the heaped bluffs and down at the pink-and-white patch of
fruit-trees. She was trying, as the young will always try, to solve
the riddle of life; and she was baffled and unhappy because she could
not find any answer at all that pleased both her ideals and her reason.
And then she heard a man's voice lifted up in riotous song, and she
turned her head toward the opening of the gorge and listened, her eyes
brightening while she waited.

"Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,
Best damn cowboy ever was born,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy-a, youpy-a,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy-a!"

Billy Louise, with her chin still in her palms, smiled and hummed the
tune under her breath; that shows how quickly we throw off the burdens
of our neighbors. "Wonder what he's doing down here?" she asked
herself, and smiled again.

"I'll sell my outfit soon as I can,
I won't punch cattle for no damn' man,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy-a, youpy-a,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy-a!

"I'm goin' back to town to draw my money,
I'm going back to town to see my honey,
Coma ti yi--"

Ward came into sight through the little meadow, riding slowly, with
both hands clasped over the horn of the saddle, his hat tilted back on
his head, and his whole attitude one of absolute content with life. He
saw Billy Louise almost as soon as she glimpsed him--and she had been
watching that bit of road quite closely. He flipped the reins to one
side and turned from the trail to ride straight up the slope to where
she was.

Billy Louise, with a self-reproachful glance at the grave, ran down the
slope to meet him--an unexpected welcome which made Ward's heart leap
in his chest.

"Oh, Ward, for heaven's sake don't be singing that come-all-ye at the
top of your voice, like that. Don't you--"

"Now I was given to understand that you liked that same come-all-ye.
Have you been educating your musical taste in the last week, Miss
William Louisa?" Ward stopped his horse before her, and with his hands
still clasped over the saddle-horn, looked down at her with that hidden
smile--and something else.

"No, I haven't. I don't have to educate myself to the point where I
know the _Chisholm Trail_ isn't a proper kind of funeral hymn, Ward
Warren." Billy Louise glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice
instinctively, as we all do when death has come close and stopped.
"Jase died last night; that's his grave up there. Isn't it perfectly
pitiful? Poor ol