her eyes returned to the jug and she
declined, a trifle stiffly. "No, thank you. I--I think I will go
around by the trail."

Either the man did not notice the curtness of the reply, or he chose
to ignore it, for the next instant, noting the gasp of pain and the
sudden tightening of the lips that accompanied her attempt to raise
her foot to the stirrup, he swung lightly to the ground, and before
she divined what he was about, had lifted her gently into the saddle
and pressed the reins into her hand. Without a word he returned to his
horse, and with face flushed scarlet, the girl glared at the powerful
gray shoulders as he picked up his reins from the ground. The next
moment she headed her own horse down the back trail and rode into the
deepening shadows. Gaining the main trail she urged her horse into a
run.

"He--he's awfully strong," she panted, "and just _horrid!_"

From the top of the divide the man watched until she disappeared, then
he stroked softly the velvet nose that nuzzled against his cheek.

"What d'you reckon, Buck? Are they goin' to start a school for that
litter of young Wattses? There ain't another kid within twenty
mile--must be." As he swung into the saddle the leather covered jug
bumped lightly against his knee. There was a merry twinkle of laughter
in his blue eyes as, with lips solemn as an exhorter's, he addressed
the offending object. "You brown rascal, you! If it hadn't be'n for
you, me an' Buck might of made a hit with the lady, mightn't we, Buck?
Scratch gravel, now you old reprobate, or we won't get to camp till
midnight."

"Anyway, she ain't no kin to the Wattses," he added reflectively, "not
an' that clean, she ain't."

CHAPTER II

AT THE WATTS RANCH

It was with a decided feeling of depression that Patty Sinclair
approached the Watts ranch. Long before she reached the buildings an
air of shiftless dilapidation was manifest in the ill-lined barbed
wire fences whose rotting posts sagged drunkenly upon loosely strung
wire. A dry weed-choked irrigation ditch paralleled the trail, its
wooden flumes, like the fence posts, rotting where they stood, and its
walls all but obliterated by the wash of spring freshets. The
depression increased as she passed close beside the ramshackle log
stable, where her horse sank to his ankles in a filthy brown seepage
of mud and rotting straw before the door. Two small, slouchily built
stacks of weather-stained hay occupied a fenced-off enclosure