est to give
warning of intention, but the copperhead never does."

"Copperhead! that's funny, for you know Conrad's hair is just about
the color of copper, dusty copper, faded copper--copper with tin
filings sifted through."

"Don't strain yourself," laughed Rhodes. "That beautiful blondness
makes him mighty attractive to our Mexican cousins."

"They can have my share," decided the girl. "I could worry along
without him quite awhile. He manages to get rid of all the likeable
range men _muy pronto_."

Rhodes laughed until she stared at him frowningly, and then the
delicious color swept over her face.

"Oh, _you_!" she said, and Rhodes thought of sweet peas, and pink
roses in old southern gardens as her lips strove to be straight, yet
curved deliciously. No one had mentioned to him how pretty she was; he
had thought of her as a browned tom-boy, but instead she was a
shell-pink bud on a slender stem, and wonder of wonders--she rode a
side-saddle in Arizona!

She noticed him looking at it.

"Are you going to laugh at that, too?" she demanded.

"Why no, it hadn't occurred to me. It sort of looks like home to
me--our southern girls use them."

She turned to him with a quick birdlike movement, her gray eyes
softened and trusting.

"It was my mother's saddle, a wedding present from the vaqueros of our
ranches when she married my father. I am only beginning to use it, and
not so sure of myself as with the one I learned on."

"Oh, I don't know," he observed. "You certainly looked sure when you
jumped that fence at Herrara's."

She glanced at him quickly, curious, and then smiling.

"And it was you, not the meadow lark! You are too clever!"

"And you didn't answer, just turned your back on the lonely ranger,"
he stated dolefully, but she laughed.

"This doesn't look it, waiting to go home with you," she retorted.
"Cap Pike has been telling me about you until I feel as if I had known
you forever. He says you are his family now, so of course that makes
Granados different for you."

"Why, yes. I've been in sight of Granados as much as twice since I
struck this neck of the woods. Your manager seems to think my valuable
services are indispensable at the southern side of this little
world."

"So that's the reason? I didn't know," she said slowly. "One would
have to be a seventh son of a seventh son to understand his queer
ways. But you are going along home today, for I am a damsel in
distress and need to be escor