but not a soul suspicioned the change. The next
night I put it back again. The old man timed the colt an' so did I.
_Fifty-one seconds!_ I knew my filly could do the whole half-mile
in that. Comet's second dam was a bronco, an' that will tell! But I
wanted to make your grandfather bet his wad. He never could resist a
sure-shot bet, never. That's all."

Amanda looked deep into his laughing eyes.

"He was willing to sell me, his own flesh and blood," she murmured
dreamily. "I think, Nal, you served him just about right, but I wish,
don't get mad, Nal, I wish that--er--someone else had pulled up the
post!"

XVII

MINTIE

Mintie stood upon the porch of the old adobe, shading her brown eyes
from the sun, now declining out of stainless skies into the brush-
hills to the west of the ranch. The hand shading the eyes trembled;
the red lips were pressed together; faint lines upon the brow and
about the mouth indicated anxiety, and possibly fear. A trapper would
have recognised in the expression of the face a watchful intensity or
apprehension common to all animals who have reason to know themselves
to be the prey of others.

Suddenly a shot rang out, repeating itself in echoes from the canon
behind the house. Mintie turned pale, and then laughed derisively.

"Gee!" she exclaimed. "How easy scairt I am!"

She sank, gaspingly, upon a chair, and began to fan herself with the
skirt of her gown. Then, as if angry on account of a weakness,
physical rather than mental, she stood up and smiled defiantly,
showing her small white teeth. She was still trembling; and remarking
this, she stamped upon the floor of the porch, and became rigid. Her
face charmed because of its irregularity. Her skin was a clear brown,
matching the eyes and hair. She had the grace and vigour of an
unbroken filly at large upon the range. And, indeed, she had been born
in the wilderness, and left it but seldom. Her father's ranch lay
forty miles from San Lorenzo, high up in the foothills--a sterile
tract of scrub--oak and cedar, of manzanita and chaparral, with here
and there good grazing ground, and lower down, where the creek ran, a
hundred acres of arable land. Behind the house bubbled a big spring
which irrigated the orchard and garden.

Teamsters, hauling grain from the Carisa Plains to the San Lorenzo
landing, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, would beguile
themselves thinking of the apples which old man Ransom would be sure
to offer,