uth was
crazy to take up a claim, having read how easily one is acquired,
while my health was not very good and the doctor at home thought it
would be improved by being in the open in a high altitude. Uncle said
I'd better stay with him and aunt, but I knew how terribly
disappointed Ruth would be if I did, because she couldn't homestead
alone. So uncle declared that if homesteaders we had to be, then we
must locate near him where he could have me under his eye, so to
speak. I myself am not taking this claim business very seriously. And
now uncle, who once had some controversy with the elder Menocal,
wouldn't be very well pleased if he knew the son was making calls on
us."

"So others besides myself have trouble with the Menocals," Bryant
stated.

"Apparently. I don't know what this particular difficulty was about,
but uncle is president of a bank in Kennard and so it may have been
some financial matter. Or it may have been over politics; both of them
mix in that. Anyway, he doesn't think highly of the elder Menocal,
and has no use at all for the younger; so I know he would be vexed at
Ruth and me for receiving this Charlie."

"You didn't know him that day he and I clashed at the ford," Lee
suggested.

"Oh, no. Our meeting came about one afternoon about a week afterward.
He overtook us on the road a mile or so away from here and politely
offered to bring us home in his car; we were walking and couldn't very
well refuse his courtesy, and then he asked to call and Ruth at once
gave him permission, and that's the way it came about. But I thought
it wise to draw the line at going off miles and miles with him to see
ruins. Of course, Ruth hasn't any uncle to consider, but uncle or no
uncle I should have drawn the line just the same."

"A colour line, eh?" Lee asked, with a lift of his brows.

"Yes, that's it, though I hesitated to put it in just those words,"
she agreed, with a nod, while both her lips and her blue eyes smiled
at him in amusement. "Really, Mexicans are of different blood and
race, you know, and I feel the--gulf. That probably sounds foolish and
ridiculous, still I can't help the feeling. When I look at a man like
Charlie Menocal, I see the Mexican strain uppermost even if his mother
was white; and I think what strange, savage, unguessed traits may lurk
in his blood from a long time back; and I shiver. One dare not say
they have ceased. There may be forces at work in his soul that are
inherited from t