n she was born and taken care of her ever
since. The two--the tall Kentucky girl and the bent mammy--arrived at
the Stone Ranch one day in June, and Richard, done then with bridges
and looking after his ranch interests, had already fallen violently in
love with Betty. She was delicate, but, if those in Medicine Bend who
remembered her said true, a lovely creature. Remaining in the
mountains was the last thing Betty had ever thought of, but no one,
man or woman, could withstand Dick Dunning. She fell quite in love
with him the first time she set eyes on him in Medicine Bend, for he
was very handsome in the saddle, and Betty was fairly wild about
horses. So Dick Dunning wooed a fond mistress and married her and
buried her, and all within hardly more than a year.

But in that year they were very happy, never two happier, and when she
slept away her suffering she left him, as a legacy, a tiny baby girl.
Puss brought the mite of a creature in its swaddling-clothes to the
sick mother,--very, very sick then,--and poor Betty turned her dark
eyes on it, kissed it, looked at her husband and whispered "Dicksie,"
and died. Dicksie had been Betty's pet name for her mountain lover, so
the father said the child's name should be Dicksie and nothing else;
and his heart broke and soon he died. Nothing else, storm or flood,
death or disaster, had ever moved Dick Dunning; then a single blow
killed him. He rode once in a while over the ranch, a great tract by
that time of twenty thousand acres, all in one body, all under fence,
up and down both sides of the big river, in part irrigated, swarming
with cattle--none of it stirred Dick! and with little Dicksie in his
arms he slept away his suffering.

So Dicksie was left, as her mother had been, to Puss, while Lance
looked after the ranch, swore at the price of cattle, and played cards
at Medicine Bend. At ten, Dicksie, as thoroughly spoiled as a pet baby
could be by a fool mammy, a fond cousin, and a galaxy of devoted
cowboys, was sent, in spite of crying and flinging, to a far-away
convent--her father had planned everything--where in many tears she
learned that there were other things in the world besides cattle and
mountains and sunshine and tall, broad-hatted horsemen to swing from
their stirrups and pick her hat from the ground--just to see little
Dicksie laugh--when they swooped past the house to the corrals. When
she came back from Kentucky, her grandmother dead and her schooldays
fini