t." Then she cast one withering glance at
Rhodes, adding,--"and if you engage range bosses like this one no one
on Granados will ever get out of sight!"

"The entire house force has been searching for you over two hours.
Where have you been?"

"Oh, come along home to supper, and don't fuss," she suggested. "Just
because you hid my other saddle I went on a little _pasear_ of my own,
and I met up with this roan on my way home."

Rhodes grinned at the way she eliminated the rider of the roan horse,
but the driver of the machine was not deceived by the apparent slight.
He had seen that half defiant smile of comradeship, and his tone was
not nice.

"It is not good business to waste time and men in this way," he stated
flatly. "It would be better that word is left with the right ones when
you go over the border to amuse yourself in Sonora."

The smile went out of the eyes of the girl, and she held her head very
erect.

"You and Mr. Rhodes appear to agree perfectly, Mr. Conrad," she
remarked. "He was trying to show me how little chance I would stand
against El Gavilan or even the Yaqui slave traders if they ranged up
towards the border."

"Slave traders?" repeated Conrad. "You are making your jokes about
that, of course, but the camp followers of the revolution is a
different thing;--everywhere they are ranging."

The girl did not answer, and the car sped on to the ranch house while
the two horses cantered along after them, but the joyous freedom of
the ride had vanished, lost back there on the ranges when the other
minds met them in a clash.

"Say," observed Rhodes, "I said nothing about Yaqui slave traders.
Where did you get that?"

"I heard Conrad and his man Brehman talking of the profits,--sixty
pesos a head I think it was. I wonder how they knew?"

Singleton was waiting for them at the entrance to the ranch house,
great adobe with a patio eighty feet square in the center. In the old
old days it had housed all the vaqueros, but now the ranchmen were
divided up on different outlying rancherias and the many rooms of
Granados were mostly empty. Conrad, his secretary Brehman, and their
cook occupied one corner, while Singleton and Billie and Tia Luz with
her brood of helpers occupied the other.

Singleton was not equal to the large hospitality of the old days when
the owner of a hacienda was a sort of king, dispensing favors and
duties to a small army of retainers. A companionable individual he was
glad to me