t to have glimpsed a disappointed look in her
eyes as she dropped her chin, but he could not be certain. Probably he
had been mistaken. Why should she be disappointed? Why, indeed?

"Start in on that bed, Racey," she directed, nodding her head toward
the columbines and wall-flowers. "There's some of that miserable
pusley inching in on the baby-blue-eyes and they're such tiny things
it doesn't take much to kill them. And Lord knows I had a hard enough
job persuading 'em to grow in the first place."

"Wild things never cotton to living inside a fence," he told her.
"They're like Injuns thataway--put 'em in a house and they don't do so
well."

"Shucks, look at the Rainbow."

"Half-breed. There's the difference, and besides the Rainbow ain't
lived in a house since she left the convent. She lives in a tepee same
as her uncle and aunties."

"I don't care," defended Molly, straightening on her knees to survey
her garden. "Every single plant in my garden except the pink geraniums
is wild. Look at those thimble-berry bushes round the spring, and the
blue camass along the brook, and the squaw bushes round the house,
and the squaw grass and pussy paws back of the clothes-lines. Some I
transplanted, the rest I grew from seeds. And where will you find a
better-looking garden?"

Racey sagged back on his heels and stared critically about him.

"Yeah," he drawled, nodding a slow head, "they do look pretty good.
Got to give you lots of credit. But those squaw bushes now--" He broke
off, grinning.

"Oh, of course, you provoking thing!" cried she, irately. "Might know
you'd pick on those squaw bushes. It is a mite too shady for 'em
where they are, but still they're doing pretty well, considering. I'm
satisfied--What's that?"

"That" was a horseman appearing suddenly among the cottonwoods that
belted with a scattering grove the garden and the spring. The horseman
was Lanpher, manager of the 88 ranch. He was followed by another
rider, a lean, swarthy individual with a smooth-shaven, saturnine
face. Racey knew the latter by sight and reputation. The man was one
Skeel and rejoiced in the nick-name of "Alicran." The furtive scorpion
whose sting is death is not indigenous to the territory, but Mr.
Skeel had gained the appellation in New Mexico, a region where the
tail-bearing insect may be found, and when the man left the Border for
the Border's good the name left with him.

"Oh, lookout! The bushes! The bushes! Don't trample my
t