duck-hunting as an escape.

"All right, honey. I'll give Quint notice who his boss is to-morrow."

"I've already given him his orders, Dad," his daughter said, with a
saucy little _moue_ at her father.

Clint chuckled. "'Nough said. When you give orders I take a back seat.
Every rider on the place knows that. I'm the most henpecked dad in
Texas."

By daybreak Ramona and her escort were several miles from the ranch on
their way to the nearest lake. Quint was a black-haired, good-looking
youth who rode the range for the A T O outfit. Like most of the
unmarried men about her between the ages of fifteen and fifty, he
imagined himself in love with the daughter of the boss. He had no
expectation whatever of marrying her. He would as soon have thought of
asking Wadley to give him a deed to the ranch as he would of mentioning
to Ramona the state of his feelings. But that young woman, in spite of
her manner of frank innocence, knew quite accurately how matters stood,
just as she knew that in due time Quint would transfer his misplaced
affections to some more reciprocal object of them.

Her particular reason for selecting Quint as her companion of the day
was that he happened to be a devoted admirer of Jack Roberts. All one
needed to do was to mention the Ranger to set him off on a string of
illustrative anecdotes, and Ramona was hungry for the very sound of his
name. One advantage in talking to young Sullivan about his friend was
that the ingenuous youth would never guess that the subject of their
conversation had been chosen by her rather than by him.

"Did I ever tell you, Miss Ramona, about the time Texas an' me went to
Denver? Gentlemen, hush! We ce'tainly had one large time."

"You boys ought not to spend your time in the saloons whenever you go to
town. It isn't good for you," reproved the sage young woman who was
"going-on seventeen."

She was speaking for a purpose, and Quint very innocently answered the
question in her mind.

"No, ma'am. I reckon you're right. But we didn't infest the saloons none
that time. Texas, he's one of these here good bad-men. He's one
sure-enough tough nut, an' I'd hate to try to crack him, but the queer
thing is he don't drink or chew or go hellin' around with the boys. But,
say, he's some live lad, lemme tell you. What do you reckon he pulled
off on me whilst we was in Denver?"

"Some foolishness, I suppose," said Ramona severely, but she was not
missing a word.

"He meets up w