would
never marry a Curtis. Somehow I couldn't go against him. He's mighty
old. I'm sorry, Yenna."

The girl leaned in her saddle and laid one hand on Ranse's, on the
horn of his saddle.

"I never thought I'd like you better for giving me up," she said
ardently, "but I do. I must ride back now, Ranse. I slipped out of
the house and saddled Dancer myself. Good-night, neighbour."

"Good-night," said Ranse. "Ride carefully over them badger holes."

They wheeled and rode away in opposite directions. Yenna turned in her
saddle and called clearly:

"Don't forget I'm your half-way girl, Ranse."

"Damn all family feuds and inherited scraps," muttered Ranse
vindictively to the breeze as he rode back to the Cibolo.

Ranse turned his horse into the small pasture and went to his own
room. He opened the lowest drawer of an old bureau to get out the
packet of letters that Yenna had written him one summer when she had
gone to Mississippi for a visit. The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it
savagely--as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both
his shins--as a drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an
envelope fell from somewhere--probably from where it had lodged in one
of the upper drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously.

Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican _jacals_.

"Tia Juana," he said, "I would like to talk with you a while."

An old, old Mexican woman, white-haired and wonderfully wrinkled, rose
from a stool.

"Sit down," said Ranse, removing his hat and taking the one chair in
the _jacal_. "Who am I, Tia Juana?" he asked, speaking Spanish.

"Don Ransom, our good friend and employer. Why do you ask?" answered
the old woman wonderingly.

"Tia Juana, who am I?" he repeated, with his stern eyes looking into
hers.

A frightened look came in the old woman's face. She fumbled with her
black shawl.

"Who am I, Tia Juana?" said Ranse once more.

"Thirty-two years I have lived on the Rancho Cibolo," said Tia Juana.
"I thought to be buried under the coma mott beyond the garden before
these things should be known. Close the door, Don Ransom, and I will
speak. I see in your face that you know."

An hour Ranse spent behind Tia Juana's closed door. As he was on his
way back to the house Curly called to him from the wagon-shed.

The tramp sat on his cot, swinging his feet and smoking.

"Say, sport," he grumbled. "This is no way to treat a man after
kidnappin'