e while only the creak of
the grindstone cut the stillness. Whoever she was, she had given him a
brief illuminating vision of the tactics of Conrad, the manager for
the ranches of Granados and La Partida, the latter being the Sonora
end of the old Spanish land grant. Even a girl had noted that the
rough work had been turned over to a new American from the first
circle of the _rodeo_. He stood there staring out across the sage
green to the far purple hills of the Green Springs range.

"You've fixed that cinch, what you waiting for?" asked the voice at
last, and the young fellow straightened up and lifted the saddle.

"That's so," he acknowledged. "But as you whistled to me and the call
seemed friendly, it was up to me to halt for orders--from the lady in
distress."

Again he heard the soft laughter and the voice.

"Glad you liked the friendly call, Johnny Reb," she confessed. "That's
my call. If ever you hear it where there are no larks, you'll know who
it is."

"Sure," he agreed, yanking at the cinch, "and I'll come a lopin' with
the bonnie blue flag, to give aid and succor to the enemy."

"You will not!" she retorted. "You'll just whistle back friendly, and
be chums. I think my clothes are dry now, and you'd better travel. If
you meet anyone looking for a stray maverick, you haven't seen me."

"Just as you say. _Adios!_"

After he had mounted and passed along the corral to the road, he
turned in the saddle and looked back. He could see no one in the
window of the bars, but there came to him clear and sweet the field
bugle of the meadow lark.

He answered it, lifted his sombrero and rode soberly towards the
Granados corrals, three miles across the valley. Queer little trick
she must be. American girls did not usually ride abroad alone along
the border, and certainly did not chum with the Mexicans to the extent
of borrowing shirts. Then as he lifted the bridle and Pardner broke
into a lope, he noted an elderly horseman jogging along across trail
on a little mule. Each eyed the other appraisingly.

"Hello, Bub!" hailed the older man. "My name's Pike, and you're the
new man from California, hey? Glad to meet you. Hear your name's
Rhodes."

"I reckon you heard right," agreed the young chap. "K. Rhodes at your
service, sir."

"Hello! K? K? Does that K stand for Kit?"

"Center shot for you," assented the other.

"From Tennessee?"

"Now you're a sort of family historian, I reckon, Mr. Pike," suggested
K. R