hort, embarrassed laugh.

"Oh, come now, Idy; Ricardo don't understand United States."

"Well, I don't care whether he understands United States or not. I guess
idiots acts about the same in all languages. I'll bet a dollar he
understands what you're up to, anyway; so there."

She drove on, in rigid perpendicularity, past the adobe ranch-house of
the Gonzales family, and around the curve of the lake-shore, into the
sunshine of the wild mustard that fringed the road. Through it they
could see the pale sheen of the ripening barley-fields, broken here and
there by the darker green of alfalfa.

As the mustard grew taller and denser, Idy's spine relaxed sufficiently
to permit a covert, conciliatory glance toward her companion's arm,
which hung from the back of the seat in the disappointed attitude it had
assumed at her repulse.

"I s'pose you think I'm awful touchy," she broke out at last, "an' mebbe
I am; but before I promise to marry anybody, there's two things he's got
to promise _me_--he's got to sign the pledge, an' he's got to get even
with that felluh Barden."

Parker's face, which had brightened perceptibly at the first
requirement, clouded dismally at the second.

Idy dropped her chin on the silk handkerchief flaring softly at her
throat, and looked at him deliciously sidewise from under her
overshadowing frizz.

"I'll promise _any_thing, Idy," he protested, fervently abject.

Half an hour later they drove into Elsmore with the radiance of their
betrothal still about them, and Idy drove the team up, with a skillful
avoidance of the curb, before the "Live and Let Live Meat-Market."

"I'm goin' to get some round steak," she said, giving the lines to
Parker, who sprang to the sidewalk, "an' then I'm goin' over to
Saunders's to look at jerseys. You c'n go where you please, but if I see
you loafin' 'round a saloon there'll be a picnic. If you tie the team,
you want to put a halter on the pinto--he's like me, he hates to be
tied; he pulls back. If you hain't got much to do, I think you'd better
make a hitchin'-post of yerself, and not tie 'im."

She stood up in the wagon, preening her finery, and looking down at her
lover before she gave him her hand.

"I won't be a hitchin'-post if you hate to be tied," he said, holding
out his hands invitingly.

As he spoke, the rider of a glittering bicycle glided noiselessly around
the corner, apparently steering straight for Eben's team of ranch-bred
broncos. The pint