h her own feelings, roused by the tumult and
toil of the round-up. She recalled that Don Carlos had been presented to
her, and that she had not liked his dark, striking face with its bold,
prominent, glittering eyes and sinister lines; and she had not liked his
suave, sweet, insinuating voice or his subtle manner, with its slow
bows and gestures. She had thought he looked handsome and dashing on
the magnificent black horse. However, now that Alfred's words made her
think, she recalled that wherever she had been in the field the noble
horse, with his silver-mounted saddle and his dark rider, had been
always in her vicinity.

"Don Carlos has been after Florence for a long time," said Alfred. "He's
not a young man by any means. He's fifty, Bill says; but you can seldom
tell a Mexican's age from his looks. Don Carlos is well educated and a
man we know very little about. Mexicans of his stamp don't regard women
as we white men do. Now, my dear, beautiful sister from New York, I
haven't much use for Don Carlos; but I don't want Nels or Ambrose to
make a wild throw with a rope and pull the Don off his horse. So you had
better ride up to the house and stay there."

"Alfred, you are joking, teasing me," said Madeline. "Indeed not,"
replied Alfred. "How about it, Flo?" Florence replied that the cowboys
would upon the slightest provocation treat Don Carlos with less ceremony
and gentleness than a roped steer. Old Bill Stillwell came up to be
importuned by Alfred regarding the conduct of cowboys on occasion, and
he not only corroborated the assertion, but added emphasis and evidence
of his own.

"An', Miss Majesty," he concluded, "I reckon if Gene Stewart was ridin'
fer me, thet grinnin' Greaser would hev hed a bump in the dust before
now."

Madeline had been wavering between sobriety and laughter until
Stillwell's mention of his ideal of cowboy chivalry decided in favor of
the laughter.

"I am not convinced, but I surrender," she said. "You have only some
occult motive for driving me away. I am sure that handsome Don Carlos
is being unjustly suspected. But as I have seen a little of cowboys'
singular imagination and gallantry, I am rather inclined to fear their
possibilities. So good-by."

Then she rode with Florence up the long, gray slope to the ranch-house.
That night she suffered from excessive weariness, which she attributed
more to the strange working of her mind than to riding and sitting her
horse. Morning, however