail I’ve always wanted to take with Cap, and they won’t let me because I’m a girl.”

“Cheer up! When you are boss of the range you can outfit any little

pasear

you want to take, but you and I won’t be in the same class then, Lark-child.”

“Are you really going it blind, trailing with Cap into the Painted Hills after that fascinating gold legend?” she demanded. “Or have you some inside trail blazed for yourself? Daddy Pike is the best ever, but he always goes broke, and if he isn’t broke, he has a jug at his saddle horn, so–”

“Oh it’s only a little jug this time, and he’s had a fare-you-well drink out of it with everyone in sight, so there’s only one hilarious evening left in the jug now. Just enough for a gladsome memory of civilization.”

“Are you in deep on this prospect plan?” she persisted.

“Well, not that you could notice. That is, I’ve got a three months’ job offered me down at Whitely’s; that will serve the captain as headquarters to range from until we add to our stake. Whitely is rounding up stock for the Allies down Mesa Blanca way, and Pike will feel at home there. Don’t you worry, I’ll keep an eye on Pike. He is hilariously happy to get into that region with a partner.”

“I don’t like it,” she grumbled at him with sulky gray eyes. “Pedro Vijil just came back from the south, and brought his sister’s family from San Rafael. They’re refugees from the Federals because their men joined Ramon Rotil, the rebel leader, and Merced is crying herself crazy over the tales of war they tell. One of their girls was stolen, and the mother and Tia Luz are both crying over that. So Papa Phil says he’s going to send me away where I won’t hear such horrors. I wish I was a man, and I’d join the army and get a chance to go over and fight.”

“Huh!” grunted Rhodes skeptically, “some more of us had hopes! Our army officers are both praying and cursing to get a chance to do the same thing, but they are not getting it! So you and I, little girl, will wait till some one pitches a bomb into that dovery on the Potomac. Then we’ll join the volunteers and swarm over after our people.”

“Oh, yes,

you

can! Men can do anything they like. I told you I was jealous.”

“Never mind, Lark-child,” he returned soothingly. “If I get over with a gun, you can come along and toot a horn. There now, that’s a bargain, and you can practice tooting the lark’s call until the time comes.”

“I reckon I’ll have plenty of time to toot myself black in the face before you show up again at Granados,” she prophesied ruefully, and he laughed.

“Whistle an’ I’ll come to you, Lassie,” he said with sudden recklessness, “and that’s for

adios

, Billie.”

He held out his hand.

“That’s enough, Rhodes,” said a voice back of them, and Singleton walked forward. “When you got your time, you were supposed to leave Granados. Is this what you’ve been hanging around for during the past week?”

Rhodes flamed red to his hair as he stared down at the elder man.

“I reckon I’ll not answer that now, Mr. Singleton,” he said quietly. “You may live to see you made a mistake. I hope you do, but you’re traveling with a rotten bunch, and they are likely to use a knife or a rope on you any time you’ve played the goat long enough for them to get their innings. I’m going without any grudge, but if I was an insurance agent, trying to save money for my company, I’d sure pass you by as an unsafe bet! Keep on this side of the line, Singleton, while the revolution is whirling, and whatever you forget, don’t forget I said it!

Adios

, señorita, and–good luck!”

“Good luck, Kit,” she half whispered, “and

adios

!”

She watched him as he rode away, watched him as he halted at the turn of the trail and waved his hand, and Singleton was quietly observing her the while. She frowned as she turned and caught him at it.

“You thought he waited here, or planned to–to meet me,” she flared. “He was too square to tell you the truth, but it was I rode out here to say good-bye, rode out and held him up! But I did not reckon anyone would try to insult him for it!”

Her stepfather regarded her grimly. She was angry, and very near to tears.

“Time you had your breakfast,” he observed, “and all signs indicate I should have sent you East last year, and kept you out of the promiscuous mixups along the border. It’s the dumping ground for all sorts of stray adventurers, and no place for a girl to ride alone.”

“He seemed to think I am as able to look after myself as you,” she retorted. “You aren’t fair to him because you take the word of Conrad, but Conrad lies, and I’m glad he got thrashed good and plenty! Now I’ve got that off my mind, I’ll go eat a cheerful breakfast.”

Singleton walked silent beside her back to where his horse was grazing by the roadside.

“Huh!” grunted the girl with frank scorn. “So you got out of the saddle to spy? Haven’t you some black-and-tan around the ranch to do your dirty work?”

“It’s just as well to be civil till you know what you are talking about,” he reminded her with a sort of trained patience. “I came out without my breakfast just to keep the ranchmen from thinking what Tia Luz thinks. She told me I’d find that fellow waiting for you. I didn’t believe it, but I see she is not so far wrong.”

He spoke without heat or feeling, and his tone was that of quiet discussion with a man or boy, not at all that of a guardian to a girl. His charge was evidently akin to the horse ranch of Granados as described by the old ranger: Singleton had acquired them, but never understood them.

“Look here,” said his protégée with boyish roughness, “that Dutchman sees everything crooked, especially if there’s an American in range, and he prejudices you. Why don’t you wake up long enough to notice that he’s framing some excuse to run off every decent chap who comes on the place? I knew Rhodes was too white to be let stay. I saw that as soon as he landed, and I told him so! What I can’t understand is that you won’t see it.”

“A manager has to have a free hand, Billie, or else be let go,” explained Singleton. “Conrad knows horses, he knows the market, and is at home with the Mexicans. Also he costs less than we used to pay, and that is an item in a bad year.”

“I’ll bet we lose enough cattle to his friends to make up the difference,” she persisted. “Rhodes was right when he called them a rotten bunch.”

“Let us hope that when you return from school you will have lost the major portion of your unsavory vocabulary,” he suggested. “That will be worth a herd of cattle.”

“It would be worth another herd to see you wake up and show you had one good fight in you!” she retorted. “Conrad has all of the ranch outfit locoed but me; that’s why he passes on this school notion to you. He wants me out of sight.”

“I should have been more decided, and insisted that you go last year. Heaven knows you need it badly enough,” sighed Singleton, ignoring her disparaging comment on his own shortcomings. And then as they rode under the swaying fronds of the palm drive leading to the ranch house he added, “Those words of your bronco busting friend concerning the life insurance risk sounde