, 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!"

[Illustration: "You poor kid, you have a hard time with the disreputables
you pick up."]

"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 intellige