Lord, yes! Summer tourists are crawlin' all over us sence
this otto line began. 'Pears like all the bare-armed boobies and
cross-legged little rips in Omaha and Denver has jest got to ride in and
look us over. Two of them new hotels in Sulphur don't do a thing but feed
these tenderfeet. I s'pose pro-hi-bition will be the next grandstand-play
on the part of our town-lot boomers. We old cow-punchers don't care
whether the town grows or not, but these hyer bankers and truck-farmers
are all for raisin' the price o' land and taxin' us quiet fellers out of
our boots."

Virginia winced a little at this, for it flashed over her that all the
women with whom she had grown up spoke very much in this fashion--using
breeding terms almost as freely as the ranchers themselves. It was natural
enough. What else could they do in talking to men who knew nothing but
cows? And yet it was no longer wholly excusable even to the men, who
laughed openly in reply.

The mountains, too, yielded their disappointment. For the first hour or
two they seemed lower and less mysterious than of old. They neither wooed
nor threatened--only the plain remained as vast and as majestic as ever.
The fences, the occasional farms in the valleys could not subdue its
outspread, serene majesty to prettiness. It was still of desert sternness
and breadth.

From all these impersonal considerations the girl was brought back to the
vital phases of her life by the harsh voice of one of the men. "Lize
Wetherford is goin' to get jumped one o' these days for sellin' whiskey
without a license. I've told her so, too. Everybody knows she's a-doin'
it, and what beats me is her goin' along in that way when a little time
and money would set her straight with the law."

The shock of all this lay in the fact that Eliza Wetherford was the mother
to whom Lee Virginia was returning after ten years of life in the East,
and the significance of the man's words froze her blood for an instant.
There was an accent of blunt truth in his voice, and the mere fact that a
charge of such weight could be openly made appalled the girl, although her
recollections of her mother were not entirely pleasant.

The young fellow on the back seat slowly said: "I don't complain of Lize
sellin' bad whiskey, but the grub she sets up is fierce."

"The grub ain't so bad; it's the way she stacks it up," remarked another.
"But, then, these little fly-bit cow-towns are all alike and all bad, so
far as hotels