about those steers. That means that I've got to go as far as Bolo
to-night, and that I sha'n't be back in time to start with the rest of
you to meet the folks. But I'll see you in Bolo day after to-morrow at
noon. The train is due then. Now be on hand, all of you that can. We
want Miss Genevieve and her friends to have a right royal welcome. I
reckon now I'd better be off. So long! Now remember--day after to-morrow
at noon!" he finished, turning away.

"As if we'd be a-forgettin' it," grinned Long John, a tall, lank fellow
sprawled in a hammock, "when the little mistress hain't set her pretty
foot on the place since last August!"

"If only she wa'n't bringin' all them others," groaned the short,
sandy-haired man on the steps. "I'd just like to rope the whole bunch
and send 'em back East again, old lady and all--all but the little
mistress, of course. Boys, what are we a-goin' to do with an old
lady--even though she ain't so awful old--and five tom-fool girls on the
Six Star Ranch?"

"Ees not the Senorita a gurrl, also?" laughed a dark-eyed Mexican from
his perch on the gallery railing. "Eh, Reddy?"

"Sure, Pedro," retorted the sandy-haired man, testily. (Pedro was the
only Mexican cowboy at the ranch, and even he was barely tolerated.)
"But the little mistress ain't no tenderfoot girl. She don't howl at a
rattlesnake nor jump at a prairie dog; and she knows how to ride, and
which end of a gun goes off!"

There was a general laugh, followed by a long silence--the boys did not
usually talk so much together, but to-night a curious restlessness
pervaded them all. Suddenly the tall man in the hammock pulled himself
erect.

"Look a-here, boys, that's jest it," he began in a worried voice. "What
if the little mistress has changed? What if she hain't no use for us and
the ranch any more? I never told ye, but at the first, last August,
'fore she went away, I heard the boss and Mr. Hartley a-talkin'. They
was sayin' she'd got to go East to learn how to live like a lady
should--to know girls, and books, and all that. They said she was
runnin' wild here with only us for playmates, and that they had just got
ter pasture her out where the grass was finer, and the fences nearer
tergether."

"Did they say--that?" gasped half a dozen worried voices.

"They sure did--and more. They said two real ladies was a-goin' ter take
her and make her like themselves--a lady. And, boys, I was
wonderin'--how is a lady goin' ter like us, a