a dry old
Easter for me!"

Pearson took off his hat and drove Road Runner at a gallop into the
chaparral east of the Espinosa ranch house.

As his stirrups rattled against the brush Burrows's long-legged sorrel
struck out down the narrow stretch of open prairie to the southwest.

Tonia hung up her quirt and went into the sitting-room.

"I'm mighty sorry, daughter, that you didn't get your hat," said her
mother.

"Oh, don't worry, mother," said Tonia, coolly. "I'll have a new hat,
all right, in time to-morrow."

When Burrows reached the end of the strip of prairie he pulled his
sorrel to the right and let him pick his way daintily across a sacuista
flat through which ran the ragged, dry bed of an arroyo. Then up a
gravelly hill, matted with bush, the hoarse scrambled, and at length
emerged, with a snort of satisfaction into a stretch of high, level
prairie, grassy and dotted with the lighter green of mesquites in their
fresh spring foliage. Always to the right Burrows bore, until in a
little while he struck the old Indian trail that followed the Nueces
southward, and that passed, twenty-eight miles to the southeast,
through Lone Elm.

Here Burrows urged the sorrel into a steady lope. As he settled
himself in the saddle for a long ride he heard the drumming of hoofs,
the hollow "thwack" of chaparral against wooden stirrups, the whoop of
a Comanche; and Wells Pearson burst out of the brush at the right of
the trail like a precocious yellow chick from a dark green Easter egg.

Except in the presence of awing femininity melancholy found no place in
Pearson's bosom. In Tonia's presence his voice was as soft as a summer
bullfrog's in his reedy nest. Now, at his gleesome yawp, rabbits, a
mile away, ducked their ears, and sensitive plants closed their fearful
fronds.

"Moved your lambing camp pretty far from the ranch, haven't you,
neighbor?" asked Pearson, as Road Runner fell in at the sorrel's side.

"Twenty-eight miles," said Burrows, looking a little grim. Pearson's
laugh woke an owl one hour too early in his water-elm on the river
bank, half a mile away.

"All right for you, sheepman. I like an open game, myself. We're two
locoed he-milliners hat-hunting in the wilderness. I notify you. Burr,
to mind your corrals. We've got an even start, and the one that gets
the headgear will stand some higher at the Espinosa."

"You've got a good pony," said Burrows, eyeing Road Runner's
barrel-like body and