white
flag yet. You pick the wrong colors."

Whereupon he began the chanting of a war song, with an eye stealthily
on the barred window.

_Hurrah! Hurrah! For southern rights, hurrah!
Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag
That bears the single star!_

"Oh! _I_ know that!" the voice was now a hail of recognition. "Cap
Pike always sings that when he's a little 'how-came-ye-so'--and
_you're_ a Johnny Reb!"

"Um! twice removed," assented the man by the wall, "and you are a
raiding Yank who has been landed in one of our fortresses with only
one shirt to her back, and that one borrowed."

He had a momentary vision of two laughing gray eyes beside the olla,
and the girl behind the bars laughed until Merced let the grindstone
halt while she cast a glance towards the house as if in doubt as to
whether three feet of adobe wall and stout bars could serve instead of
a duena to foolish young Americans who chattered according to their
foolishness.

There was an interval of silence, and then the girlish voice called
again.

"Hi, Johnny Reb!"

"Same to you, Miss Yank."

"Aren't you the new Americano from California, for the La Partida
rancho?"

"Even so, O wise one of the borrowed garment." The laugh came to him
again.

"Why don't you ask how I know?" she demanded.

"It is borne in upon me that you are a witch of the desert, or the
ghost of a dream, that you see through the adobe wall, and my equally
thick skull. Far be it for me to doubt that the gift of second sight
is yours, O seventh daughter of a seventh daughter!"

"No such thing! I'm the only one!" came the quick retort, and the
young chap in the shade of the adobe shook with silent mirth.

"I see you laughing, Mr. Johnny Reb, you think you caught me that
time. But you just halt and listen to me, I've a hunch and I'm going
to prophesy."

"I knew you had the gift of second sight!"

"Maybe you won't believe me, but the hunch is that you--won't--hold--the
job on these ranches!"

"What!" and he turned square around facing the window, then laughed.
"That's the way you mean to get even for the 'seventh daughter' guess
is it? You think I can't handle horses?"

"Nix," was the inelegant reply, "I know you can, for I saw you handle
that bay outlaw they ran in on you this morning: seven years old and
no wrangler in Pima could ride him. Old Cap Pike said it was a damn
shame to put you up against that sun-fisher as an introduction to