g at
the door late at night or early in the morning; but he always responded
without a word of complaint. It was all lovely discipline. It was like
batting a measly bronco over the head in correction of some grievous
fault (like nipping your calf, for example), and he took a grim
satisfaction in going about degraded and forgotten of his fellows, for
no one in Keno knew that this grimy hostler was cow-boss on the Perco.
This, in a certain degree, softened his disgrace and lessened his
punishment, but he couldn't quite bring himself to the task of
explaining just how he had come to leave the range and go into service
with Harford.

The officers of the fort, when tired of the ambulance, occasionally took
out a team and covered rig, and so Kelley came in contact with the
commanding officer, Major Dugan, a fine figure of a man with carefully
barbered head and immaculate uniform. In Kelley's estimation he was
almost too well kept for a man nearing fifty. He was, indeed, a gallant
to whom comely women were still the fairest kind of game.

In truth, Tall Ed as hostler often furnished the major with a carriage,
in which to make some of his private expeditions, and this was another
and final disgrace which the cowman perceived and commented upon. To
assist an old libertine like the major in concealing his night journeys
was the nethermost deep of "self-discipline," but when the pretty young
wife of his employer became the object of the major's attention Kelley
was thrown into doubt.

Anita Harford, part Spanish and part German, as sometimes happens in New
Mexico, was a curious and interesting mixture with lovely golden-brown
hair and big, dark-brown eyes. She had the ingratiating smile of the
senora, her mother, and the moods of gravity, almost melancholy, of her
father.

She had been away in Albuquerque during the first week of Kelley's
hostlership, and though he had heard something of her from the men about
the corral, he had no great interest in her till she came one afternoon
to the door of the stable, where she paused like a snow-white, timid
antelope and softly said:

"Are you the new hostler?"

"I am, miss."

She smiled at his mistake. "I am Mrs. Harford. Please let me have the
single buggy and bay Nellie."

Kelley concealed his surprise. "Sure thing, mom. Want her right now?"

"If you please."

As she moved away so lightly and so daintily Kelley stared in
stupefaction. "Guess I've miscalculated somewhere. Ol