I promised. She'll forgive me, I know, and be patient a while
longer. It's all for her sake I'm staying away. Give her the letter I
enclose.

"Your old bunkie,
Dick Lane"

CHAPTER II

The Heart of a Girl

Jim Allen was the sole owner and proprietor of Allen Hacienda. His
ranch, the Bar One, stretched for miles up and down the Sweetwater
Valley. Bounded on the east and west by the foot-hills, the tract was
one of the garden spots of Arizona. Southward lay the Sweetwater Ranch,
owned by Jack Payson. Northward was the home ranch of the Lazy K, an
Ishmaelitish outfit, ever at petty war with the other settlers in the
district. It was a miscellaneous and constantly changing crowd,
recruited from rustlers from Wyoming, gamblers from California,
half-breed outlaws from the Indian Territory; in short, "bad men" from
every section of the Western country. They had a special grudge
against Allen and Payson, whom they held to be accountable for the
sudden disappearance, about a year before, of their leader, Buck McKee,
a half-breed from the Cherokee Strip. However, no other leader had
arisen equal to that masterful spirit, and their enmity expressed
itself only in such petty depredations as changing brands on stray
cattle from the Bar One and Sweetwater Ranches, and the slitting of the
tongues of young calves, so that they would be unable to feed properly,
and, as a result, be disowned by their mothers, whereupon the Lazy K
outfit would slap its brand on them as mavericks.

Allen was a Kentuckian who had served in the Confederate Army as one of
Morgan's raiders, and so had received, by popular brevet, the title of
colonel. At the close of the war he had come to Arizona with his young
wife, Josephine, and had founded a home on the Sweetwater. He was now
one of the cattle barons of the great Southwest. Prosperity had not
spoiled him. Careless in his attire, cordial in his manner, he was a
man who was loved and respected by his men, from the newest tenderfoot
to the veteran of the bunkhouse. His wife, however, was not so highly
regarded, for she had never been able to recognize changes in time or
location and so was in perpetual conflict with her environment. She
attempted to make the free and independent cowboys of the Arizona
plains "stand around" like the house servants of the Kentucky
Bluegrass; and she persisted in the effort to manage her