ttle amusement. It's
been powerful dull out here lately. Nothin' to do but shoot the queue
off Ling Foo."

"Oh! you don't do that; do you?" gasped Ruth.

"Don't mind him, Miss," said the foreman, "he's jokin'."

Miss Pennington and Miss Dixon were only too willing to show their
talents to the appreciative audience of cowboys, and with Paul, who
played the banjo, they went through the little sketch, with a side porch
as a stage, and the setting sun as a spotlight.

There were ample sleeping quarters at Rocky Ranch, though the bedrooms
were rather of the camp, or bungalow, type. But there was hot and cold
water and this made up for the lack of many other things.

"Do you think you're going to like it here, Alice?" asked Ruth as they
sat in the room they were to share. Ruth was manicuring her nails, and
Alice was combing her hair.

"Like it? Of course I'm going to like it. Aren't you?"

"Well, it's--er--rather--rough," she hesitated.

"Oh, but it's all so real! There's no sham about anything. They take you
for just what you are worth out here, and not a cent more. There's no
sham!"

"No, that's true. But everything seems so--so different."

"I know--there isn't romance enough for you. You'd like a horseman to
wear a suit of armor, or come prancing up in a top hat and shiny boots.
But these men, in their rough clothes and on their scraggy-looking
ponies, can _ride_. I saw some of them just before supper. They can
ride like the wind and pull up so short that it's a wonder they don't
turn somersaults. I'm going to learn to ride that way."

"Alice, you're not!"

"Well, maybe not so well, of course," the younger girl admitted, as she
finished braiding her hair for the night. "But I'm going to learn. I'll
have to, anyhow, as I'm cast for a riding part in several scenes, and so
are you."

"Well, then, I suppose I'll have to. But I hope I will get a gentle
horse."

"Oh, Pete will see to that."

"Pete? Do you call him by his first name so soon?" asked Ruth rather
shocked, as she shook out her robe, and ran a ribbon through the neck.

"Everyone calls him Pete; why shouldn't I?" laughed Alice. "He's awfully
nice--and he's been married three times!"

"Did you ask him that?"

"No, he told me. He asked me if I'd ever been 'hooked up,' as he called
it."

"Alice DeVere!"

"Well, I couldn't help it. He meant all right. He's old enough to be our
father. Do you think daddy is quite well?" she asked, perhaps to chan