soft veil enwrapped the
far hills, and she had seemed almost as far away if not so mysterious.
Not once had he crossed her trail, and he heard she was no longer
permitted to ride south of the line. The vaqueros commented on this
variously according to their own point of view. Some of the Mexicans
resented it, and in one way or another her name was mentioned whenever
problems of the future were discussed. Singleton was regarded as
temporary, and Conrad was a salaried business manager. But on a day
to come, the senorita, as her mother's daughter, would be their
mistress, and the older men with families showed content at the
thought.

Rhodes never could think of her as the chatelaine of those wide
ranges. She was to him the "meadow-lark child" of jests and laughter,
heard and remembered but not seen. She was the haunting music of youth
meeting him at the gateway of a new land which is yet so old!

Some such vagrant thought drifted through his mind as the sweet calls
of the drowsy birds cut the warm silence, now from some graceful palo
verde along a barranca and again from the slender pedestal of an
occotilla.

"Lucky you, for you get an answer!" he thought whimsically. "Amble
along, Pardner, or the night witches get us!"

And then he circled a little at the north of the canon, and the black
horse, champing and fidgeting, was held there across the trail by its
rider.

"We are seeing things in broad daylight, Pardner, and there ain't no
such animal," decided Rhodes, but Pardner whinnied, and the girl threw
up her hand.

"This time I am a highwayman, the far-famed terror of the ranges!" she
called.

"Sure!" he conceded. "I've been thinking quite a while that your term
must be about up."

She laughed at that, and came alongside.

"Didn't you suppose I might have my time shortened for good behavior?"
she asked. "You never even ride our way to see."

"Me? Why, child, I'm so busy absorbing _kultur_ from your scientific
manager that my spare moments for damsels in distress are none too
plenty. You sent out nary a call, and how expect the lowest of your
serfs to hang around?"

"Serf? That's good!" she said skeptically. "And say, you must love
Conrad about as much as Cap Pike does."

"And that?"

"Is like a rattlesnake."

"Don't know that rattlesnake would be my first choice of comparison,"
remarked Rhodes. "Back in Tennessee we have a variety beside which the
rattlesnake is a gentleman; a rattlesnake does his b