Raquel of the ranch country
Date: 2025-08-20T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Teenage girls -- Juvenile fiction; Ranching -- Texas -- Juvenile fiction

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Title: Raquel of the ranch country

Author: Alida Malkus

Illustrator: George Avison

Release date: August 20, 2025 [eBook #76708]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1927

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76708

Credits: Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAQUEL OF THE RANCH COUNTRY ***

RAQUEL OF THE RANCH COUNTRY

BELOW LAY THE RANCH

RAQUEL OF THE RANCH COUNTRY
by
ALIDA SIMS MALKUS
Illustrated by
GEORGE F. AVISON

NEW YORK

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.

COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY GIRL SCOUTS, INC.

Fifth printing, April, 1937

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BY QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC., RAHWAY, N. J.

CONTENTS

I | RAQUEL GOES TO SCHOOL
II | HOME AGAIN
III | PROBLEMS
IV | TAKING STOCK
V | DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINS
VI | THE HUNT
VII | CHRISTMAS
VIII | LOIS
IX | THE BLIZZARD
X | THAT DANIELS GAL
XI | THE WILD HORSE
XII | DROUTH
XIII | ACROSS THE BORDER
XIV | HIDING
XV | WHAT BECAME OF RAQUEL
XVI | GEORGIE GETS LOST
XVII | FATE PLAYS A TRICK
XVIII | THE MAGIC FLAME
XIX | CONFESSION
XX | HOME WITH THE HERD

ILLUSTRATIONS

- BELOW LAY THE RANCH
- RAQUEL RODE OVER SOUTH TO A WINDMILL
- A MEXICAN WOMAN WAS BAKING TORTILLAS

- IT WAS STILL COOL ON THE DESERT WHEN THEY RODE AWAY OVER THE SANDS

RAQUEL OF THE RANCH COUNTRY

CHAPTER I
RAQUEL GOES TO SCHOOL

Sunset brought Raquel to The Towers, that fashionable school for girls whose turrets overlooked the Hudson. The glow behind her seemed to have lingered to introduce this child of the land of sunshine. It seemed to burnish the dowdy little figure sitting so stiffly in the sedan. Yet she resolutely kept her back to the West, for to see it made her homesick. This was all so different. No wonder a calf bawled for its mother when they took it away!

Three days’ travel from Texas had put a whole world between Raquel and Los Ranchos, the Sunset Limited speeding her back over plains that the covered wagon of her grandparents had not crossed in three months’ journeying. And here she was rolling up a drive toward high iron gates. She leaned forward to peer through. It was even more imposing than she had imagined, this feudal castle in its beautiful grounds, all splashed with the reds and golds of autumn.

Lights were already glowing within the school. The pupils of The Towers always dressed for dinner, and Raquel could see girlish figures passing and repassing before the windows in their soft-colored frocks.

She had never been so afraid of anything in her life as of the prospect of this new world. She was trembling with nervousness. Two girls stood for a moment in one of the windows, each with an arm around the other’s waist. How happy they seemed! Oh, of course she would love school! Homesickness fell away. Raquel leaned forward, sat on the edge of the seat in her eagerness to be inside among those cheerful groups.

The girls of the Misses Carter’s school, watching from the windows as the sedan came to a stop at the entrance, saw a slight figure in a badly fitting suit swing out of the car the moment Jeems opened the door. Before he could stoop for her old calfskin bags the new girl had seized them herself and with a bulging piece of luggage in each hand leaped up the steps ahead of him.

There was a rush from the drawing-room windows. The next moment she was standing in the hall, eager eyes on the faces filling the doorway. They looked mighty pretty. Then the bags dropped to the floor with a thump. A lean hand was thrust out to enclose the plump white one of the younger Miss Carter, and a soft Texan voice was drawling, “Howdy, Ma’am, I sure am glad to be here.”

Then, striding after the floating form of the younger Miss Carter, the new girl was gone up the wide staircase.

“The cowgirl from Texas, or the Girl of the Golden West,” laughed a mischievous voice. “That your new roommate, Lois?”

Lois Wainwright shook a blonde head; her pretty face hardened. “Not if I can help it. I can get along without her in my young life. As a matter of fact I didn’t come here to be forced into any such association.”

“Oh, come, Loie, don’t be a snob!” A long-legged, handsome girl spoke from the depths of an easy chair where she sprawled with a book. “Besides, what do you know about that girl? She’s probably a peach. And she may be the very person that you may need most in your young life, old kiddo.”

Upstairs, Raquel Daniels followed Miss Isaphine Carter down carpeted halls strangely soft to unaccustomed feet. Her nostrils widened like a colt’s at the unfamiliar odor of this new atmosphere, a mingling of scented clothing, fine housekeeping, imperceptible to the careful but accustomed nose of Miss Isaphine, ever on the alert for forbidden things—cigarettes, strong perfumes, bubbling fudge after bedtime. At the ranch there was only the odor of fresh alfalfa blossoms to cover the smell of frying meat or sizzling frijoles.

“This will be your room, dear child.” Miss Carter was switching on the lights. Raquel blinked. How pretty! It was prettier than anything at San Antone’s big store. Prettier somehow than Raquel’s own room at home, and she had thought hers was surely the handsomest set of furniture in the world when Dad bought it for her last year.

“You will have a charming roommate, Lois Wainwright, one of our sweetest girls,” Miss Carter smiled professionally. “You had better dress for dinner now, dear, and then come down to the drawing-room as quickly as you can.”

Left alone, Raquel stood for a moment, smiling, excited. Well, here she was. All these girls to be friends with! And she had to learn to act pretty, like them. Dress for dinner, the teacher had said. Was there anything wrong with her new suit? She had thought it very plain-looking, but that was what they had told her to get. Did Miss Carter mean for her to wear her party dress with elbow sleeves, or should she wear the Sunday dress with long sleeves? She knelt before the bags and threw them open—calfskin bags they were, handmade, and polished from a quarter century’s use. The Sunday dress was in the trunk.

They had forgotten to unstrap it, and Raquel attacked the clumsy-looking knotted rope with deft fingers. Custer was such a hand at roping, he couldn’t even let her new trunk be. Raquel was so absorbed that she did not hear the door softly open and close.

“I think there must be some mistake.” It was an almost artificially sweet voice. “I have this room to myself. Perhaps you’d better not unpack until you can be transferred.” Lois’ eyes took in the cheap trunk, the heavy leather valises.

Raquel rose. Surely this was the prettiest girl in the whole world. She could not take her eyes away.

“I reckon you must be Lois Wainwright, aren’t you?”

“Lois Wainwright is my name.”

“Why, then,” the brown hand shot out again, “you’re my roommate sure enough. I’m Raquel Daniels from Los Ranchos.”

But the pride and confidence in her voice faded as her empty hand fell to her side.

“It was Jimmy, Jim Hovey, your cousin, who told us about The Towers. And you being here, and all. And Dad wrote—Jimmy wrote, too—to you. Maybe you didn’t get the letter. He—” Raquel stopped, checked by the utter lack of response. “I’d have known you anywheres from your picture,” she said softly then.

“Really! How interesting,” Lois drawled indifferently. She fancied that her pointless remark was the essence of sarcasm. “My father, however, happened to engage my room for me early last summer. Yes, I believe Jimmy did write about you. But I don’t pretend to keep up with my cousin’s—er—acquaintances.”

It didn’t take schooling for the girl from Los Ranchos to know that she was not wanted. This strange burning in her cheeks and tightness in her throat made it necessary to get away as fast as she could. Stooping quickly, Raquel closed her grips, and striding to the door, threw it open and set the bags, ever so gently this time, outside. Then back; and lifting the heavy trunk on end, she dragged it swiftly and easily to the door, and bumped it over the threshold, Lois standing there motionless, like one fascinated by what she had done.

It was this tableau which flashed before Anne Marvin as she rounded the corner on her way to her room, and stopped before Lois’ open door—Lois standing cool, indifferent, in the center of the room, the new girl flushed, tense, there in the hall in the midst of her own luggage.

Anne knew just what had happened. That was clear enough.

“This is Raquel Daniels, isn’t it?” She laid a cordial hand on Raquel’s arm. “I’ve come up after you—to meet my new roommate. There was some mistake in the rooming plans, and we’re to be partners, you and I. Shall we go right on to my room? There’s just time before dinner.”

Raquel’s head came up proudly. Then she smiled at Anne. “Thank you. My mistake.”

“A game youngster,” thought Anne. She wouldn’t hold up a sore paw. Sporting!

And—here was a girl you could understand, Raquel felt. Easy-handed enough to gentle a stallion colt. That tight feeling in the chest, the hurt in her throat, eased. And if Anne Marvin winced at Raquel’s grip, it did not go unreturned this time.

It needed the reassurance of Anne’s handclasp to carry Raquel through that first meal at The Towers. Such fine linen and silver she had seen in San Antone, and for service, too, the Toltec Hotel, during the cattlemen’s convention, could not be surpassed.

But to sit in the company of all these easy-mannered girls!

“Do you find that even your clothing feels damp in the East, Miss Daniels?”

“Is it true that there’s only one family to a county in Texas, Miss Daniels?”

“Yes’m,” “No’m,” and “Yes, Ma’am,” and “No, Ma’am,” were all Raquel could find tongue for.

It was not until late the next afternoon that Anne Marvin was called to Miss Carter’s office, a formal room of which the girls stood in awe. But Anne never minded being summoned there.

Anne usually had her way in life. And this was as true at The Towers as it had been at home. There was a reasonableness and good humor in Anne’s way, a deep kindness of heart, that argued more eloquently than her words.

Tall, blonde, handsome, she was easily the best and the most simply dressed girl at school. Her hair was ashen fair, her skin a flushed ivory, and she wore tans, ashes of roses, sage greens, deep blues, avoiding the usual pinks and blues affected by blondes. “Insipid,” she said of them.

There was nothing insipid about Anne. Sports and studies alike came easily to her—far too easily, for, although she was talented, she was lazy. Everything had always come too easily to her—family, wealth, position, were hers by inheritance. She might have been a leader among the girls, but leadership did not seem worth exerting herself for. She did what amused or interested her, and read voraciously. She had just finished Cooper’s Pathfinder, and that wonderful tale of the Pueblo Indians, The Delight Makers, which had stirred her enthusiasm for the West. Then Raquel arrived, fresh from that land of adventure, a character out of a book.

Anne’s example did have a great deal of influence at school. She was copied and sought after. But she had not the slightest inclination to manage, and down in her heart she realized that her inertia was often not only lazy but selfish.

“Don’t make me a chairman”—“Don’t ask me to go to her party.” Anne, sprawled with a book, would wave an eager girl away, and offer a mollifying box of candy. “Eat this, please, darling, or I’ll be sick.” Or, “I’ll be skiing when that committee meets.” Anne would not compose the thesis on history that would have added to her own credits, but she did tutor Lillie Matthews so that Lillie could finish two years of French in one.

Needless to say, Anne was amiable, up to a certain point. She was furious with Lois now. But she, too, was “sporting.”

“It isn’t that Lois said anything to her, Miss Carter,” she smiled across the desk at Miss Hetty; “but one can see that Lois and Miss Daniels are not particularly suited to each other. I find her extremely interesting, and she seems not to object to me. So we just paired off.”

Miss Hetty smiled drily. Anne seemed to have taken an unusual amount of trouble!

“Of course I haven’t yet abandoned my custom of making such arrangements myself, Anne. When I do, I may consult the girls beforehand.”

Anne, reddening at the rebuke, still smiled disarmingly. “I thought, before she got settled, Miss Hetty—”

“Very well, Anne, if you wish it. But I thought you particularly wanted to be alone this winter so that you could give more time to extra subjects.”

“I will, Miss Hetty, I will. In fact, I’ll be the gainer, for Miss Daniels can coach me in Spanish; she speaks it like a native. And I will help her in some of her work.”

And so Raquel stayed in Anne’s room, which was plenty large enough for the extra furniture which had to be brought in. It was both gay and comfortable with its English chintzes, even if it was not as exquisite as that other room had been. But it suited Raquel better. Anne could not have imagined her in Lois’ setting of taffetas and filet laces.

As far as Raquel knew, nothing had been said of what happened the night of her coming to The Towers. It did not occur to her that the story had flashed over the whole school and that it was discussed by both younger girls and seniors that night and for a week afterward. Just what had happened, no one knew.

But why had Lois snubbed her? Raquel asked herself. She wasn’t good enough for her; that was it.

After that first night the girls left her alone, except for the perfunctory courtesies of the table. The novelty of the newcomer wore away in a week.

“It’s a curious thing,” observed Miss Hetty to her younger sister, “how all the girls make excuses for Lois Wainwright. She’s a spoiled and sometimes a cold-blooded little thing; I know perfectly well that she said or did something to hurt that Daniels girl. But not one of them would admit it.

“Lois has every one waiting on her and shielding her. But some day she’ll have to face life on her own. She’ll have her first lesson to learn, and this girl from the West may be the one to do it.” Even Miss Hetty was sometimes ungrammatical.

“But she has sweetness and charm.” Miss Isa rushed to Lois’ defense.

“When she wants to be sweet and charming,” Miss Hetty put in grimly. “She has you wound round her finger, too, Isaphine.”

“She’s generous to a fault,” Miss Isa defended stoutly, “always making gifts, and giving her own things away.”

“Yes, it gratifies her and doesn’t cost her anything. And that and her beauty are what bind the other girls to her.... And there is a something,” Miss Hetty mused; “I don’t myself know what it is. Her mother had it, and she was a lovable, selfish creature herself.

“Well, if it weren’t for Lois’ having lost her mother, and for her father’s invalidism, I really wouldn’t have her here another winter. She’s too capricious, and her extravagance sets a bad example. Her father denies her nothing. She spent more than a hundred and fifty dollars on that theater party which we allowed her to take in to town last week, and you know I don’t approve of fifteen-year-old girls doing such things.”

“What shall we do about Raquel Daniels?” Miss Isaphine hastily changed the subject. “Her clothes are not adequate. She hasn’t at all the wardrobe we advise, and I took special pains to describe everything in our correspondence with her father.

“And her hair, Hetty, that awful, masculine short hair! It makes her look so boyish. Hetty, I—”

Miss Hetty interrupted her sister with a withering glance. “What shall we do about her clothes? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Don’t you suppose the child thought they were adequate? Can’t you see the stuff she’s made of? Can’t you see she would suffer if we suggested she discard the clothes she’s brought? Wait until she finds out for herself what she wants to wear. Use a little common sense, Isa,” snapped Miss Hetty. “Besides, Anne Marvin has exceptional taste. She’ll learn.”

And Raquel, off in the wing room, was too absorbed in Anne’s company to give a thought to clothes. She was telling Anne all about Los Ranchos, and Dad, and Mother, and the boys—Grant and Custer and Georgie (he was twelve), and Jim Hovey, who was from Boston.

It helped the home hunger a lot to talk about it to willing ears. It was the only world Raquel knew, and under the spell of Anne’s sympathy she spread its sunny beauty, its simplicity, its vast unfenced reaches before her new friend.

“Dad, he was born under a covered wagon on the way west. His father and mother were the first people who pioneered into that valley of the Pecos. And Dad’s mother was a beauty in the South, though his father was pioneer stock from ’way back.

“Dad’s got an idea he wants me to have schooling. He’s sold more than seventy thousand head of cattle in the last four years, and he said, he and Mom, that this was the time for me to go to school. He aimed to have me learn banking and bookkeeping, because he and the boys have to carry every penny in their heads.

“And they thought I’d worn breeches and ridden the range long enough. They wanted me to go to San Antone at first, but Jimmy—that’s Jimmy Hovey—he persuaded ’em I should come to The Towers—” Raquel stopped a moment, flushing; then went on steadily; “Jimmy, he’s Lois Wainwright’s cousin. He said she was here and would be sweet to me.

“He thinks a lot of Lois and of her Dad. She was like a sister to him, he said; and he used to tease her a lot, but she needed it; though she was a good kid, he said.

“He had a picture of her on his bureau all the time. She was twelve. He hadn’t seen her since. She looked just as she does now. I sure liked to look at that picture. And Custer, he just loved it. He thought she was just like a fairy. He said when she grew up he wanted to marry that little girl!

“I thought when I came here, perhaps she would come back to the ranch to visit us sometimes. But now—” Raquel smiled pityingly at herself for ever having thought of such an impossible thing.

“She is pretty,” Anne conceded warmly. “And she can be sweet when she hasn’t some contrary notion fixed in her mind. Her mother died when she was a tiny girl, you see; and her father, I think, was so afraid he would die, too—he’s sick, you know—and leave her alone that he always gave her everything she wanted.

“He tried to make up to her for the loss of her mother, and as a result, she didn’t know what it was to be crossed. I think she’d have been different if it weren’t for that.

“But tell me, Raquel, how did Jim Hovey happen to be in the West?”

“Lungs. He came out to our ranch and stayed there a long time. Dad and Mother took a fancy to him. We all did. And after Miss Angie left—she was our school teacher for six years, ever since I was seven—he made Dad let him teach us.

“He was a fine teacher. I love to hear him tell about history. He helped me prepare for the examination papers I had to write for Miss Carter before she said I could come here.”

“Raquel, do you mean to say that you’ve never been to regular school before? I think that’s wonderful!”

A warm flush at the praise spread into the roots of Raquel’s cropped hair. It embarrassed her, and she turned her face away; but she was glad to have Anne say it, for she felt a passionate loyalty to this new friend, her first girl friend.

“Well, you’re the only girl here that does.” Raquel grinned bashfully. “Oh, I know! I can see. I guess I don’t eat right or something, the way the girls at our table look at me sometimes. I suppose they’d be ashamed to ask me to their homes.”

“Oh, Raquel, you mustn’t say that! The girls haven’t had a chance really to know you yet. And they’re more or less taken up with the friendships they made last year, and getting settled, and their studies fixed up and all that. Wait until you’ve been at The Towers a few months, dear, and you’ll love it.”

“Oh, I’m glad I came anyways—anyway, I mean—although I guess the proper place for me would have been the State Agricultural College! But I’ve met you, and I’ll never forget that. And Dad wants me to have some life away from the ranch, he says.

“Mom does too. But she’s different from Dad. She doesn’t talk much. She says she was so much alone in the early days, with the mesa and the desert stretchin’ out so silent all ’round, that she guesses she forgot how to talk. Most ranch women are like that. And then when Dad came in, he would do all the talkin’.

“Mom says she wants me to have a plenty of pretty things to think about when I go back home. Ranch women are bound to be alone more or less. But I think it’s mighty pretty to raise the colts and gentle them. That’s my job at home.

“I’m more like Dad, I guess. I like to ride the range. And I haven’t forgotten how to talk.” Both girls laughed spontaneously. “But Dad seems to set a lot of store by his mother’s memory. Says he’d like for me to have some of the things she gave up when she and my granddad went West.

“And he wants me to be able to hold my own out in the world as well as on the range, he says. And I’ve got to do it.”

“Raquel, do you look like this grandmother?”

“Dad thinks so, because he wants to, but no one else seems to. Not even me, and I’d like to, myself! Do you want to see her picture?”

At Anne’s eager nod, Raquel laid before her roommate a tintype from which looked out a vivid, dark face. The finely-cut features, the way the head was set upon the slender throat, made you think of pride, and mettle, the endurance of a blooded horse. She smiled out at you in the strangely lifelike way that tinted tintypes have.

“She is beautiful, Raquel,” said Anne at last, “and you are very like her, except for the curls, and—and the coquetry. I never realized before just how lovely you are.” Anne’s blue eyes looked up in frank and generous admiration at the finely featured brown face bending over her, the sleek, closely cropped brown head, which clever Anne saw had chic—in a day before the boyish bob was smart. She was growing tremendously fond of Raquel.

Too covered with embarrassed shyness to speak, Raquel brought out from the calfskin valise some snapshots of herself and the boys.

“Jimmy took these. There’s Dad. Isn’t he sweet?”—pointing at a tall, lean, bow-legged figure in the middle of the group, horny-handed, weather-beaten. “And Custer, he’s awfully handsome. Mom is right pretty, but she won’t ever stand up for a picture. She had one when she was married, she said, and she’s never had time to be dressed up since.”

“Why, Rakie, Rakie Daniels,” chanted Anne, “is this you in the beauteous leather breeches, with the silver belt and all those silver buttons? And look at the hat! Aren’t you wonderful! Did you bring them with you?”

Raquel grinned sheepishly.

“Took up the whole bottom of my trunk, and I guess I won’t get to wear ’em anyway.”

“Let me see ’em, quick! Oh, I want to wear—”

Some one was knocking insistently at the door, and Anne, springing up belatedly to answer, was drawn mysteriously into the hall.

“I really can’t,” Raquel could hear the answer. “No, well, I’m sorry, Lois, but if you can’t, I can’t.”

“Do you mean to say,” came in audible exasperation from the other side of the door, “that you won’t go anywhere without—” The door was quickly and decisively closed.

Anne came back in a few moments with an elaborate air of unconcern, but the magic spell was broken. Raquel had relapsed into the subdued, colorless, and somewhat stiff young person who took her seat each day at the table with the throng of careless, happy, moody, flippant, serious, generous, and thoughtless girls at The Towers.

Autumn flew by. The red haze of autumnal sunsets deepened, and each night the red haze of war, the Great War, spread further over the country, until at last it colored even the atmosphere of the schools, including that of The Towers School for Girls.

“Barry has enlisted with the French flying corps,” Anne announced one afternoon as Raquel came in to find her tearful but proud, a letter from home in her hand.

To youth, there was thrilling excitement in the Great Adventure. It did not loom with the deadly portent which weighted the spirits of their elders. Somehow it could not touch them with its lean and cruel finger, or had not, as yet.

There was a rush of gayeties, a feverish busyness, those days; innumerable parties planned to cheer the boys, to keep up their “morale.” Even the school girl was called upon to do her bit.

The girls at The Towers were to take charge of the booths at a Red Cross benefit fair to be held in the near-by village. Nearly all the older girls had been invited to a party and a dance to be given afterward for the lads about to sail for France.

Raquel had never yet been included in those little gayeties given surreptitiously in one girl’s room or another’s; she never seemed to be gathered into those little chatting bevies that foregather in a corner. And so far she had not been asked to take any part in preparations for the fair.

The older girls had been organized into committees of arrangements. Would they have her sell something, Raquel wondered. Shyness, partly, and partly the consciousness of that first snub, had held her aloof ever since her coming to The Towers. Raquel was not in the least selfconscious, but instinctively she drew herself into a shell of silence, and like the plants of her own desert, thrust out little thorny spikes that said “Keep off” just as effectively as if the words had been visible.

And she found little time for play in this new and ordered existence. The rising bell, the quick shower, adopted after observing Anne’s habits for a week; prayers, breakfasts—they always left her hungry for they were daintier but not half so satisfying as breakfasts at Los Ranchos—and then classes and study periods in quick succession.

Raquel worked hard and stood well in her studies at the end of the first half term, in spite of the fact that she could hardly understand the marked English accent of one of her teachers. She probably could not have understood her at all, had it not been for her experience with Jimmy Hovey’s crisp Boston elegance of diction.

She began to feel less constraint with the girls too. But she and Lois Wainwright had never spoken to each other since that first evening. Lois, whose serene face betrayed nothing of what might be passing within her head, gave no sign of any secret compunctions.

Once she stopped in the hall beside Raquel, however, as if to speak to her. But Raquel remained quietly studying the bulletin board, and after a moment Lois shrugged her shoulders and went on. Raquel knew that Lois was standing there, but she was afraid of another snub and had made up her mind not to put herself in the way of it. Raquel did not know how to forgive gracefully. In her country it was etiquette not to forgive an insult. She had been brought up on tales of men’s vengeance, of killings for insults—Dad had always said a man could steal him blind, but insult him—never!

Once when a group of girls from The Towers were riding, Raquel and Marian, a plump, highly manicured girl of sixteen who was always in Lois’ wake, with several of the younger girls galloped ahead of the party. Raquel, who was well in the lead, became separated from the others as she mistook the road, turning off in another direction.

When finally she overtook her party, pulling up after a furious gallop, she was escorted by two nice-looking boys who reined in their mounts beside the girls. Marian recognized the boys as coming from a preparatory school about two miles from The Towers. Smiling her prettiest and edging her horse closer to Raquel’s, she waited for an introduction to the attractive strangers.

Raquel, untrained in such amenities and coquetries, was chatting easily and brightly with her appreciative companions.

“Thank you so much for settin’ me on my way. I sure was lost. That was a nice race we had, and I’ll be glad to beat you again any other day. These are my friends from The Towers.” She waved a comprehensive hand at the other girls. “But don’t let us make you any later.”

Marian was glaring at her, the other girls noticing her curiously, as if for the first time. How attractive Raquel was in her riding clothes! Why, she looked stunning! As the boys lifted their caps with a flourish and cantered away, Marian turned on Raquel.

“Well, what was the object in not introducing those boys?”

“Why-a,” stammered Raquel, “I don’t know their names. I—”

“Oh,” interrupted Marian scornfully, “so you picked them up! I suppose they do that sort of thing where you come from.”

Her sarcasm flew wide of the mark, because it was a simple truth.

“We don’t see any harm in thankin’ a stranger who is polite to us, an’ we let alone those who ain’t.” Raquel, furious, gathered her reins, and under a mysterious pressure of her knees, the horse sprang into a full run, and they were off and down the road in a clatter of shod hoofs before Marian could think of an answer.

“Gee,” said Nancy, one of the Gerould twins, “she surely got off on the right foot! The riding master can’t even do that, throw his mount into a run from a standstill. Thought you said, Marian, that cowgirl couldn’t ride a real horse?”

“Got off on the right word, too, if you ask me,” giggled Gloria, the other twin. “Who said she was dumb?”

Helen Virginia Jones, a plump southern girl of fifteen, made no comment, for she was busy thinking to herself that she would cajole her mother into getting her a new riding suit of that tan deerskin cloth, with the faintest twill, and have the breeches fitting snugly at the knees just as that Daniels girl’s did. Why, it was actually the smartest thing at The Towers!

Raquel might have felt happier had she heard her champions. And her habit was beautiful. She had chosen the cloth because it did look like deerskin, and Anne’s tailor had done the rest. But her pleasure in the new outfit was spoiled, and all the way back she felt miserably guilty and uncomfortable at the rebuke.

The day for the Fair drew near. Every one except little Emmy Martin and the eleven-year-old Geroulds was planning a booth. But no one had yet said anything to Raquel about helping. Still, she really thought they would ask her. She would not have inquired about it for anything. Girls were strange, after all, Raquel felt. If it had been a bunch of men or boys, now—well, you could step right up and ask, straight out.

Anne, as usual, had shunted aside any committee work, with the easy assurance of plunging in at the last moment and doing whatever she could, whatever remained to be done, to help.

“They like it,” she argued comfortably; “it’s good for them. I don’t like it. And there’s always a lot to be done at the last. They always need some one to step in at the last minute.”

So she gave the Fair little thought and didn’t realize that Raquel was being left out.

Two days beforehand, Raquel, dressing back of a curtain in the Gym, heard her name.

“Raquel Daniels. Dress her up and take her along. I like that girl and she surely can ride.”

“No,” impatiently, in Marian’s voice. “She’s such a stick. She couldn’t wear the clothes if she had ’em. No! Can’t be bothered. She wouldn’t know how to act, and the fellows simply wouldn’t have a good time with an unattractive girl. Cowgirl! What does she know of—of romance, or managing things?”

“Oh, I think you ought to ask her.” It was Helen Virginia’s voice, amiable and drawly. “She’s not even been given a booth at the Fair. Why not put her at the fudge booth? She can surely sell candy.”

“Raquel Daniels couldn’t sell Red Cross stamps! Besides, Lois’s the chairman and she’s got it all arranged. Raquel will have to help her country some other way.” And there was a laugh.

Raquel had wanted to speak,—to let them know at once that she was there. But instinctive kindness kept her from presenting herself, to the embarrassment of the speakers, when unkind things had been said about her. But the last words—these girls sure used a mean quirt. Tears stung Raquel’s eyes. She could not have uttered a word. Then rage boiled up to her rescue.

So they wouldn’t even let her sell fudge? A little old candy! Why, all they could make and sell wouldn’t bring as much as one good steer. Well, there were other ways of helping one’s country. Perhaps she didn’t know how to dress or act. Why should she? But she could go back and ride the range, and raise stock to feed the armies.

Beef’d carry ’em a lot further than fudge. At the comforting thought Raquel was able to smile.

In her pocket was a letter from Dad. Custer had enlisted one day and Grant the next. They were already in training camp. And good old Jimmy, who couldn’t make it for overseas service, was teaching at one of the new training camps.

“But all right, little girl,” wrote Dad. “We don’t need you—at least not yet. You just stay on and get all the learnin’ and fun you can. I’ll let you know when I need you.”

Dad had always said she was as good as a couple of hands; she burned to show him what she could do now.

After all Raquel did not have to endure the Fair where she could not help. Coming into her room the next afternoon, dispirited, feeling, she thought to herself, like a prickly pear, she was met by Anne waving a letter from her mother.

“You’re coming home with me for Thanksgiving. Yes, you are. Here’s a letter from Mother saying so. I didn’t know whether she’d have room or not, and as she always makes room if one of us asks to bring some one home, I waited. Come on, Rakie, let’s go tonight.”

It was a home-coming that Raquel never forgot; Anne’s father, eyes twinkling, voice booming out, “Well, here’s our little Texan;” Anne’s mother, clasping Raquel close, mothering her, so that she felt at once enveloped in affection and understanding. She marveled at the personal daintiness of Anne’s mother, the faintly scented lace in her bosom, so different from Raquel’s own best violet soap at ten cents a cake. Why, Anne’s mother had gray hair, yet she was dressed up as pretty and sweet and her hair was done as nicely as a young girl’s.

The great house with its crystal lights, its damask walls, its bowls of flowers, was to remain always in Raquel’s mind as an incredible vision, somehow too beautiful for daily use. If school had seemed luxurious it now paled into simplicity beside the finished elegance of the Marvin house, where living was made a fine art.

There was breakfast in bed the next morning on a tray that looked like a bed of Mom’s posies, sure enough. There was a maid to draw her bath, and slip her feet into red leather shoes, and throw a velvety red robe around her shoulders.

“A guest gift from Mrs. Marvin, Miss,” she explained.

Raquel didn’t see Anne until ten o’clock, when she came trailing in in great good spirits.

“Shopping. You and me, Rakie. Come on, the car’ll be here in ten minutes.”

There were shops and things such as Raquel had never dreamed of. And Anne looking at all sorts of clothes! That pink and flame georgette—oh, Raquel had never really wanted clothes like this before!

The money Dad had given her—she had spent but a little of it yet, for her riding habit. This was the time to do it. She would get some new clothes to wear at Anne’s house. This novel idea was no sooner imparted to Anne than saleswomen came hurrying, and racks and chairs bloomed.

Try them on? But of course.... Mademoiselle had an excellent straight back.... But she must not be stiff. But there, that was better. Relax. So!

It was a different Raquel who emerged from that shop an hour later, in a simple suit of golden tan tweed, a jaunty hat of dark brown velour, and a Scotch heather top coat.

And it was a vision in pale pink and flame-color, satin-shod, that descended the staircase in the Marvin home the next evening, Thanksgiving night. At the foot Barry Marvin, home for the holidays, fine and handsome in his uniform, waited for her—waited to take her in to dinner.

“Oh, God,” prayed Raquel earnestly, “I can ride a bucking bronco, I can rope and tie a Latin verb, but, oh, God, please, don’t let me slip on the floors and disgrace myself before Anne’s family.”

“What a pity the girls at school couldn’t see Raquel now,” thought Anne. If Lois could, she would either turn a little bit green or else come around generously, in the way her friends adored, and admit Raquel the equal of any girl at school, even if she couldn’t see her superiority when it wasn’t dressed up.

But Lois was not to see Raquel in the chiffon gown. The flowering was but for a night. And there, too, Fate was to take a hand. For Barry Marvin carried away with him when he sailed for France that week the memory of a vivid dark face, lit from within with candles of happiness that seemed to warm to life an unexpected humor.... Or was it just the surprise of such penetrating honesty, such simple candor?

Barry, the charmer, the gay and reckless Barry who was never hard hit by any girl! But this was different. A little girl, he said to himself, just a little Texas girl. But what a find! A memory for any chap to tie to!

Anne, crouching on Raquel’s bed late that night, talked and talked, laughing, romancing, going off in gay flights of imagination which literal-minded Raquel could scarcely follow. “La Principessa Raquela, with the spell cast off. She was a bewitched princess shut up in The Towers.”

“Hmm. You’re more like it. I always pictured you,” Raquel’s thought came hesitatingly, “when we read that poem, The Princess. I never did see any one look more beautiful than you did tonight, Anne. You sure did look lovely in that changeable taffeta, blue and silvery. And your hair braided round your head shines so.

“I was just thinkin’ how the boys, Grant and Custer, and Russell and Jami—they’re our ropers I told you about—would sit up and stare if they could see you. Oh, Anne, you must come out to Los Ranchos some day. We’d sure treat you like a princess.

“Me, I’m just a desert plant. Made to stand a hard life—and bloom once in fifteen years. Tomorrow I’ll be the same old ugly Rakie again.”

There was a long yellow envelope awaiting Raquel when she and Anne set down their bags three mornings later in the great hall at The Towers, a night message from Dad.

“Enlisted today. Assigned to animal transport section,” it ran. “Need you back to run the rancho.” He was to leave as soon as she could get home. Dad enlisted! And she was to be the Boss of the Lazy L!

Curiously enough Miss Hetty Carter was at almost the same moment reading a message from Mr. Wainwright. Lois was not to return to school, he was sorry to say. The doctors had ordered him west; he had little time to live, though Lois did not know it. And he felt that he could not bear to be parted from her—so she was going with him.

When the girls were assembled in the auditorium, Miss Hetty Carter stepped before them to make an announcement. Something in her manner commanded a deeper hush than usual.

“I have two announcements to make which I know you will all be sorry to hear.”

The news of Lois’ departure was received with whispered “Ahs” of surprise and disappointment, which rose from all over the assembly room.

Miss Carter waited a moment and then spoke quietly. “We have had with us this year another classmate whom some of you have not come to know very well—Raquel Daniels. Raquel is in her room now, packing to leave us. She has been called home to run the ranch while her father and brothers are at war.

“It is a big thing to do, an important one. And it falls upon the shoulders of a girl of barely sixteen years. I should be happy if you would offer Raquel some evidence of your good wishes and appreciation of what she is doing for her country.”

It was always bewildering to Raquel, the recollection of that leave-taking at The Towers. Deep in the old trunk, with Anne sorting her traveling clothes, she rose at a knock to see the whole school, apparently, trying to crowd into her room. Girl after girl, they squeezed in, and then bright little Lillie Matthews was speaking for them.

They’d heard she was going. They were all so, so sorry. But wasn’t it splendid? And The Towers was so proud of her; any one who could be really useful. And here was a token of their esteem. And earnest little Lillie, eyes suddenly brimming, planted a kiss on Raquel’s cheek.

And then a shower of books, scarves, boxes of candy, girls’ trinkets, came pouring into Raquel’s lap and trunk, and Raquel was standing up before them all.

“I’m glad you came. Thank you. And for the presents. I—I don’t deserve any, but I’m sure glad not to quit an outlaw—to part friends.”

That same afternoon two west-bound trains sped into the setting sun, bearing two girls—one back to the country she knew and understood; the other away from all the scenes that knew and understood her, into a strange country where life might deal none too gently.

CHAPTER II
HOME AGAIN

Down at the end of the corral in the hot sunshine of midday, Panchito Esquibal was energetically currying his burro.

“It is necessary, for the padroncita comes. But thou art going to be most beautiful, my little one; therefore do not budge.”

He spoke reassuringly, judging no doubt that the burro had the same objections as he had himself to submitting to such an operation.

“Rest tranquil,” advised Pancho the elder, who watched his son from the shadow of the corral sheds, a lazy cigarette drooping from his lips. “He will not run. It would take more than currying.”

“Hey, you Pancho Esquibal,” yelled a voice from inside the shed, “I wish I knew what would make you run, or work, once. Not a pinny do you get this month till you get these here saddles every one worked over.

“Here. Supple up them cinch straps on Raquel’s saddle. They’ll be here any minute now.”

Russell—if he had another name no one knew it—was polishing, as he spoke, the silver fittings on a beautiful saddle of Spanish leather, with an energy that made his red face even more fiery.

“Russell certainly ain’t purty,” Mr. Daniels had often said of the gangling cowboy, “but he’s as faithful as that ole houn’ dawg, an’ a durn good hand.”

At the bunkhouse an extraordinary activity was going on, currying of heads and grooming of beds.

“Chuck them dirty shirts under your bunk, Ang-hel,” shouted Jami Jamison. “D’ye want the boss to see ’m?”

Jami had washed and washed on the bunkhouse veranda until even his fingernails were clean. He was now struggling into new boots, which fitted so tightly over the instep that the operation was excruciating. But the boots were the finishing touch to a superb costume—cowhide chaps, buff corduroy shirt, beaver hat limbered up to a picturesque limpness, and a blue and orange silk neckerchief, the loose elegance of the whole artfully filling out six feet two of incredibly thin cowboy.

“’Pears to me,” observed Ole Hossfoot Cantnor, who, having oiled his hair, now sat on the edge of a bunk oiling a gun, “you’re takin’ a awful lot o’ trouble fer just seein’ Raquel again.” He squinted down the barrel of the gun, a pretty little twenty-two that he himself had given Raquel two years ago.

“Brr-rr,” snarled Jami, “I see you shaved your chin first time in twenty years, stid of mowin’ it off with a pair o’ sheep shears.” And, having at last worked into the boots, for which he had spent the whole of his past two months’ salary, namely forty dollars, Jami examined his own chin for any fugitive blonde down that might not have been revealed the first time. He scorned notice of Hossfoot’s new red flannel shirt and his best corduroy breeches.

Up at the ranch house there was an air “de fiesta,” as Mariquita Esquibal confided to her little sister. Mrs. Daniels, a green apron over her fresh gingham, knelt before the open oven turning a pan of light bread. On the long kitchen table twelve big golden-brown loaves cooled, giving off a delicious odor. They never baked less than twenty-four loaves at a time at Los Ranchos, and they baked every other day.

The verandas had been swept and scoured with lava sand and buckets of hot water, the kitchen floor freshly oiled. A clean red cloth covered the kitchen table. There were three smaller rooms opening from the kitchen, pantries and storerooms, and in the middle one of these there lay on a massive table a full haunch of venison, which Ole Hossfoot had brought down with him from the mountains the day before.

Beside it were spread some three dozen plump little birds, all skinned, ready for the frying pan—late quail that Russell had shot at daybreak that morning. Mrs. Daniels rose and passed through the three rooms to an outer one, where, over a spring bubbling from the virgin rock floor, the milk shelves were hung. Lifting down one of the blue pans, she unrolled from the top of the milk a little blanket of cream half an inch thick, popped it into a glass churn standing near, and returned to the kitchen with the clabber.

“Think I’ll make a mess of gingerbread,” she explained to the resplendent Jami, who lounged into the kitchen just then. “Raquel always did like it. Expect I have time before they git here.” She smiled a crinkly-eyed, patient little smile. “Them prune pies aren’t goin’ to last very long.”

Mrs. Daniels was a short, plump woman, small-boned. Her cheeks were round, and rosy under the brown skin, thin and smooth like a baby’s, except around the eyes where tiny wrinkles protested against the desert glare.

She stooped to take out the second pan of bread, and the smell of roasting venison escaped as the oven door was opened. The mingling of meat odors and fresh bread brought the hound dogs sniffing at the kitchen screens. On the back of the stove the inevitable frijole beans simmered.

“A fiesta,” said thirteen-year-old Mariquita, who sat in a corner peeling a mound of potatoes. Beside her on the floor sat her little sister, in her lap a bowl of scarlet chili which she was crushing with bare hands.

“Gimme that chili, Josefita; you’ll burn your little hands with that old hot stuff.” Mrs. Daniels’ voice had the caressing drawl of the Oklahoma born. She took the dish from the little girl, and gave her a sack of tiny piñon nuts to crack instead.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!” shouted Jami from the front veranda, and yells of announcement were heard from corral and bunkhouse. Mrs. Daniels hurried out to the piazza where Jami, his eyes glued to a pair of field glasses, was looking towards the pass through which ran the road to town.

“They’re only six miles away. Just hit the pass,” he yelled. “Guess I’ll ride out to meet ’em at the pasture gate,” and he threw down the glass and bolted for his horse.

But Russell was ahead of him, and already clattering out of the corral.

As the big Pathfinder struck the top of the Organ pass and began to coast down the mountain slope, a full view of the Daniels’ ranch spread before the returning party.

Beneath them the road fell away, and with the roar of the Pathfinder’s engines shut off, they seemed to float down through the clear air. Below lay the ranch, resting on the eastern slope of one of those sharp, sheer spurs of the southern-most Rockies.

Away, almost as far as you could see, stretched mile after square mile, the fenced acres of the Ranch of the Lazy L. In those days Los Ranchos boasted thirty-five square miles, besides ten thousand acres of rented range, a feudal domain, larger by far than that ruled over by many a baron or prince of old.

In that land Dad Daniels’ word was law, though there were few men to heed it, and the wild creatures that warred against cattle and cattlemen had a law of their own.

For thirty-five miles to the north or east you might travel and neither see smoke in a chimney nor speak to a man. For there would be neither chimney nor man, and for twenty miles to the south only the cowboy or an overland car; but westward it was just eight miles to the little mining town over the pass. From there it was fifteen miles to the nearest railroad station, bank, and ice cream fountain.

“Well, there’s home, Rakie.” Old Man Daniels leaned forward from the back seat, where he sat with Georgie, whose round face belied the man’s estate claimed by a pistol holster on the hip. “That’s your’n from now on for a spell, by right of eminent domain.”

As the scent of the mesa blew fresh in her face, and the familiar sight of the ranch house and its outlying buildings, their cream-plastered walls vivid in the late afternoon sun, came nearer and nearer, Raquel drew a sigh of content. Her eyes sparkled as she called over her shoulder, “I pretty nearly forgot what the sun looked like back there.”

“What!” Jimmy Hovey, back on a three days’ leave, beamed from the driver’s seat beside her. “What, didn’t the sun go with you then? Why, it’s been much darker since you went away. This is a special illumination in your honor.”

“Aw, cut it out, Jimmy,” growled Georgie. “Rakie’s gonta have an awful swelled head anyways. Say, Sis, thought you were goin’ to be wearin’ some real purty clothes, velvet or silk or somep’n.” He looked with disdain at her homespun. “That coat looks just like Jimmy’s.”

They were nearing the upper pasture, where the radiant Jami waited, swinging wide the gate to let the Pathfinder through. Had it not been for a deep arroyo between the upper and the lower pastures, the car could have coasted straight to the ranch house door, but Jimmy deftly threw in his clutch and started the engine just as they struck heavy sand. Roaring boastfully of its eighty horsepower, the car slid through the outer gate and rolled quietly to a stop before the patio door.

“Howdy, howdy, Raquel.” There was the canny Russell, redder than ever, who had ridden back through a short cut so that he might be the first to shake Raquel’s hand, which he was now awkwardly pumping up and down. And Ole Hossfoot. And if there wasn’t Angel, and Pancho Esquibal, extending the most ceremonious and courtly greeting of them all to his “muy querida padroncita.”

“Where’s Mom?” Raquel’s eyes looked eagerly ahead through the open patio door, across the courtyard and into the house.

“Oh, that poor old mother-woman,” Mr. Daniels answered, “most likely she’s a-hidin’ out like she always does when any one comes home. ’Fraid she’ll cry. Guess I’ll have to go and drag her out of the ice house.”

And in fact they did. Even when Dad and Raquel appeared in the ice house door, their eyes searching the dark recesses, Mom was so busy with imaginary duties that she could not hear them.

“Mother, you in there?” they called.

“Yes’m,” she answered desperately. “You back, Raquel?—Did you have a good time? Sure has been a dry winter here.”

Raquel threw her arms around her mother’s neck and kissed her cheeks and Mrs. Daniels pulled her apron over her head and wept.

Later, as they walked together towards the ranch living-room, Mrs. Daniels said, “That’s sure a purty suit and coat you brought back, Raquel honey. Did you get you a red dress while you were away?” that having been the fondest fancy of Raquel’s childhood.

“Yes’m.” Raquel remembered the pink and flame-colored chiffon, an ethereal realization of that red dress of her early dreams, and as different from it as that other world which it brought back for a moment—so far away that already it seemed like a dream.

The thought of her school life had been with her constantly on the train, but now it slipped from her mind completely as her father called her out to the veranda to point out how dry the grass was over the mesa at their feet. The sun was setting in a splendor of unbroken crimson that faded through the spectrum into the dark blue of the overhead sky. In the east another spur of mountains glowed like living opals with reflected color. Across the great mesa rolling away from their door stretched an unbroken vista of thirty-five miles.

“I’d hoped to ride the range with ye tomorrow, Raquel,” said Mr. Daniels, “but I’m due to sail any minute. Everything’s in good shape but—feed’s scarce. And looks like there’ll be little seed for spring.” Mr. Daniels spoke wistfully. “Seems I’m due along to catch some vessels goin’ straight over, transportin’ cattle.

“It’s time to bring down that bunch of cattle up t’ the Ruidoso. They’s five, six, hundred, up there. They should bring a fancy price on all that good grass—seventy-five dollars a head. I cleaned up this fall, sold twenty thousand head for feeders from forty-five dollars to fifty dollars on the hoof, which cleared up every cent we owed on bank stock, and that herd of thoroughbreds I bought last year. Not more’n five thousand left now.”

“Where’s all the boys?” asked Raquel.

“Oh, I had to let ’em go when Custer and Grant enlisted. They was ’leven of ’em down in the bunk house. Guess you c’n make out with Russell an’ Jami.

“Poor Russ had flat feet, bad eyes, boils, an’ what not, which don’t seem to interfere none with his bein’ as good a roper as ever forked saddle leather. And Jami—well even a high instep and a good fittin’ boot didn’t get him past. Underweight, they says, even with shot sewed in his pockets, an’ him the fightinest young catamount an’ the toughest, in these here parts.

“Pancho Esquibal, he’s on the commissary same as usual. Hasn’t no use for legal shootin’, Pancho hasn’t, and the draft ain’t drawed him yet. Watch that thievin’ coyote—but I never found his beat for brandin’, saddle work, an’ the like.

“An’ Ole Hossfoot stands ready on call to look after my gal. But I guess you don’t need much lookin’ after, Rakie. You’ll about do all the lookin’ after yourself. Girl’s brains’re as good as man’s brains any time, and you been brung up on the runnin’ of the Rancho. They’s nothin’ new to you in the cattle business.”

Dad looked fondly and sentimentally at Raquel. Stern overlord, shrewd cattleman and financier, Old Man Daniels was tender, if strict, with his family; and proud, particularly of his only daughter.

“I’m not tellin’ ye to be a man, Rakie. I don’t want for ye to be. We got men enough in the fam’ly. And Georgie here is the man of the place to look after the women folks. He’s been as good as two hands since Grant and Custer left.”

It was true that Raquel knew each trick of grazing, branding, the business of the roundup, the horses. She had been keeping books for her father after a crude way of her own before she left for school, and the three months’ training in accounting she had taken would make it infinitely easier now.

She knew the packing houses and commission merchants with whom her father dealt; she followed the market quotations on beef which he read laboriously from the Sunday paper every week, as a matter of course—as other girls follow hat sales. She knew the business of shipping, from the drive down to the railroad yards to the telegram announcing the shipment of the cattle.

But this would be an unusually hard year. Before Raquel lay the problem of looking after the herd that remained, with four boys instead of the twelve or fourteen they usually had in the summer; bringing the leaner cattle or the weaklings down to the corrals to be fed up, riding the range to keep an eye on the new calves in the spring, especially if it should be a cold or late season; and then, after the rodeo and branding, the job of selling, feeding the cattle before shipping, and delivering safely to the yards. But that was all work which a good overseer could handle. Today Dad’s business had grown to such proportions that the financial end of it was half the work.

“The main thing you’ll have to handle, Raquel,” Dad said, looking keenly at her, “is meetin’ our notes. Thirty thousand dollars on the Valley Grant land, due April first, and the interest on our other two loans.

“That means you’ll ship at least a thousand head of cattle early in March.

“I wouldn’t have expanded so much, takin’ in extra range, if I’d realized I’d have to be leavin’ it all to you like this.

“Bein’ as we’re borrowed up to the hilt, if anything should come up unexpected we’d have to turn over our cattle quick. The banks have all loaned the limit to the stockmen this fall, and although I stood to make a fortune, I’m afeared there’s trouble ahead for the stockmen.

“A. B. Meyers has been made director in our bank to succeed me. You know he’s swore to git me for callin’ that note of his two years ago?” Dad chewed his long mustache. “As a matter of fact if he hadn’t been forced to draw in and sell some o’ his stock, he’d be broke and most likely rustlin’ cattle to start a new herd today.

“But that don’t make him feel no better, knowin’ that. And he may cause some trouble. So remember you got to have thirty-five thousand dollars by April first. You’d better ship the first week in March.”

“Don’t worry, Dad. Leave it to me. We’ll ship ’em. I’ve got ’em off before. I can do it again.”

A. B. Meyers, known in that part of the country as “A. B.,” himself an old-timer, figured with Old Man Daniels as one of the biggest cattlemen in that part of Texas. He had disputed the open range with Dad for twenty years, and the enmities of the cattle country were still bitter at the time of the Great War.

A. B.’s range touched Los Ranchos land at two points. And A. B. fought secretly and openly for every piece of property that Daniels would be likely to want. It had been nip and tuck, with Dad getting the best of it two-thirds of the time.

Two years before, the Valley Grant, a rich range that Meyers had been after for five years, had been granted by the Land Office to Old Man Daniels. Neither his popularity nor his influence had succeeded in winning him this new range, but the fact that he was a sounder business man than A. B., and one whose dealings were absolutely square.

Dad had then borrowed money from the bank to acquire the intervening land, thus extending his range enormously. He had also bought some new stock, and for two years had not sold any cattle in order to increase the stock on the fresh range. Then the War had come and he had had to begin selling his cattle.

“But when it comes to sellin’, have nothin’ to do with these travelin’ commission men,” Dad impressed Raquel for the fiftieth time. “There’s bound to be a lot of ’em prowlin’ around durin’ this war, or I miss my guess. Beware of ’em.

“You sell straight to Cudalow’s in Kansas City or Shift’s in Chicago, an’ rest content at the market price. Bank everything an’ go slow. Guess that’s all.

“Jimmy,” as Jimmy himself came round the veranda end, “Jimmy here, says he’ll be able to get off maybe every couple of months, an’ he’ll come out an’ cheer you all up.”

On the stillness of the December air, chill with the penetrating cold that steals into your bones with sundown in that altitude, clanged the welcome note of the dinner bell.

Not all ranch houses boast a dining-room, but Los Ranchos had rooms to spare. The rambling old building, once a fort, later a road house, was high-ceilinged, deep-walled, to the width of three full adobe bricks, and built around a fifty-foot square patio, in the fashion of the country.

Old Man Daniels led the way through the house to the patio, and along the veranda to the dining-room. As he opened the door a wave of warmth and light streamed out. A large baseburner glowed where once had been a fireplace, and this, with the heat from the kitchen and from an acetylene lamp hanging over the table, made the big room comfortable.

The feudal board bore up sturdily under the food that Mother Daniels had prepared in honor of Raquel’s return and Dad’s last night at home. The juicy haunch of venison was at one end, a platter of golden brown quail at the other, flanked with savory bacon. Huge bowls of flaky potatoes, chili and beans, winter squash, and Mother Daniels’ sweet-pickled peaches, made a continuous round of the table. The mounds of bread would have appalled a camp baker. And the dishes of gravy seemed like never-failing pitchers of Baucis and Philemon.

In a moment they were all seated, taking the fringed napkins from the glasses, and piling the plates with unpampered appetite.

“My goodness,” thought Raquel, as Ole Hossfoot speared a piece of bread, deftly reaching across Jimmy’s face. Jami’s smooth cheek was bulging, and Georgie’s face was bisected with a whole slice of bread and butter. Angel’s eyes followed lovingly the bowl of beans, which, never stopping its circuit of the table, was now in Dad’s hands.

“’Pears like some one’s missin’.” Mr. Daniels peered down the table, counting ten heads. “Where’s Russell?”

There was a momentary pause in the clatter of fork and knife against plate long enough to hear a pounding on the dining-room floor from beneath.

“He’s down in the storm cellar,” and Mr. Daniels, pushing back his chair, strode towards an inner wall, stopped, and pulled up a trap door in the floor. It was like releasing a jack-in-the-box, for simultaneously Russell’s red and agitated face popped up, and he clambered out, bearing a big jug and a little jug.

Every one roared, except Russell and Georgie, who sank down in his seat. “I forgot to let him out,” he mumbled.

Russell had brought his contribution to the feast, some sparkling hard cider, and a peach brandy which he had buried in the earth more than a year before.

In spite of the mighty prowess of the diners scarcely a dent seemed to be made in Mother Daniels’ provisions. When the meal was over, Raquel and Georgie rushed to their mother’s side, and each seized an arm.

“No, you don’t, Mom. Come on. The boys will wash dishes tonight.”

“Well, mind you don’t chip ’em any, Ang-hel,” Mom cautioned, “an’ don’t rub the gold hard.” For Mom had got out the best dishes, with a gold band and a large gold D initialed on each piece. It was an elegant set, all right, and Dad sure liked the looks of that gold.

So they went into the sitting-room, where Dad was already sitting with his shoes off, warming his feet before the open fire.

The ranch sitting-room was magnificent by firelight. It was long and fairly wide, with heavy, irregular beams studding its ceiling. Mesquite roots and dried tulas burned in an uncommonly large fireplace, built with a projecting hood by some Mexican craftsman with a cunning hand. The firelight leaped ruddily on the cream plastered walls, and on trophies of ranch hunts hanging there.

On the floor were Navajo rugs, black and white, gray and red, and angora sheep pelts, dyed to inconceivable Mexican hues. The furniture was of various kinds, mostly ugly, except for a set of willow which belonged on the porch, a couch covered with a fine old Chimayo rug, blue and white as only those Indians can make them, and a battered old Spanish table, hand-carved, but, alas, not valued by any one but Jimmy Hovey.

Raquel sank upon the sofa and Jimmy seated himself beside her, lighting a cigarette.

“Just one, old Jim,” warned Raquel.

Jimmy grinned. “Bossing me straight off, aren’t you? But honestly, Big Boss, I haven’t coughed in six months.”

“That’s because I made you cut it out.”

Jimmy smiled gently and nodded. Jimmy had a most gentle way. It might deceive you unless you saw him angry, the way he got that time when Pancho Esquibal’s brother beat the Alezan mare over the head. Ugh-h-h. It made her shiver to think of it. But she had liked Jimmy ever since. Now she noticed for the first time how good-looking he was. His head was so round and so straight on his shoulders. And he seemed taller than she remembered him, bigger.

“I’ve gained twenty pounds, you know, since last year.” Jimmy’s eyes twinkled. “You mustn’t tell all you think, Raquel—with your eyes.”

Jimmy’s hair was crisp and wavy, rather blonde, and his eyes were extremely blue. He had a cleft in his chin when he smiled, and he smiled often. Yes, Raquel decided, he was the same old Jimmy, and the only reason she hadn’t thought about how he looked was that he was just so nice that she had never thought of anything else. And then he was thin and ever so sick when he first came.

Jimmy was studying Raquel thoughtfully and appreciatively. He had done little else since her return. By George, what a development in three months! First of all, the clothes. Jimmy’s city-bred eye could scarcely fail to take them in at once. By George, the right clothes, cloth, cut, color, and all that, certainly did show a pretty girl off to advantage!

But the other change, inside, he was studying now. The same Raquel in most ways—her smile was as warm and unaffected as when she had left. But she didn’t talk as much as one would expect of Raquel on getting back from school. And she seemed to avoid him somehow, in little strange evasions.

“Tell me a bit about it, Raquel,” he begged, “about school. How did it go off? I had only one letter from you, you know, and that was largely taken up describing the difference in the training of the eastern girls’ high school horse, and our western horses!”

“Oh, Jimmy, I did too write you another letter!”

“Yes, that one was all about how much further advanced we were in our Medieval History. But not a word of yourself.” Jimmy knocked out his cigarette.

“What of my little cousin?”

Raquel knew no arts. Three months before she would have said, “Well, she and I kept to opposite sides of the corral.” But three months had tempered her frankness with consideration. Three months of association with Anne had added ease to her forthright manners.

“Lois is even more beautiful than when you saw her, Jimmy,” she answered, “and she is so popular. All the girls in the school were crazy about her.”

“She would be, she would be,” Jimmy nodded as a matter of course. A sharp pang of something or other set Raquel’s blood racing. “I haven’t heard from Uncle in some time. I wonder how they are.”

Raquel started to speak. Anne had told her on the way to the train that Lois was gone, and why.

But as she hesitated, Jimmy pressed, “Did she make a good roommate? That’s what I want to know. She didn’t answer my letter, but Uncle wrote me a note in which he said that he knew Lois would do all she could.”

“Jimmy, I had the nicest roommate in the whole school,” Raquel looked straight at Jimmy with disarming candor.

And Jimmy, mere man that he was, was foiled by this newly developed astuteness. Raquel had a sense of shame. Never before had she deceived, unless it were unintentionally by silence. A confusion of pressing reasons flooded her mind. If they didn’t think enough of Jimmy to let him know, why should she do it? Maybe he’d get a letter any day now—he’d have to go straight where they were then. Oh, he mustn’t do that! He mustn’t go to Lois again. And she heard herself talking of the war, of her Thanksgiving vacation, and Anne and the Marvin family.

“Their house was just like a palace inside. But you’re used to that. You’d understand them, too. They were just folks. After you got used to their ways you could see how they were just human beings like us Texans underneath.”

Jimmy laughed. “Well, I guess we are all pretty much alike under the skin.”

“No, we aren’t, Jimmy. Take Dad for instance. He thinks honor is dearer than life, and that justice is his, not the Lord’s—nor the state’s. When he shot those three men who killed his Dad he said he was going to get them the same way they got him—in the back. And he did. Every one of them.

“When he had to serve three years he didn’t complain. Said it was worth it. But he thought a year of his life was worth more to the community than any one of the men, living.”

“It was, at that,” Jimmy agreed.

“Well, I think people should pay up for what they do.” She said it so fiercely that Jimmy looked at her in mock amazement.

They had been talking in low tones, but Dad was reminiscing, and his narrative filled the room.

“Yes,” he recounted, “I’ve fit to make this country a place for white men to live in; Indians, varmints, bad men an’ killers, are pretty near cleaned out. I never thought we’d have to go clear back across them plains, and across the ocean, to a country where cows, I hear, is family pets tied up in the parlor, and men tote knives instid of guns, to keep it fittin’.

“Fightin’ is goin’ to be a sight different than what we see in the old days when we fit the Indians and the rustlers.

“I remember when my father carried me along up into the Carrizozo country in New Mexico. I was about eleven year old. At the hot springs there we was set upon by the sneakiest bunch o’ Navajos I ever see. We fit and fit, for three days, never stoppin’ to eat more’n a chew of tobaccy (that’s why I never could tolerate chewin’ since) an’ the only water we had to drink was what we could dip out the boilin’ springs an’ cool in the sun.

“Then we got out o’ water an’ Everett Eames—he was a good ole scout—slipped out easy after dark to the springs. We heard a splash an’ a fearful screech, and Paw says, ‘Poor ole Eames, the varmints have boiled him alive.’

“An’ just then ole Eames comes crawlin’ in, drippin’ an madder’n wet wildcats. It was the first time water had touched his hide in nigh on thutty years, an’ hot at that!

“By mornin’ we had got down to nothin’ but rabbit shot and we was pepperin’ away at a bush where a few Indians still held out, when out tumbles a young feller, full o’ buck shot, an’ the fight was over an’ so was our shot.

“Well, I spent the rest o’ the mornin’ pickin’ shot out o’ that young Navajo’s back and easin’ him o’ the lead, an’ he was the gratefullest Indian you ever see. Used to bring me presents every year up till a couple o’ years ago. An’ I was grateful too, for we needed the shot to go out an git us some breakfast.

“Them were cruel days in some ways. When this very house was a sort o’ fortified hotel still, I was stayin’ here and there stopped a sickly lookin’ young feller, real dapper, who had a holler cough. Tuber-coo-losis, in the last stages, I says to myself.

“From the East he was, he says, an’ afeared o’ shootin’ irons. Towards the third day there rode in from the west the Sheriff o’ Doña Ana County, and from the east the Sheriff o’ Alamogordo, Lincoln County.

“They was bent their man was there an’ started round the house. The young feller was comin’ up from the corral when they seed him and he seed them an’ was scared stiff I reckon. He dodged round the corner. We was lookin’ out the dinin’-room window an’ we seed the two Sheriffs start to stalk him round the house, one side, t’other.

“The kid came runnin’ in, skeered. Never carried a shootin’ iron, he said, an’ I hid him in that very cellar where Russell got shut up this evenin’. The Sheriffs ran round the house and shot each other through their two-gallon hats, an’ when I opened the cellar door Billy the Kid had made a clean get-away. Though we never figgered how, for I was a-sittin’ on the lid all the time, an there’s nary other openin’.”

“Well, sir,” said Jimmy, amidst the general shout over the story, “I never heard you tell that one about the famous boy bandit of New Mexico before.”

“Oh, I got a passel of stories you never heard me tell yet.” Old Man Daniels’ eyes twinkled.

“Ever tell you about Pecos Bill an’ the time he rid a Kansas cyclone clear through these parts an’ on into Arizony? He came so fast an’ raised up such a dust he carried a part o’ Texas clear into New Mexico. You c’n see it there yet, down in the corner. Pecos Bill he could step clear over that peak yonder an’ never notice it, accordin’ to them that seed him at the time, an’ he flavored his beans with tarantulas.”

Amidst the laugh that followed, Ole Hossfoot Cantnor spoke up from the bench by the fireplace where he sat working at a piece of leather, as he always was.

“I kin tell ye a tale more stranger than that, an’ a true one. You recollec’, Jim, that the last bounty the Govinmint put on the Custer wolf brought the price on that outlaw’s head up to five hundid dollars. Well, Bill Marsden, owner the Bar X, swears, or has swore, to git that animal for six or seven years past.

“Bill’s killed a couple litters of the old Lobo but can’t get the wolf himself. He’s tore up more prize ewes for Bill, an’ more yearlin’s, than they could keep track of. Sixty sheep one night that bloody devil killed an’ et nary a bite hisself.

“But he’s too cute for all of ’em, hunters and trappers. Won’t touch pizen, won’t let his pack bite bait. Smells a trap under a snowfall. Many’s the trap he’s sprung with his forepaw. I seed him with my field glasses, a-strikin’ as light an’ powerful as a cat an’ then jumpin’ away.

“He’s four inches between the eyes, an’ his paws’re as big’s my hand, an’ it ain’t no trouble at all to him to fell a two-year-old bull by hisself.

“Well, Marsdens has got a little girl, on’y one left o’ six babies. She’s up in the mountings last summer durin’ the drouth, at the ranger’s cabin. Plays with his police dog. Strays off one day an’ gits lost. But they’s a cloud burst bustin’ the drouth that night an’ the ranger’s off over the mountain an’ don’t find it out till next mornin’.

“They starts out on a hunt, fearin’ to hope, what with the rain an’ the wolves, and Bill scared she’s fallen into a trap he rigged for the Lobo. Found the trap sprung all right, but no Lobo, no Lutie.

“Well, to make a long story short, they finds her, asleep, in a cave, with the Custer wolf lyin’ down beside her.

“Bill shoots, thinkin’ maybe she’s dead. But she’s all right. Wakes up as the wolf leaps outen the cave, an’ up over the rocks an’ gits away agin. An’ the little girl cries after her ‘doggie’; seems she’d been playin’ with him in the woods. Give him water when he was caught in the trap; rolled off a log Bill rigged so he got free; an’ when the rain burst, the Lobo carries her in his teeth to an ole lair.

“Bill swears he’ll never set hand nor hound to him agin.”

“Well, I always did say there was more dog than coyote in a lobo,” Dad observed. “Come on, boys, give us some songs. Let’s have some music for remembrance. Mother here looks a little sad.”

Blushing and scraping, Jami and Russell got out their mandolin and guitar and, after some tuning and picking, began—Russell in a surprisingly sweet light tenor, and Jami in a disconcerting voice that was trying to be a deep baritone, and would be, when he grew to full manhood. A stirring cowboy ballad, an epic of frontier days; The Cattle Rustler’s Daughter, a mournful ditty with the tender passion which strikes the sentimental cowboy—Russell and Jami warbled them all feelingly.

Then the soft-eyed Angel, sitting back of the others, and plucking a vibrant guitar, sang La Paloma and Sobre Las Olas (Over the Waves), so beautiful a barcarole that Mom rocked in her chair in time, Dad’s foot waved, and every one swayed to the air.

Home again. Raquel, sitting beside her mother, was seeing it all with new eyes. Yet everything was the same. Oh, it was dear; close to her—yes, that was it.

There was Mom; her plain hair, combed straight back, her calico dress, her silent ways. Of course she could see now the difference between Mom and a woman like Mrs. Marvin. The difference in the things she had had! What Mom had gone without all these years! Yet she was sweet, sweet. Almost a pang of jealousy for Mom swept over Raquel. Who would change Mom for anything? And what would Los Ranchos be without Mom? Why, the whole range centered round Mom in her kitchen, and every trail led straight back home.

And Dad, he was just as she had always seen him when she shut her eyes—and heard him talking as he was now. You loved Dad—and obeyed him. Of course you couldn’t do anything with him when he’d made up his mind. Raquel began to realize dimly that there was prejudice in the opinions she’d always accepted as gospel. But he was big; there was nothing petty about Dad. The eyes of his mind saw things from afar just as his eagle blue eyes, accustomed to distances, saw across the mesas, detecting the true water hole from the mirage.

Tonight it all seemed more like real living, happier even than on that far-off day when she had left for school. Yet how different it was from life back there! Why, back there Ole Hossfoot would never get any further than the garage door. He’d never get to set a foot inside the parlor.

And nobody would ever know what a wonderful hand with horses he was, nor hear his good stories, nor go to him for advice on almost any subject, for if he didn’t know about it first hand he’d be sure to have read about it when it was first invented ’way back the year of the World’s Fair.

Jimmy was the one unchanged quantity, the only person that linked up with that other world, her new knowledge of which had laid a claim on her. Some day, of course, she’d like to have some things different at Los Ranchos, now since she’d been back there. Jimmy could understand. And yet he “wouldn’t go back there now to live if he could.”

Raquel turned suddenly to him with a shy smile of mutual understanding. Jimmy smiled back and reached out to pat her hand.

“I’ve been waiting all evening for that smile, Raquel,” he said. “Began to fear it wasn’t going to come.”

“Raquel, give us a tune, can’t you, daughter? Let’s hear somethin’ sweet and sad.” Dad remembered that this would be his last night at home for a long time, perhaps a very long time. Indeed, this knowledge weighed on every one, though no one spoke of it, and no one mentioned that Grant’s ship had sailed the day before.

“Raquel’s awful tired, Father; she’s had a hard trip,” said Mom. “I don’t guess she’s even been to her room yet, and I think she ought to get to bed.” They were the first words she had spoken since dinner. But when Mom did speak it was law.

Sleepily they dragged themselves up from before the dying fire, Georgie had already said goodnight and disappeared. Mrs. Daniels went with Raquel to her room, leading the way with a kerosene lamp.

“Everything’s just as you left it, Raquel, ’cept for one thing,” she said, shy now at this new Raquel, whom she felt had changed ’way off at school there “in the East.”

“Oh, Mom! it sure looks lovely.”

The big, high-ceilinged room, which had been hers since she was a little girl, was both strange and familiar. A warm fire had been kindled in the corner fireplace, so cozy with its raised hearth, where you could dry your boots or toast your cold toes. The crackling flames threw rosy lights on the painted bedroom set.

Yes, it was as pretty, prettier, than she remembered it. Lovely apple green—oh, wait until Anne saw it—with sprays of flowers and dull, yellow-gold shadows. And now at the windows which had been bare always, hung chintz curtains, soft yellow, with green and black, and dashes of cunning cherry color.

“Mom! Did you make them?”

“Yes’m. Miz Sperry, over in town, at the Emporium you know, she come out and looked at the furniture an’ then sent me the goods. The hems aren’t so good.... I didn’t expect to get ’em up till Spring. I—I don’t suppose they look anything like those curtains of Anne’s you wrote about?”

“Mom, they’re just as pretty as any I ever did see.”

After Mom had said good night, tucking her in and blowing out the light, Raquel lay snugly in bed, enjoying the firelight, looking about, up at the high ceiling where the same old mud dauber’s nest still clung in a corner; up over her head where the five-foot rattlesnake skin was looped around an old musket. It had twelve rattles; she could count them all from where she lay. Then she laughed out loud. It did look funny, a snake skin, over a Louis Quinze bed. She used to think it was Louis Kahn’s, after the store in San Antone. And those deer antlers on each side her dressing table! They didn’t go so well either.

A wonder Jimmy had never told her. Good old Jimmy. He always gave a fellow a chance to find out for himself. How had he ever stood table manners at Los Ranchos? Specially Russell, though Ole Hossfoot was pretty bad.

And how was she ever going to take the place of Dad, and Custer and Grant—all three. But Mom had had to take the place of three—she had done the work of three women—without runnin’ water, for so long, and—things must be easier for Mom, from now on.

Raquel fell into dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER III
PROBLEMS

They were gone. Raquel and Mom stood at the end of the long veranda running the length of the house, and watched the car as it climbed towards the pass.

Mom looked like some hurt thing; she was too unconscious of anything but that they had gone to try to hide her feelings. She and Raquel walked side by side back into the house, Georgie following.

Raquel put her arm around Mom’s waist. She felt strong, and tender, and it comforted Mom. Words and caresses were few, but understanding was there.

“Georgie.” Mom reached out and drew him, the only baby she had left, into her lap, rocking him there tight in her arms. She rocked and rocked till gradually the strain eased and they began to talk about how much milk Ruth was giving, and all the jobs Georgie would have to take on.

Georgie at twelve was very round of face, very skinny of leg, snubby of nose, and liberally freckled. His two front teeth had reached their majority before the rest of him had, thus endowing him with the hated nickname of “Tooth,” but to Mom he had not yet lost his pearly baby teeth.

“Look after your mother and sister, Georgie,” was all that Dad had told him when he said good-by. “Remember you’re man breed.”

Dad had looked strange in a store suit, with a white collar that parted fearlessly each side of his Adam’s apple. In his red tie there gleamed like a cat’s eye a huge yellow diamond, purchased from a Mexican refugee.

It was the outfit Dad usually wore to Bank Directors’ meetings. Now that he was gone, his flannel shirt hung limply on a nail on the kitchen porch. His famous two-gallon hat, without which he never left the house, hung beside it. There it would hang till his return.

Raquel, looking at it, grinned ruefully.

“I wish what Dad kept under his hat was there now.”

Old Man Daniels had made plenty of enemies in his time, but there was no one, at the time of our story, who would rather have shot his hat and what was under it, full of holes than “A. B.” Meyers. It was not only the matter of losing out on fresh range, but that called loan at the bank had filled “A. B.” so full of poisoned hatred that he would stop at little to get back at the Boss of the Lazy L.

As the Pathfinder, carrying Dad to the railroad station, swooped down through Red Dog, and swirled past the saloon, “A. B.” looked out.

“Daniels off to take charge of cattle transportation overseas,” reported Red Bailey, the proprietor of the saloon, as the car disappeared in a cloud of dust. “Got his gal home from school in the East to run the rancho.”

“Takes more than fancy ropin’ and trick ridin’ to carry on the cattle biz,” remarked “A. B.” drily.

“You said it,” Red agreed. “A little money comes in handy.”

“A. B.” grew an angry red and made an impatient gesture. Then an evil smile came to his face. And at that moment he knew how he would get back at Bill Daniels. He would strike at him through his girl. A grand chance to get even, if Daniels wanted to be such a fool.

Raquel, meanwhile, all unconscious of the forces that were preparing to fight her, was thinking back over her parting conversation with Jimmy.

They had gone into the little school room together so that Jimmy could show her the school work laid out for Georgie that winter. Raquel was wearing a green jersey sports dress, a pretty thing, the most becoming she had—she had slipped into it at the last minute instead of pulling on her ranch clothes. How glad she was Anne had finally persuaded her to buy it!

Jimmy pompously took his seat at the teacher’s desk, while Raquel squeezed into one of the mutilated old desks which Dad had brought out from town when Grant and Custer were little, so that his children would have all the advantages of real school atmosphere.

“What’s it to be now, Raquel?” Jimmy had asked. “Oh, I know you’ve come back to handle a job that releases three able-bodied men to go to war”—an expression of momentary bitterness pulled at Jimmy’s mouth—“but how does it all seem, apart from the fact that there’s no life like the old ranch? I mean to say, what did you bring back with you from the East, from School, besides some mighty stunning clothes and three months’ good schooling? Got any new ideas?”

Raquel looked puzzled. What did Jimmy mean? She was not particularly analytical; she took things as she found them. She was going to run the ranch and that was all there was to it. If she could just hang on till Dad’s return, that was all she asked.

“Well, I couldn’t exactly get any new ideas about cattle ranching back East, could I? But I can think of one improvement. It seems to me I sort of hanker after a good shower bath and a couple of large porcelain tubs in place of that green tin tug boat we lug around to the warmest fire. Seems that if the Lazy L could afford a cattle dip and a couple of pianos it ought to be able to stand at least one genuine bath tub.”

Jimmy roared his delight.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Jimmy, it was really a wonderful experience, but somehow it seemed to me that the girls, none of them, had ever had a real responsibility outside of their monthly marks, and what they learned didn’t have much real meaning to them because of it. I mean—well, having lived out here you could just understand how the discoverers and pioneers felt when they found all the new countries of America. And that made me interested in history; the people seemed more real to me, and the growth of a country something about human beings, instead of just dry writing on a page.

“And I never realized till then how easy you had made it for me, Jimmy, tellin’ me such interestin’ things about the people in history as we went along. So I got fine marks in history and it was only because I knew their lives.”

Jimmy’s face broke into the smile that had won him the instantaneous liking of the Ranch of the Lazy L.

“It’s worth a lot to hear you say that, Raquel; I—oh, well, you know. There’s nothing I could do would repay what this ranch and this family have done for me.”

Raquel had a vague feeling of disappointment. Well, Jimmy was so nice of course he would feel like doing all he could. But she wished he hadn’t said that about repaying—or that he’d said he taught her because he wanted to anyway.

And Jimmy, strangely at a loss for him, was trying to find words to make his appreciation more personal; to say what she herself had meant to him, and that there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her. And then—it was time to go, and he hadn’t said anything.

They were blowing the horn outside. He and Raquel hurried out to the Pathfinder where Dad was already stowing away his grip, the same one that Raquel had taken away to school and had hastily unpacked for Dad’s use last night.

In the sorrow at parting with Dad, Raquel forgot Jimmy’s going.

But Jimmy himself thought about his lost opportunity all the way into town, and was kicking himself for his stiffness, his tongue-tied stupidity.

CHAPTER IV
TAKING STOCK

Raquel had been home two weeks. It had been, as luck would have it, a busy time from the minute of Dad’s going. Jami had driven Mr. Daniels and Jimmy into town and had come roaring back within an hour and a half at nearly sixty miles an hour, so that even with the handicap of the arroyo to cross he had to brake the Pathfinder down with a skidding of tires that brought Russell and Raquel running from the corrals.

Jami, heady with the freedom of the car, swung carelessly out and, without a backward glance at the steaming radiator, strode off toward the bunkhouse.

Raquel went quickly up to the car. The engine was fairly smoking. The tires were hot and showed the wear of the sudden braking down and skidding. The back tires were gouged with bad stone bruises, and as she and Russell stood there suddenly one went flat. It had been perforated by a sharp rock.

Raquel was furious. She followed quickly down towards the bunkhouse.

“Jami,” she called softly, “Jami. Come here a minute, will you?” And to Russell, “You go on in and take Mom these packages, will you, Russ?”

“Jami,” as he came up sheepishly, sensing something wrong, “do you think that’s the way to treat property, the minute Dad’s back is turned? Look at the radiator. Not a drop left in it. And on a winter’s day at that. Look at the tires. Six months’ wear taken out of them so you can ’ride ’em, cowboy, ride ’em.”

“Engine smoking, rear tire flat, got to have a shoe. No need in it. Now, Jami,” looking at him severely, “it isn’t as though you hadn’t been through this before, and been warned and respectfully requested.”

Which was all too true. Jami, crestfallen, dejectedly started to tote water for the engine now that it was too late.

Jami was a good mechanic, but he simply couldn’t be trusted to run the car, Raquel thought, a bit discouraged. And there was no one else but herself now to drive.

When she went down with Russ to inspect the garage she found that the lavish supply of oils which had been there when she left for school was almost gone. A couple of spare tires were also missing.

Raquel was aghast. “Why, Russ, where—what’s happened to the supply shop?”

“Well, ma’am, you know how the old man is. Every one comes along, ocean to ocean tin-tourer, shorthorn sports, grub-line riders, hunters, politicians, friends, give ’em what they want. Sure, stranger, help yourself. An’ then after they’ve filled up on our gas an’ your ma’s cookin’ they’re off. An’ when the ladies have cold-creamed the dust of Los Ranchos off their faces and the hombres have wiped it off their boots, that’s the last of us.”

Raquel could not help but laugh at Russell’s rage. “But, Russ, you ought not to fuss that way about strangers eating here. Where else would they eat within fifteen or twenty miles?”

“Well, you Westerners is open-handed, but I’m a Yankee, come from Kansas, an’ we don’t believe in scatterin’. Let ’em tank up before they come.”

“Well, we’re going to save every penny from now on, and we ship a thousand head March first, remember, or not later than the seventh.”

“We’ll need it,” said Russ. “So little seed this year, an’ the quail et up a lot.... I’ve got Angel and Pancho going over all the leather on the place this week, and Jami makin’ the rounds of the windmills. Catamounts and coyotes been pretty bad this year, an’ that angora goat you set such store by, Raquel, a mountain cat got her an’ her summer’s kids—le’s see, last month it was.”

“Oh, Russ, she was such a beauty! What did you do with the pelts?”

“Well, the kids was sort o’ spoiled, but Angel made a right purty rug for your ma’s sittin’ room o’ the old she. I got near enough lobo skins for a new carriage robe for you, curin’ down back o’ the coolin’ house now.”

They went down so that Raquel could see the thick, lustrous pelts, tawny, with flecks of black.

“You know,” said Russ, “we been losin’ too many cattle this winter.” He looked ominous.

“What do you mean, Russ? Wild animals?”

Russ nodded. “An’ more’n that, I’d guess. Last spring I made sure I counted at least two hundred calves over on that plain yonder alone. This fall I can’t see more’n half that. Coyotes didn’t get ’em all.”

Raquel laughed. “Why, there’s nobody in this country would rustle a calf off Los Ranchos. Come on, Russ, I want to show you how I want the grove cleaned up. If it’s goin’ to be a dry spring we’ll need the reservoir there.”

The cottonwood grove down in the glen southeast of the house was an oasis in a desert of grass, the heavy white trunks towering up against the blue sky. In summer it was a green-lighted refuge from the brilliance of the sun, and in the autumn a golden glory, as though the leaves had been marvelously hammered out of beaten gold.

But now the grove was a welter of brushwood, old iron and ranch junk: an old plow, an old buggy, an ancient cart with wooden wheels. And the great reservoir in the center was filled with leaves and twigs. When the rainy season was on, the tiny stream that ran through the glade from the mountains behind it would fill the reservoir. There had been a time when the boys used this tank as a swimming hole, to which the cattle did not seem to object.

Raquel had in mind to pipe the overflow from the windmill tank at the house down to the glen, and to rely on wind and rain to keep the reservoir water fresh and renewed. She had been wanting to clean the place out for several years, but while Dad spent lavishly on cars, musical instruments and upkeep, he had little use for improvements that were out of sight of the house.

The house itself had been newly whitewashed in the early fall and the patio wall given a fresh layer of pink plaster, mixed from a pink silica outcrop in the mountains back of the ranch. Everything else was in excellent shape—pumps, windmills, sheds.

Mom had always tended the patio, a small velvet oasis, shut away from desert winds by the pink wall, against which stood vivid hollyhocks. A square of “onhealthy” grass, the boys considered it, because it was so soft and fine; here, too, were beds of old-fashioned flowers, with honeysuckle and bougainvillea hanging thick over the cloistered porches.

Mom had a gracia in her fingers that made things grow, just as it made bread rise, Raquel often thought, looking disgustedly at a sickly vine of her own planting.

“But Raquel can sew beautiful. Her seams and hems’re so fine you can hardly see ’em,” Mom would defend.

“But I can’t make anything a-sewing, Mom! Look at the fit of this darn dress!” They always seemed to turn out very queerly, it was true.

So after that Raquel bought what dresses she had in town. They hadn’t been many, for she was only seven when Ole Hossfoot had brought her down a tiny pair of woolies to wear over her ginghams, and before she was in her teens she rode on the roundups always in her cowboy rig. It was so that Jimmy was used to seeing her, like a slim boy, with clustering dark hair, wearing a sombrero, a bright neckerchief, a leather jacket.

Raquel had ridden bareback at three, and before she was five had clambered aboard a cowboy saddle, clinging to the pommel, hard, bare feet thrust into the straps above the stirrups, dark hair flying, eyes round with daring. Dad had forbidden her to ride bareback as she grew older. He was afraid she would climb on a bad broncho some day. She had done so, but not to be thrown. That, however, is a story all to itself.

By the time she was fourteen her gift for “gentling” horses had become known throughout the county. There were times when Raquel took the place of a grown man, and in some kinds of work she was better than a man. Her lithe, tireless body could be carried over more ground without wearing out her horse than the heavy weight of a man; and whether the animal was a biter or a bucker, if it had the qualifications of a good cowhorse, Raquel could have it behaving when she rode it.

Sometimes she stayed home and helped Mom cook for the hands, and sometimes Mom had a Chinaman out from town to help. Sometimes, as now, she got on with the little Mexican girls, for during the shipping and branding seasons it took all hands to look after the cattle.

The Daniels had not long had so much money. There had been years and years when Mom did everything at the ranch house, and carried all her water in from the windmill when the men folks were out on the range and Dad was his own riding boss, in the saddle sometimes for twenty hours out of the twenty-four.

And then one autumn Dad said, “Mom, we got seventy-five thousand dollars reposin’ in the bank. Let’s all take a trip to Chiny or Californy.” So he had drawn five thousand dollars from the bank and they stayed in California until it was spent.

The Boss of Los Ranchos was not up to ring the rising bell herself the morning after Dad’s departure. Dad or one of the boys always rang it every morning, at six o’clock in winter and five in summer.

Now it was the crackling of the fire on her hearth that roused Raquel. Panchito Esquibal was slipping quietly out as she opened her eyes. The fires were Georgie’s job, but he was now doing the milking and the young milch cow would give down her milk to no one else.

Raquel remembered in a flash, and in a flash came wide awake, with the glorious aliveness of the healthy young. Jumping up she crossed to the sheepskin rug before the open fire. The crackling tulas gave out an extraordinary amount of heat and yet over in the corner by her washstand she could have seen her breath.

Tingling with an exhilaration that she had not felt at sea level, she splashed herself with the icy water and five minutes later was pulling on her boots before the fire. Not such riding boots as are found in smart city booteries but a cowboy’s pair, elaborately stitched, and perhaps a trifle quaint as to cut about the toe, but nevertheless beautiful.

Breakfast was already on the table when she opened the dining-room door. Hot bread, yellow corn meal and salt pork, stewed dried peaches and coffee. At Raquel’s place was a little pitcher of cream.

“It’s from Ruth,” explained Georgie proudly. “I’m goin’ to let her sleep in the shed off the summer kitchen from now on. It’s gettin’ too cold for her.”

“You certainly are not,” said Raquel with a grin. “From there it would be just a step into the kitchen. You’ll be wanting to put Old Whitey into the patio next.”

Georgie clanked out in disgust, his leather chaps concealing the fact that as yet his legs were unbowed in the manner befitting a real cowman. At his heels rattled a murderous-looking pair of spurs, which were in reality so blunt that at best they could only massage Old Whitey’s hide.

In fact the spurs were just a sort of friendly hint to Whitey as between friends. And being a faithful cowhorse of many years’ standing, Whitey always tried to oblige when Georgie gave the signal, and would break into a run. Perhaps the run lasted only a few steps before subsiding into an apologetic trot. But at a scratch of the spur Whitey was off again.

“Georgie, you’re to ride with Angel over to the second windmill and see if everything’s all right. Mom, why hasn’t Elena been up to the house? I was down there yesterday and no one was at home. I’m going down there right now. I want to see Pancho.”

Elena Esquibal, Pancho’s wife, had lived at Los Ranchos ever since she was a girl. Somewhere there was a strain of proud Spanish blood, and her father had owned his own rancho. He had been a friend of Old Man Daniels, and when at his death it was found that the rancho, on which Dad had already loaned him money, was lost on a mortgage, Dad brought the girl back and gave her a home.

“I don’t know what’s come over Elena,” said Mom. “She’s sort of queer these days. But the little girls’re sweet little old things, and Panchito’s too young to be mean yet.

“I never did take much to Pancho Esquibal, though he’s got real purty manners,” added Mom, “and it was sort of a pity that Elena couldn’t have kept that rancho of her father’s; but it wasn’t your father’s fault that the bank had to take it over for his debts. Seems like Esquibal didn’t seem to sense that; he thinks Dad was to blame some way. They think influence should do anything.”

“Well, I’m going down there now, Mom; I want to go over some things with Pancho.”

The Esquibal casita, a flat-roofed adobe house, nestled down at the foot of a hill below the corral, and faced the Alamos, the cottonwood grove. There seemed to be no one at home, but back of the house Raquel found Panchito asleep in the sun, his back to some empty oil cans.

As she stood looking at him Panchito awoke, rubbed his eyes, and stood up, grinning shyly. His papa and mamma had gone in the wagon over to visit a sick tio [uncle]. They would be back tomorrow, tonight maybe. “Si Señorita.”

The ranchito they had gone to? La Bolsa, they had called it, he thought.

Raquel pushed one of the oil cans with the toe of her boot. “What does your papa use these for, Panchito?”

“Oh, those are just the empty cans. He has sold already the oil,” Panchito answered innocently. “Since the gate below the Alamos was closed there come by our house many automovil-es.”

Raquel walked back to the big house thoughtfully. Pancho Esquibal was a bad hombre all right. And going off like that without a word. He always had an excuse. And there was nothing to do but shrug the shoulders at the institution of a Latin-American family and the demands of relatives upon the time of first, second and third cousins.

But this business of the oil—no wonder they couldn’t keep oil! What else was Pancho selling? Passing by the bunk house, where Angel was sweeping out with a tender regard for the broom, she called to him to saddle the Alezan mare. The horse was a quivering, high-strung creature which Raquel herself had cured of fright and which she would let no one but herself or Jami ride. Jami was hard on a car but easy on a critter.

Raquel swung quickly into the saddle. It was a pretty thing to watch her mount. There were times when she simply vaulted in, her feet seeming to find the stirrup leathers by instinct. But now she did not wish to startle the Alezan.

Left hand grasping the reins smoothly at the base of the horse’s neck, left foot thrust under the stirrup hood, she made a quick upward flight of her slim body, feet together, until the right foot swung quicker than the eye over the saddle—it never seemed to sprawl over the horse’s flank. She rode with a somewhat shorter stirrup than a good Panhandler usually does, and didn’t lean back for a lope or a slow trot. This morning the mare was off like the wind, down the road leading to the pass.

Beyond the arroyo Raquel turned back to the right, and followed the road that led past the cottonwood grove, round which ran a fork that joined the main road again beyond the Alamos. The inner road had always been closed with a gate, but now a new gate closed the main road, and the inner road, which led past Pancho’s house, was open. Cars would have to go this way now, and the detour could not be seen from the big house.

“Easy way to make a little money.” Raquel was angry as she loped back. “But I wouldn’t have thought it of Elena.”

Pancho would never have been hired at Los Ranchos had it not been for Elena. When she married, Dad took Esquibal on because of her, rather than because he was an expert cowpuncher and brander.

Well, selling oil could be settled easily enough. But what else was Pancho Esquibal up to?

At that moment Pancho was concluding a very satisfactory sale of La Bolsa, the ranchito of Elena’s uncle, to “A. B.” Meyers for a sum satisfactory to both parties, and terms that were most agreeable. The ancient uncle and aunt were to continue to live there the remainder of their lives, and Esquibal was to work the place for “A. B.” on shares.

La Bolsa was what the name implied, a pocket of land lying in a tiny valley that ran down to the Daniels range and was entirely surrounded by Los Ranchos property, except on the northwest corner.

CHAPTER V
DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINS

A cold spell had come, and Russell, Jami and Raquel had ridden up to the Reservation range to bring down the cattle. A large part of the herd were always left up on the mountain ranges as long as possible in order to take advantage of the fine grass, and spare the lower slopes. They were brought down before the winter grew too cold, or there was danger of blizzards and snow, and had been left overlong this year.

Russell did not want Raquel to ride so far, since she had not been in the saddle for three months.

“But I have been riding, Russell, two or three times a week anyway.”

Russell wouldn’t allow that there could be any real riding back there. But Raquel was going.

They had left Los Ranchos at six in the morning and it was now noon. By ten o’clock they had reached the foothills and, striking off from the mesas, had ridden steadily upward ever since. Through a rocky canyon, the steep sides of which were covered with stunted piñon, cedar, and oak rubble, they picked their way, following a trail which led up and over a great rounded slope—an upland meadow, sparsely wooded with pine.

It was sharply cold in the mountains, and as they mounted higher and higher the wind became keener. Raquel buttoned her sheepskin jacket tighter about her throat and was glad she had worn “woolies,” the sheepskin chaps with fleece turned out.

Some of the cattle had been put on fenced ranges early in the summer by her father. He usually divided the herd into several lots and put them on different fenced ranges in order to make it easier to bring them down, as a few men could easily handle a hundred at a time.

“Oughtn’t take us more’n a hour now,” Russell, riding ahead, called back. “Guess we’ll have to put up to Peevey’s tonight after we locate them fellers. Then we c’n round ’em up and herd ’em down to the pastures on the lee side of yon peak.”

Peevey was a mountaineer who managed to eke out a living for himself and his family by trapping. He had also a few cattle. He lived with his wife, a sixteen-year-old girl and a ten-year-old son in a log cabin at an altitude of more than eight thousand feet. Old Man Daniels had allowed him to “squat” on land adjoining a rented range, because the old fellow had lived there for twenty years, without bothering any one or paying anything.

Peevey’s place nestled in a thicket of pine at the foot of a tall cliff. So like a very part of the forest it was that you could not see it until you were right on it. As they rode through the trees and came suddenly upon the cabin a boy darted away and disappeared behind a rock.

“That’s Boy Peevey,” said Jami. “Ain’t it funny the way he runs like a deer whenever any one heaves in sight? He’s a reg’lar wild boy, ’fraid o’ no four-footed thing, but skeert at the sound of a human voice.”

“Well, he’s never spoken to any one but his family, so that’s natural,” Raquel replied. She had known the Peeveys for years and remembered Boy had always been so.

“Ma Peevey says he don’t hardly speak to his fam’ly no more,” said Russell. “Won’t talk to his Dad at all, don’t hardly speak to his sister, and won’t come for no one but his mother. He sets a lot o’ store by her.”

They had reached the cabin and Old Man Peevey came out to meet them. He was a strange little man, gloomy and passionate by turns, whiskered up to his cap. “Fences down, gates open, cattle’s all in together,” was his greeting, in an accusing tone of voice. He was supposed to keep an eye on gates and fences.

Russell was in an instant fury at the news and Raquel turned to question Peevey, but just then Mrs. Peevey came to the door, all aflutter to see Raquel, the Boss’s daughter.

Mrs. Peevey called back as she came hurrying out, “Lena, come, here is Raquel Daniels.”

Lena Peevey had sometimes been down at the Daniels ranch for a few days at a time, and she had been at school in Alamogordo one winter when her mother, who was a good cook, had taken a job in town. It had been a cold winter, bitter, and Mrs. Peevey had had to supply bacon and flour, and meal, as Pop had been laid up with the rheumatics, never setting foot out of the cabin all that winter.

Lena came running now to see the visitors, her pimply face beaming with delight. They had dismounted, and leaving their horses to forage and find their way down into a little gully where ran a mountain stream, the three entered the cabin to warm themselves at the fire, while Mrs. Peevey and Lena bustled about getting something to eat.

Within an hour a steaming meal was on the table. Rabbit stew—“Boy ketched ’em in his hands,” Mrs. Peevey said—hot biscuits, coffee with condensed milk. It was nearly four when Raquel started out again with Russell, Jami following with Pop Peevey.

Some spite work, Pop thought, but it mought a been fall hunters layin’ down the barbed wire fer to let their cars through. Most likely that’s what it was, come to think of it. He’d aimed to get down last week and let Mr. Daniels know about it, didn’t know it hisself till then. Boy’d seen some o’ the Ranchos’ cattle on the lower slope when he was layin’ his traps. He’d had rheumatics ever since, though, an’ couldn’t stir. Jami winked and tilted his elbow behind Pop’s back. Peevey’s attacks of rheumatics were known to come from a bottle.

Well, there was nothing to do about it but go after them all. Russell made straight for the Corona, a high peak from which the surrounding country could be seen. An hour’s climb through spruce, pine and cedar, so fresh and lovely that it did not seem like winter weather; then a somber glade of hemlock, mysterious, forbidding—and they were out in the open at the top of the world.

It was already dark in the canyons far below, but up in these high regions the sun still rode well above the horizon and they could see for miles in every direction; light and shadow, light and shadow, of crest and peak and valley; timberline, where the forest stopped abruptly at creation’s gesture.

Raquel was silent under the solemn vast beauty. She had not been up on the Corona in more than a year, and then it was summer. The cold, the quiet, were intense now. The air was strangely still, as it often is just before sunset, and the riders did not feel the cold.

Each of them carried field glasses; Russell was already searching the valleys below for whitefaces, the Ranchos cattle, unmistakable even at a distance of several miles. Raquel came out of her dreaming with a start, guiltily. She was the Boss of the Rancho; she’d better be looking for her cattle!

Glasses raised, she and Jami scanned the lower levels in different directions. Yes, they were there, full five hundred head all together, Jami thought. Yeah, Russell allowed that many. They’d not move afore mornin’ lessen a blizzard came up and it didn’t look like it from that clear sky.

The sun was sinking with sudden speed over the edge of the world. You had a sense of the world’s being round, up there; it curved and dropped away to the horizon. It seemed up there as though it were not such a very big globe after all because you could see all the sides, and you were on the top of it.

They were back at Peevey’s in less than an hour, but it was already dark in the forest, and a wind rustled mournfully in the bare branches of the pallid aspen groves. The log cabin was pleasant and warm and smelling of salt pork and frijoles. They were ready to eat again.

“Boy, he’s et and gone to bed in the loft,” Ma Peevey indicated as they came in. “He’s clean run out. Had to doctor his legs. Huntin’ cat, he says; but he’s friends with the bars, an’ the bulls an’ the deer too.”

“It’s a hard winter,” Pop Peevey mumbled over his food. “Froze tight many a night, withouten any snow, and gonna be worse. Watch out fer the bars and catamounts, says I, and the coyotes and lobos down on the range.

“It were just such a winter as this’n when early spring that young engineer took his bride down by the Rio Grande near the dam, an’ she was et by a grizzly. It was after the bacon, an’ they didn’t have no bacon, so the bar took her.” He chewed gloomily on his own salt pork.

“Never throw nothin’ at a bar, specially a grizzly,” Ma Peevey contributed piously. “I alwiz give a bar what it wants. Recollec’, Lena, when the big brown bar came in the door last spring lookin’ fer bacon an’ took it from the shelf, an’ took the surrup; we didn’t bother him none, an’ he didn’t bother us. Just went out ’thouten any trouble.”

“How would you and Lena like to come down to the ranch for the spring roundup and help Mom with the cookin’, Miz Peevey?” Raquel asked.

Mrs. Peevey started to reply affirmatively and then looked questioningly at her husband.

“She don’t have to work out,” he decided grandly. “Sooner’n have her go out to work I’d work myself even.”

“That sure is noble an’ generous of you, Pop.” Jami winked at Russell.

Pop Peevey relished his wife’s cooking too well to part with it as long as there was a strip of bacon in the house, or a rabbit in Boy’s traps. Boy Peevey, wild little faun that he was, really kept the family in food, bringing his tribute each day to his mother.

“I hate to go away count o’ Boy,” she decided, “but Lena can go if she wants.”

Lena showed her wishes by a broad smile.

Raquel shared Lena’s room that night, while Russell and Jami slept on shakedowns before the fire in the living-room. Lena insisted that Raquel take the bed, with its lumpy mattress of pine needles, while she slept on a shakedown on the floor at Raquel’s side.

Lena took off only her dress and her shoes, and pulled a somewhat soiled flannel nightgown over her underwear. Raquel unrolled her gown, her comb, her toothbrush, and a cake of soap in a little case, from a red neckerchief which she always carried in her saddle pocket. She was tired enough with the long ride and the cold to relax comfortably into the hollows of her pine mattress, redolent of the forests that closed about the tiny cabin.

Less than a month ago she had been sleeping across from Anne in a beautiful big room, fresh and fragrant. How clean and straight Anne was, how beautiful her skin, so clear and rosy, and creamy! They were just the same age, Anne and Lena. And look at poor Lena!

“I want to be a school teacher.” Lena’s unexpected words, ending with a silly-sounding giggle, broke in on Raquel’s thoughts.

“Why, Lena, where did you get that idea?”

“Down to district school.” Lena’s eagerness dispelled her embarrassment, although she always laughed at everything Raquel said, because poor Lena was so glad to be with another girl that she could express her happiness only by laughing.

“The teacher there said I could learn. I think it’s awful nice to be a teacher. I bin through the sixth grade.”

“I think it would be lovely, Lena,” Raquel answered. “Perhaps you could work this summer and save some money, and then if you got work in Alamo this winter you could get ready for the State Normal.”

Raquel opened the tiny window, and although Lena looked at her in astonishment, she felt that everything Raquel did must be perfect. The fresh wind blew in and put out their candle, and as Raquel went to sleep she thought how pitiful, how different Lena’s life was from hers or Anne’s.

Well, how different her own life was from Anne’s, though she had never thought that way about it before she went to school. She wondered if Lena could ever possibly get to be a teacher.

“I aim I’m goin’ to do it all right,” Lena’s voice came startlingly out of the darkness.

And Raquel was vaguely troubled in her dreams by seeing her wonderful Anne with a diploma in her hands laughingly refusing to teach the little mountain district school when they asked her to, while Lena, struggling up the mountain side, kept calling, “Wait, I’m coming. I’ll be the teacher.”

It was still dark when they left Peevey’s cabin the next morning. As they trotted briskly along the sun rose somewhere behind the mountain and a green dawn filtered down through the pine needles. Jami led the way, a shepherd dog belonging to Custer, which he had left up at the Peevey cabin for use on the upper range, running along with them, leaping about their horses’ heads to show them how glad he was to be with his ranch folks again.

When they had climbed half way up the Corona suddenly the sun burst upon them, an hour before it would reach into the valley below. From a vantage point on the hill Russell cupped hands to his mouth, gave the salt cry, “Coo-ee-coo-ee-ee. Coo-oo-ee.” Down the thin air it carried, echoing back from distant mountain sides, spreading over mountain meadow, into canyon and thicket.

Raquel tingled at the thrill of the call, and her own clear shrill voice took up the echo and sent its vibrant message down into far-off glades, full four miles away.

From where they were they could see the cattle come running from all sides, hurrying down to an open space below them, towards which Russell was already riding, still calling his “Coo-ee, coo-ee-ee.” Down there sounded such a lowing and bellowing as would have terrified a tenderfoot.

Great bulls, young bulls, white-faced cows, fawn-colored heifers with horns still short, were milling and seething in their efforts to get at the salt which Russell was scattering on the “licks,” the hollows worn in the flat rocks of the meadow by the rough tongues of countless cattle.

Jami rode herd on the edge of the roundup, turning back the strays or those that had had their fill of salt and were turning back to their feeding grounds. The shepherd dog rode before him on the saddle leaping down among the crowding animals to nip at a pair of hocks, here and there, and leaping back to safety when menacing horns were lowered at him.

Raquel and Pop Peevey circuited the herd and slowly drove the animals toward the outleading valley. Had it been on the plains instead of in the mountains the four could not have ridden herd on the wild bunch. But the hills hemmed them in, the older cattle responded from habit to the yells, and the younger cattle followed.

Nevertheless, it made them busy to keep the great mass moving along, and moving in the right direction. Russell’s hoarse shouts, Raquel’s high call, piercing, but clear as a flute, echoed now from this side, now from that. On one hand there were at one time five contests going on between as many pairs of young bulls, which snorted, pawed the dirt in great clots over their backs, while with lowered heads pressed together, they pushed back and forth furiously.

On the other hand a bunch of cows would pile up, finally clambering upon each other’s backs in the crush. The cattle became jammed; packed. It looked as if they would not be out for hours. Jami, with the aid of the collie and a sharply pointed pole, was riding back and forth, trying to separate them, to prod them along with the slowly moving mass.

There was a time when, as they approached the narrow exit to the meadow, chaos reigned. It was nearing noon, the sun was high, and in that upturned pocket so near the sky, unprotected from the fierce light that beat so straight down upon them, it was unbelievably hot.

Would they never get out?

Then suddenly the confusion quieted. The mooing and bellowing became less frantic, the cattle seemed to be following along easily. Far off in the center of the herd Raquel saw a tiny figure, like a little old mountain gnome, atop the magnificent back of Big Cap, the blooded black bull, patriarch of the herd.

It was Boy Peevey, legs straight out, hands grasping firmly the horns of the big bull as he rode him down the glade. Big Cap raised his head in a long deep-throated bellow, full of majesty and command, calling the herd after him.

The powerful vibrations filled the glade with a thunder that even the great crouching cats of Corona respected.

“That’s music to my ears,” called Raquel to Russell. “Look at Boy bringin’ home the cows.”

“He talks their tongue all right. He’s a wild un. Yoo-ee-ee.” And Russell was off whirling his rope after a straying cow.

And so they came down from the upper mountain, and by four in the afternoon had their cattle safely within the Daniels’ fences, with twenty miles to roam in between them and the Rancho.

Elated, glowing with the exhilaration of the rare air, and the successful outcome, Raquel was for returning to the Rancho that night. So with a wave to Pop Peevey, and a tightening of their cinches, they were off, the horses apparently as fresh as when they had started out that morning.

Although there was only an hour of daylight left, stars were out with the twilight, and it was by their bright radiance that the three trotted briskly along across the open mesa towards that far spot on the mountain slope which was Los Ranchos.

Even before they saw the lights in the windows a pale, brilliant moon had risen over the tops of the craggy mountains to guide them on their way.

CHAPTER VI
THE HUNT

Bad news greeted Raquel when they clumped into the Rancho’s kitchen shortly after midnight. A mountain lion had got Ruth’s calf. Georgie was disconsolate.

The thermometer dropped that night to well below freezing, and two weeks of extremely cold weather followed the mountain roundup. Frost lay white each morning, silvering the sage and cactus and sparkling under a brilliant sun that gave no heat.

A week after the disappearance of Ruth’s calf, Jami came across the mutilated remains of a white-faced steer up in an arroyo back of the big house. It was the work of a lion by the signs—the hide ripped to ribbons by cat claws.

Then two sheep that the Esquibals had been caring for at their place disappeared. Every one wanted to go hunting.

“Well, I guess we might as well go after those fellows now while it’s so cold,” Raquel reluctantly agreed. She sent Jami into Los Pasos to bring back the two hounds that her father had loaned in the fall to a friend.

That afternoon Raquel and Georgie rode north to a branding cabin that was not used save during the season. A spring in the mountains behind La Boka had been piped down to a circular reservoir, now covered with a thin coating of ice except where the cattle had broken it around the edges.

Not far from here they found a fallen heifer, another victim of the wild creatures which disputed their ownership of land and cattle. The torn throat told its own tale.

Georgie’s freckled face paled. He rose from where he had knelt at the heifer’s side. “The Lobo of the Magdalena did that. It’s a killer.... But say, Rake”—the boy’s eyes were fairly popping—“that’s not the Lazy L’s cow.” He touched the branded flank of the heifer with the toe of his boot.

A large and cruel leaning H marked the animal. Raquel nodded. She stooped and gazed intently at the scar, her hand fondling a velvety ear.

“That brand’s about six months old, Tooth. A brand that deep takes just about that long to look like this. Yes, it belongs to us, all right. See that little notch hidden at the bottom of its ear. That was the calf I brought home and raised on the bottle when it got lost from its mother. Remember? And I wanted to mark it, it was so fat and cute.

“I thought I knew that heifer some way the minute I saw her. A slick job, whoever covered the Lazy L. They didn’t get away with it, though! But how many have they got away with, I wonder. And who would do a thing like that?”

“Quien sabe! I don’t know who’d dare. Gee, if Dad had known this!”

“Well, it’s a bad piece of business for somebody.”

Raquel was so upset by this evidence of cattle rustling that she forgot for the time being the more successful rustler who had got away with his theft. Such killings meant thousands of dollars loss to the ranchman every year.

“Well, looks like we’ll have to go huntin’ for two kinds of varmints, old Tooth,” said Raquel, as they turned their horses’ heads back towards the ranch house, “four-footed and two-footed.”

“Dad said all the hoss thieves was cleared out,” grunted Georgie, “but I guess they left a few cattle thieves for us to clean out.”

“We’ll start in the morning after the cats, unless it comes on to snow. It’s too cold to do anything else just now and it’ll give me a good chance to see something more of the range back of the ranch house.”

Back at the house they found Jami with the dogs, fat, and crazy to run after their well-fed stay in town. They were barking and milling around in the kennel house.

Guns were got out, cleaned and oiled. Raquel would carry her little twenty-two. Russell and Jami were going, Angel and Georgie. Mrs. Daniels made sandwiches almost as big as plates, filled with salt pork and ham of her own curing. They were all in bed and asleep by eight o’clock for Mom was to get them up at four in the morning.

In the cold dark dawn Raquel slipped quietly down towards the corrals. Overhead a million stars were sparkling with a brilliance such as Eastern skies never know. Russ was roping himself a horse. The winter string were running round and round in the dark, away from the sound of his whirring rope.

As Raquel came up Russ drew into the light a little foolish-faced pony. “Aw, shucks, I don’t want you at all,” and it had to be done all over again. Raquel picked for herself one of Custer’s string, a swift, sturdy cow pony that would bite if it was crowded.

Raquel’s rope stopped him easily as he passed, and with a swift turn around the snubbing post she had him. “You’re not a-going to bite at me, old boy.” Her caressing voice arrested the wicked little laying back of the ears, yet as her hand crept up his nose the lips curled back with a look of singular meanness.

“Look out, there, Rakie, ain’t you got any sense? He’s fixin’ to bite. Drive him in the saddlin’ pen.”

“You’re loco, Russ; he’s smilin’ at me, that’s all. Glad to see an old friend, aren’t you, little feller?” And indeed the pony seemed merely to be exhibiting his pleasure as Raquel quickly smoothed her saddle blanket and dropped the saddle over his back.

She liked to see to saddling her own horse, the single cinch tight but an inch farther back than was customary, the blankets well forward. Then as the saddle worked looser in going down hill there would be no chafing when it was impossible to get off and readjust a blanket.

The dogs were already tumbling about in their kennels, sensing a hunt. As Raquel and the boys went back towards the house the smell of hot coffee came deliciously down the wind. Fortified by incredible breakfasts of hominy, pork chops, corn cakes and molasses syrup, the hunters hurried down again to the corral.

Just as the east grew crimson, Russ took the two lead hounds out on leash. The four others that made the pack strung eagerly along, following down to Pancho’s house, from which the start was to be made. Esquibal was waiting for them and at once informed Raquel that he could not go on the hunt because he had had word from Elena’s uncle to go to La Bolsa today, but he would certainly return tonight and would go around by Los Pasos and call for that bunch of oil cakes for calf feeding.

Raquel was annoyed, but as it did not seem to make any real difference, except that they would be a man short, she nodded, for the dogs were straining at the leash.

Whining and trembling with excitement, the powerful leader of the pack ran round and round, nose to the ground, trying to pick up a scent already three days stale. Baffled, he threw up his head to sniff the air time and again, leaping towards the old oxcart that lay in the yard.

“Never seen him act that way,” said Russ, worried, and unsnapped the leash.

With a deep-throated yelp, the hound shot off towards the foothills and was out of sight in a minute, the rest of the pack after him. Raquel was a close second and her pony needed no quirting.

As the first ray of the sun flashed over the mesas below them, the hounds gave tongue from a canyon ahead, the deep music of their baying echoing roundly.

The hunt pressed forward, the horses racing on the morning wind, Raquel, as usual, in the lead. With the wind in her face and the blood singing through her veins, with delight in the chase and the springing earth beneath her horse’s feet, her light body and lighter hand guided the cow pony unerringly.

Now, a good cow pony usually does not rely on other than its own quick eye and quicker feet, but in such a chase as this it trusts the rider somewhat to help it avoid gopher holes and rough rocky going. And where Jami put his horse at fence or bush, Raquel rode to save her pony.

“Hey, cowboy, spare that hoss,” she cried as she passed Jami. “That’s not a crow you’re ridin’. Go round a few mountains.”

Far away to the left, and now to the right, the belling of the leader of the pack could be heard.

“Gato grande,” called Angel; “he always sings so when he smells the big cat.”

The horses slowed up at the mouth of a deep canyon, and the hunters stopped to breathe them. There was no more baying for a space, so after five minutes they pressed forward again, Raquel bearing off to the right with Russ and Georgie, while Jami, Panchito and Angel took to the left. They would follow two ridges until they should meet all together again near the summit.

Climbing quietly and carefully for the better part of an hour, occasionally they heard the bell-like notes of the leader of the hounds and the sharper, lighter baying of the pack.

“You’d think the ole feller would shut his trap and not make such a noise,” fretted Georgie, riding beside Raquel. “How in time can he expect to steal up on a lion thataway!”

“Let him do his own huntin’, Tooth,” growled Russ. “You ain’t no hound, so you shut up. I notice we get to draw a bead on a critter more often follerin’ a hound’ dawg and his racket than we do makin’ Injun tracks through the woods by ourselves.”

“Will you-all hush up!” breathed Raquel. “Look what a place for turkey.”

The horses were walking now, up over a pine-crowned summit, carpeted thick with russet needles.

As she spoke there sounded faintly over the ridge the silly peedle-eedle-eedle of the wild turkey. Instantly the hunters stopped in their tracks, and in a few moments there trailed over the crest a flock of half a dozen handsome birds.

At this minute Old Whitey felt that he must switch his tail, and at the swishing slap the turkeys gave a startled obble-obble, and scurried with amazing speed into the forest.

But not before a pinging whine from Raquel’s rifle, adding to their terror and their speed, took one from their number. On the russet floor of the forest lay a beautiful young turkey, “fat as butter, purty as a peacock, a crop full of piñons,” exulted Russ, bursting with pride at Raquel’s bringing down such a difficult bird.

As if the shot had been a signal, a terrific hub-bub arose from the canyon below. Hastily gathering up the turkey they slipped and slid down the steep sides of the canyon. They could see nothing through the pines, but they heard the full tongue of the pack in chase give way to the sharp yapping of combat.

Raquel, cheeks like dark holly berries, was fairly lifting the dancing cowpony down the slippery grade. Behind came Russ, and away back Georgie. Old Whitey reluctantly picked his way like a fat old woman, his hips wobbling from side to side, until under the frantic urging of Georgie’s heels he sat down and slid.

“They’ve treed a cat,” shouted Raquel over her shoulder; “a lion. He’s fixin’ to spring.... Russ, quick!”

Glowing tawnily through the branches below, crouched a menacing form, tail lashing cat-fashion, as the lion waited to spring upon the ancient enemy of his kind, to rend and tear his way to freedom and safety again.

Russ fired, but his shot only stung the tail of the big cat, infuriating it. The horses were trembling, for they hate and fear the mountain lion or the big bear.

The three hunters crept down, nearer and nearer. The great hound, El Capitan, was leaping up at the quarry above his head, fearlessly courting a cat and dog encounter.

With back to the cliff which no leap, however desperate, could scale, the cat looked warily about. Had the hunters not come upon the scene, the hunted thing would have waited, treed for hours or days, until either the dogs or itself gave out. But the smell of man and the sting of the shot made it desperate, and with a terrible, settling crouch, suddenly it sprang with an astounding leap, out over the jumping dogs and down upon Sis, gallant but light-weight member of the pack.

Two of the dogs fell upon the lion’s flank while El Capitan sank his fangs in the tawny throat. The cat fought cruelly and well. Raquel, her heart pounding against her ribs, seized Russ’s Winchester and took one careful aim after another—without firing. If she shot she would be sure to get Cap, or Belt, or Sir Galahad (named and loved by Jimmy).

And then from the far side of the canyon came the crack of a gun, the zoom of a bullet; the cat relaxed slowly, then fell limply beneath its pursuers, torn and bloody.

Jami and Angel scrambled triumphantly down the opposite slope. Rushing over to the excited dogs, they pushed them aside and examined the trophy.

Raquel’s voice and hands at last succeeded in quieting the hounds. She slipped the leash on El Capitan, for the blood lust had been aroused, and, in spite of his wounds, he was ready to hunt for days without returning to Los Ranchos.

As they were examining the lion, a Mexican on a lean, scraggy horse swung down the narrow canyon, and drew up at the group around the cat. It was Manuel, the half-wit cousin of Elena Esquibal.

He grinned amiably, and dismounted to look at the kill, for his horse could not be urged near. As he turned about and the animal leaped up the mountain side to join the other horses, Raquel saw on its flank a large leaning brand, an H.

The shock of it left her speechless for the moment, and before she could collect herself, a tragedy almost took place. The big hound on her leash sprang at the vaguely smiling Mexican youth, tearing the strap away from Raquel’s hand, and burning the wrist round which it had been wrapped.

He leaped upon the boy, sinking his fangs through the sleeve before the others rushed upon him, and tore him off. But Cap seemed enraged, straining and sniffing, even after the terrified Manuel had dashed to his horse and was making off up the mountain. Apparently he had not been injured, but he was scared out of what wits he had.

“Never did see Cap attack a human before this,” muttered Russ. “There is something mighty queer there.”

“Did you notice that brand on his horse, Russ?” asked Raquel, who had recovered her breath and her speech by now. The boys hadn’t noticed. Something kept Raquel from saying more about it. She looked at the lion.

It was a long, lean creature, seven feet from nose to tail, its fine coat torn, its flanks as lean as though it had not had its pick of cattle through the winter. The gaunt, ugly jaws had been pried apart; the long fangs still dripped.

Raquel shuddered. For the first time in her wild, free life, on range of desert and mountain, it all seemed bitterly cruel to her. She turned away with undisguised dislike; all the elation of the morning and her glorious ride vanished.

“Aw, go on, Rakie. You haf to do it.” Georgie read his sister’s expression. “Think of all the stock that fellow has had off our range. Why, one of these lions will eat thirty cows, sixty sheep and heaven knows how many calves, every season.”

Angel was staying to bring back the pelt, after he had skinned it. It was already growing dark in the canyon. It was after four o’clock, but it seemed as if they had started out only two or three hours ago. All at once every one remembered the sandwiches, for which they had had no thought before.

Those generous slices of bread were immensely heartening, and yet, somehow, as they picked their way down the canyon, Raquel was silent and depressed. Then the faithful and gallant boys, her knights of the roundup, set up a rollicking tune, singing Raquel’s fame to the words of The Pecos Queen, caroling right lustily as they rode along:

“Where the Pecos River winds and turns on its journey to the sea,

From its white walls of rock and sand striving ever to be free,

Near the highest railroad bridge that all these modern times have seen,

Dwells fair young Raquel Daniels, the Pecos River Queen.

“She is known to every cowboy on the Pecos River wide,

They know full well that she can shoot, that she can rope and ride,

She goes to every roundup, every cow work without fail,

Looking out for her cattle branded, ‘walking hog on rail.’

“She made her start in cattle, yes, made it with her rope,

Can tie down every maverick before it strikes a lope,

She can rope and tie and brand it, as quick as any man,

She’s voted by all the cowboys, an A-1 top cowhand.”

And so singing the hunters came back to the ranch, the tired horses breaking into a mad gallop as soon as they came in sight of the corral.

The next morning Pancho Esquibal came to Raquel where she was throwing rope down in the feeding corral, limbering up, getting into practice for the spring work.

“May I have the keys to the garage shed, Señorita?” he inquired courteously. “I think it would be safer to hang the skin of the lion in there.... That is the best place,” he added, after a few moments during which Raquel, coiling and hurling her reata, gave no evidence of having heard him at all.

Esquibal waited. There is nothing so disconcerting as to be ignored. Raquel knew this well, partly from instinct and a natural wit in dealing with people, partly from experience.

A curious, furtive look came into Esquibal’s eyes. He looked at the padroncita suspiciously. Raquel had kept the keys to the supply house and to the garage sheds in her own pockets ever since the incident of the oil cans.

Now she turned suddenly while Pancho was still off guard and glanced swiftly at him.

“Why not hang the cuero in the old drying shed, Pancho? Russ has mended up the doors and windows and neither skunks nor dogs can get in there.”

Pancho nodded. As he turned to go Raquel asked carelessly, “By the way, Pancho, Russell tells me that ‘A. B.’ has bought La Bolsa, the ranchito of Elena’s aunt, over by our north reservoir. Is that so?”

“Si, señorita. It was a worthless place and it was sold to him.”

Raquel nodded, and went on with her roping, spreading wide loops over Panchito’s burro.

“Why did they not sell to my father last year when he offered to buy?”

Pancho shrugged. As he turned away there was an expression of annoyed speculation on his face. Raquel grinned. She was pleased with herself that she had disconcerted Esquibal, but she knew that some day she would have to have it out with him.

But although it was the conviction of Ranchos justice that if you let a bad hombre have rope enough he would hang himself, Raquel did not want Pancho to steal the rope, nor to achieve that desirable end at her expense if it could be avoided. She could not be sure that he had had anything to do with the rebranded, stolen heifer. Had she known then, or suspected, what was to come to light later on, she would not have waited for events to solve the matter.

CHAPTER VII
CHRISTMAS

Christmas week came upon Los Ranchos suddenly, and, although there were so few to celebrate it this year, Jami and Raquel and Georgie went out in the car to gather mistletoe, according to the custom. The scrub oak was covered with the pretty parasite, and they gathered great bundles, thick with pearly berries, mixing it with sprays of silver spruce and ground holly from the mountains.

Raquel did up large boxes and sent Russell in to town to mail packages off to the Marvins, and to The Towers in care of Miss Carter.

With the rest she decorated the house, and three days before Christmas she and her mother drove into town to do their Christmas shopping. For Ole Hossfoot, who would be down Christmas Eve as usual, she got a leather jacket, composed mainly of pockets. For her mother she bought a quilted satin dressing gown, fleece-lined, to wear elegantly as she sat before her fire on winter nights after the last dish had been dried and set back on the table for breakfast, after the cats had been fed and put out and let back in again.

It never took Raquel long to decide about anything, and in a short time there was a gift for every one but Anne and Jimmy. Anne’s gift would be late of course. As Raquel strode along the main street she saw in a curio window the gift—a string of graduated, polished turquoise wampum, a lovely thing that Anne could wear beautifully.

What for Jimmy? Impulsively Raquel pointed to a red leather frame and, slipping a large kodak picture of herself out of her bag, she tucked it in with a Christmas card, “Love to Jimmy.”

As she stepped out into the street she came face to face with a man who had been standing there looking through the curio window. It was “A. B.”

“Howdy, Miss Daniels.” The ranchman’s voice was suavely courteous as he waved his hand towards his hat, bowed deeply, and spat by way of greeting.

“Howdy do, Mr. Meyers,” Raquel answered pleasantly as she started up the street.

But he blocked the way.

“Say, Raquel,” he said without looking at her, shifting his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, “I understand your Dad had an option on that piece of valley range that lies near my northern fences. Don’t suppose you care to hold on to that now. Just thought I’d tell you I was willin’ to take it off your hands.”

“Why, no; we want to hold on to that land, thanks. We will take care of it when the time comes.”

“Better not be too sure of that, my gal; financial conditions are pretty bad, pretty dangerous, right now.”

“Well, I’d have to have my Dad’s instructions before I could sell and he said he wanted to hold on to that land.” Raquel turned to go.

“Is that so?” “A. B.” could not control the rage that he felt at being thus dismissed by a mere slip of a girl. “Well, let me tell you,” he called angrily after her, “you’d better keep your Dad’s cattle off my land then. The next animal found on my range I’ll brand.” And with this threat he turned about and strode the other way.

It was an unpleasant encounter, and Raquel went into the post office angry and defiant. There was no mail for any of them. Raquel had not known that she would feel so disappointed. Nothing from Jimmy? Had Anne forgotten her so quickly? She had not heard from her since returning to Los Ranchos nearly a month before.

There was not even a line from Custer, nor from Pop. Mom did not seem to mind, for letters were an almost unknown quantity in her life.

Had it not been for Georgie and Ole Hossfoot it would have been a sorry Christmas Eve. The boys had all gone into town. Mom and Georgie and Raquel sat late before Mom’s fire, and went reluctantly to bed, as if they were waiting for something.

At nine o’clock on Christmas morning, as they lingered over a holiday breakfast of pancakes and cane syrup, and fresh pork sausage, a great hallooing was heard outside the gate, then a heavy tread on the veranda. The door burst open, and there was Custer.

There was a joyful clamor. Mom, unable to flee the arms of her six-foot son, had taken refuge in his coat front, from which haven she eventually emerged transfigured.

“And Raquela, the kid sister, Boss of the Lazy L!” Custer swung her round with one arm while he kept Mom prisoned with the other. “Don’t make ’em any finer!” He kissed her warmly.

He was a man after a girl’s heart, this Custer Daniels—and after a man’s. A gay, undaunted adventurer, with a way about him that seemed to extend even to his roping. But alas for the peace of mind of the girl who, at a ranch ball or a blowout in La Cruz, took to heart the laughing flattery of his words, or believed what his eyes said! And alas for the luckless puncher who presumed on any one’s else range or reputation within Custer’s vicinity!

Custer was courageous and handsome, and now there was a tempering of his spirits with a white fire of consecration to this cause on which he, along with the other youth of the country, had embarked so lightly.

Raquel in her chaps would have been the same little sister to Custer, but now he looked at her again in amazement. Was this Raquel in the citified green dress?

“Mountain cats! But ain’t she the prettiest thing this side San Antone!”

He swung her off her feet and with one hand, held her up under the mistletoe, where he smacked her right heartily. Georgie was then properly cuffed, the hound dogs fondled, a packet of cigarritos slipped Angel while Jami and Russ were wreathed with smiles, smoke emanating from large and murderous looking black cigars.

“Mom’s the only one gets a present, a real present.” And he pulled from his pocket a dull square of folded silk that shook out into a gorgeous Spanish shawl, rare and strange, its golden brown embroidered in pale yellow and crimson roses. Amber and jade flecked its surface like sunshine on a shaded pool.

“It’s too beautiful for me, son.” Mrs. Daniels spoke tremulously. “I danced in one something like this the night I met your father.”

“Well, I’ll tell you something strange about my finding this,” said Custer.

He had been looking for a gift to bring his mother, he said, and was wandering down through the curio shops in El Paso when suddenly he saw a face, the most beautiful girl! He knew he had seen her before, and then it came across him that she was just like that picture of Jimmy’s cousin, Lois, which he had always been so loco about.

He’d have sworn it was she; so he followed her into a shop and saw her go up to look at a shawl. It was this one. She was with an elderly man, and Custer had just made up his mind to step up and speak to her when they turned suddenly, went out a side entrance and, before he could get into the street, stepped into a car and were a block away.

So he went back and bought the shawl. And the next morning he dropped into the same shop, hoping to run across her again. But the shopkeeper said she had returned the same evening and had been fearfully put out, real angry, that the shawl was gone, and she and her father had gone on to the train. They had said they were leaving that night.

Raquel heaved a sigh of relief. That must have been Lois all right!

“I plumb forgot the mail,” said Custer. “Stopped by the post office early and made the boys give it to me. Bring it in from the car, Angel.”

So Christmas was very nearly perfect after all. There was a card from Dad, about to sail on a transport, a letter from Grant, “safely on the other side,” a five-pound box of candy from Jimmy, and a long letter from Anne, and a box.

“Don’t think I have forgotten you, you precious Rakie,” wrote Anne. “I haven’t been at school since the week after you left. Came home to help with the terrific war work that piles up. If I was ever lazy may Heaven forgive me now.... I have scarcely slept, nor has Mamma.... A letter from Barry asks after you and he wishes to be remembered to you without fail.”

Raquel had scarcely dared to think of the elegant Barry since she had been back at home. But at the message a pleasurable warmth mounted to her hair.

The box held five beautifully bound volumes of history, an etching and some handkerchiefs.

After dinner Raquel told Custer about her encounter in town with “A. B.”; of the purchase of La Bolsa, and of the dead heifer which she and Georgie had found, as well as the incident of the half-wit’s horse and its brand.

“Lordy,” said Custer, “not so long ago that would have meant a killin’. But there’s too much shootin’ goin’ on now in the world as it is. And I can’t take time to have it out with the old pizen snake now. Don’t worry, Sis, just keep track of everything and we’ll look after it when we come home!

“Leaving tonight, Mom,” he went on. “Got to. I’ll see Jimmy in Kansas City Wednesday, and we sail just a week later.”

The day passed brilliantly, and all too soon. Yet even after Custer’s rented car had disappeared in the purple shadow of the pass they were heartened by the robust confidence and cheer he always spread.

CHAPTER VIII
LOIS

Life had not been very thrilling for Lois since she had been called away from school so suddenly. At first it was a pleasure to be free from routine and to be with her father, whom she loved deeply and sincerely, if somewhat selfishly.

When they reached El Paso, they found that Jimmy, whom Lois half-feared seeing again, had been transferred to Kansas.

Through a friend of her father Lois was invited to a dance at Fort Bliss, and, exquisitely lovely in a silver tissue dancing frock, she was immediately surrounded by officers. That was thoroughly satisfactory, as were the “dates” with which her calendar was filled for a week ahead.

But alas, two days later her father’s physician decided that the altitude of Colorado would be a better climate for him, and they left for Colorado Springs at once.

Christmas week found them back in El Paso. Colorado had proved too cold; and just when Lois was beginning to make acquaintances and have a good time in the smart hotel at the Springs! But Mr. Wainwright felt much better farther south.

“I would like to hunt up that ranch where Jimmy stayed so long,” he said to Lois the morning after their return. “If it is comfortable, wouldn’t you like to stay a while on a ranch? I think it would be an interesting experience.”

Lois instantly became irritable. “The Daniels’ ranch! Goodness gracious, no, Daddy! There’s not a thing to do there. We’d be bored to death. Oh, don’t talk about it, please, Daddy.”

Mr. Wainwright smiled tenderly, and a little wanly. “All right, darling. I don’t want my little girl to be bored any more than we can help.”

Yet that same afternoon he returned to the hotel with the suggestion that they visit another ranch for a few days. At the Cattlemen’s Loan and Trust Company, where he was doing his banking, he had met a ranchman who had invited them out for Christmas week. The cattleman wanted Mr. Wainwright to look over his property, as he wished to secure a loan on the ranch.

Lois pouted, but as Daddy really seemed eager for it, and there was “absolutely nothing to do here,” she consented to go after she had done her Christmas shopping.

There were many pretty things in El Paso shops. Lois was astonished and, as her father gave her all the money she wanted, she really had a very good time. In a burst of enthusiasm she bought Miss Isaphine Carter a gay Spanish shawl, riotous with roses and color that suggested coquettish eyes and a balcony in Seville, rather than Miss Isaphine’s near-sighted orbs.

There was another, in the same store, which Lois liked. While hesitating over it, she became aware of the good-looking chap in uniform who seemed to be watching her intently. She purposely prolonged her inspection of the brown shawl, which was to play such a part in her life, until Mr. Wainwright exclaimed that they had just three minutes to get to the hotel to keep an appointment.

Lois glanced across the counter at the young officer, and found herself looking straight into a merry, quizzical face. Then she turned and ran after her father. Later on she had insisted on going back after the shawl. She half expected that the same young officer would be there. She really wasn’t the least bit interested, of course—but—and then to find the shawl gone!

The long ride to the ranch which they were to visit was made with indifference on Lois’ part. She sat silent while her father and Mr. Meyers (was that the man’s name?) talked about cattle, and range, and the war market. It was very stupid.

And Christmas Eve at the ranch with Mr. Meyers’ sister, Miss Angie Meyers of Texarkana, acting as sprightly hostess, was silly, with cowboys dressed as she had seen them in Madison Square Garden in New York, roaring and crowding around her, and dancing uncouth dances. Miss Angie, filled with Southern airs and graces, was absurdly up to the minute in her clothes. Why, she wore a dress with long sleeves and a low-cut neck just like Lois’ own! But she was so good-natured and affectionate that Lois rather liked her after all.

Still, she was relieved when they were ready to pile into their car the next afternoon, and she was able, for that reason, to say good-by to Mr. Meyers with real enthusiasm. He thought the young lady had had a good time, and was pleased with himself, for Mr. Wainwright had consented to make an investment in his ranch. That would furnish him with funds for extensions that his local banks were too over-borrowed to finance.

They had been riding for some time after dark when their driver stopped, and said he had got off on the wrong road somehow. He knew they were not going in the right direction. They were headed for those mountains and he knew El Paso lay over there. All the roads looked alike on these deserts. He didn’t know this country by night very well. They turned about and drove back to the last fork, taking a well-traveled road which seemed to be the main thoroughfare. But when it swung east, they stopped, realizing that they were really lost.

Mr. Wainwright, ill able to stand fatigue or exposure, began to cough, and Lois, who until now had been listlessly indifferent to whether they were lost or not, became all solicitude. It was her tenderness and petting at such times which filled her father’s heart with happiness.

The driver was just about to start the engine again when the sound of another car was heard, and in a moment the swinging searchlight came into sight. Their driver got out and held up his hand. The other car came to a stop. A young man jumped out and stepped into the light.

It was the officer whom Lois had seen in the store two days ago!

The driver explained their predicament. The young man came over, hat in hand, and bowed. When he looked up, he could not restrain a start of surprise. This doll-like blonde surely had a meltingly lovely smile! And her voice was sweet as alfalfa honey, thought the romantic Custer.

The result of the meeting was that Custer, returning to his post at Fort Bliss from the holiday visit with Raquel and his mother, joined Lois and her father on the back seat. He directed the driver to the right road, and the rented car followed them.

They talked of this and that, but it was not long before Custer said boldly, “Didn’t I see you in a curio shop in El Paso the day before Christmas?”

“Perhaps so,” replied Lois, all wide-eyed innocence. And then, “I was there.”

“And I bought the shawl you were looking at,” laughed Custer.

“Oh, it was you, you wretch! And I wanted that shawl terribly.”

“Well, I wanted terribly to speak to you,” Custer replied. “I—I thought you were some one I knew; that is, I knew about. Aren’t you Jimmy Hovey’s cousin Lois?”

Lois was completely taken aback. But it never occurred to her that this attractive fellow, a second-lieutenant, was ever anything but a lieutenant. Some friend of Jimmy’s at the fort, she thought, and smiled.

“Yes. How did you know it?”

But Custer was laughing and teasing again. He would not tell her. He thought it would be amusing if she didn’t know that he was Raquel’s brother.

Lois was unaccountably radiant. Custer was a charmer, she thought. And he was entranced.

“Looks like fate that I should meet you,” he told her.

Mr. Wainwright spoke to him then and they talked for some time of the cattle country, its present condition, and the war. Mr. Wainwright told of their Christmas visit to the A. B. Meyers ranch. He spoke of investment. Custer listened politely but this information somewhat chilled the atmosphere, and spoiled the ride a bit for him. They were nearing the city and the rest of the drive was made with little conversation.

Reaching a filling station they stopped and Custer turned to say good-by. Mr. Wainwright held out his card.

“I hope that we shall see you again when we get back to El Paso in the spring. We leave in the morning for California, but we’ll be back. I am very grateful indeed to you for setting us right.”

“Thank you, sir. I am Custer Daniels, and if ever I can be of service to you I should be proud. Only sorry it wasn’t Los Ranchos you called at instead of the Diamond Bar, Meyers’ place. You must come out when you get back this way.”

Lois had been leaning forward, smiling graciously. While Custer spoke a puzzled expression flashed across her face. Then with realization came distress. Something stirred her, something that had long lain unheeded.

Custer turned and held out his hand. “My sister would be right glad to see you again, Miss Lois,” he smiled.

The unaccountable Lois suddenly became strangely distant. Quite self-possessed and exquisite she looked, her gray squirrel coat drawn up about a coolly tilted chin.

“We probably shan’t have time on our return, thank you.”

She did not dare to meet Custer’s eyes, yet she could not withhold her hand from the hand held out to her. A limp enough hand it was that lay for a moment in Custer’s firm clasp.

He gazed after the disappearing car with surprise and bafflement. Now, what was wrong with that? Custer shrugged his shoulders and climbed back into his own car. It was a let-down to the high-spirited mood of the day. Was it because he was Raquel’s brother that she acted like that?

CHAPTER IX
THE BLIZZARD

When it is bright, sunshiny weather, the cold out West is not so penetrating, at least by day, but at night it eats into the very bones. There were long evenings of hard, dry cold, and occasionally a flurry of snow, when Raquel sat opposite Georgie and prodded him on to his lessons.

They had had no more letters from Dad and the boys. Mom, silent and undemanding, spent her time in little services for Raquel and Georgie. The great house was never overly clean, nor even tidy, except for the kitchen. There had been so much drudgery, and Mom was one of the army of western women who grow weary of struggling against the ceaseless invasion of desert dust even into the top shelves of the closets.

“Take it easy, honey. When spring comes on there’ll be plenty of hard work for you. Just wait till this cold weather breaks.”

But it did not break. One afternoon in late January after a day of dark skies it started to snow in great whirling flakes. By night it was blowing a blizzard, sweeping unbroken across the mesas with a strength that seemed to gather force with every mile, until it hurled itself in fury against the steeps of the mountains at their back.

“Well, if we don’t lose us a bunch of steers tonight, this snow’ll save the grass mebbe.” Russell, melting off before the fire, slapped the backs of his hands to bring the blood. He began to warble:

“Oh, I am a Texas cowboy,
Far away from home,
If ever I get back to Texas
I never more will roam.

“Montana is too cold for me

And the winters are too long—”

He was unfortunately interrupted by Georgie, who burst in with the message that Elena’s little girls were both sick, and Pancho and Elena wanted Mom and Raquel to please come down there.

“I’ll go.” Raquel was already slipping into her sheepskin jacket and she ran out the door calling back, “If you’re needed, Mom, I’ll come back up, or send for what’s wanted. Come on, Tooth, pronto.”

Out through the frozen patio she ran, and as she squeezed through the snow-blocked gate a cutting gale fairly snatched the breath from her lips. Alternately racing before the wind and stumbling head down against it, she and Georgie made downhill.

Blown half the distance in a few minutes, they scrambled and stumbled against the wind the rest of the way for ten or fifteen minutes more.

In the little low adobe at the foot of the corral ten-year-old Josefita sat shaking before the fire, torn by one chill after another. On a pallet against the wall a four-year-old baby, tiny Luisita, lay with glazed eyes, her lips drawn back pitifully from teeth and gums. Fragile little fingers plucked at the coverlet

“How long has she been like this?” Raquel asked sharply, a sick feeling clutching her throat.

“All day, Señorita,” Elena barely whispered, appeal and agony in her eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell us before?” Raquel stopped at Elena’s pitiful face. “Oiga,” she said in Spanish, “listen. My mother will have to try to come down. I will go to Red Dog for the Doctor. Take that grease, there on the stove, warm it at once and put it on Josefita’s chest and throat with this flannel over it. Make her a hot drink of your mescal water and sugar, Pancho. Put her feet in hot water; wrap her in a hot blanket.”

It was so they treated sick creatures in the ranch kitchen. But the baby, Luisita!

“This baby, you should have—” No good to scold that poor mother. It looked too late now. She had seen sick lambs so, but this was beyond her skill.

It seemed madness to go out in such a storm. But the Pathfinder had never failed them yet. And within twenty minutes they had started, Jami and she, bundled and gloved and mittened, the Pathfinder’s powerful lights searching through driving snow that swirled and sifted between the closed storm-curtains until she and Jami looked like two snow figures.

Pushing, plowing, slipping, skidding ahead, stopping, they went, Raquel’s hands stiff, glued to the wheel, and they had been gone only twenty minutes. And back there a baby lay gasping for its life.

“Not through the pasture yet,” shouted Jami.

But at length they made the upper gate and, once on the slopes, with a clean-swept frozen road beneath the wheels, the car seemed to take the gale between its teeth as it roared swift and straight up to the pass. The blast that struck them as they reached the top made the ascent seem like balmy weather.

Tears of pain from the cold rolled down Raquel’s face and froze there, and for a moment she had to release the wheel to Jami, who would all too willingly have driven the whole way.

The descent on the other side was made rapidly, and fairly easily. They seemed to aeroplane down through bitter arctic spaces, but when they came to enter the tiny mining town drifts mounted, choking, smothering them. The engine labored, roared like a baffled giant, and only when it had been fed with the thermos flask of hot coffee did it gather itself together, and plow up over the freezing masses of snow.

They stood at length within Doc Merrick’s house. He pulled them toward a leaping fire. The clock on the mantel showed ten, nearly an hour and a half since Raquel had looked down at the sick child in Esquibal’s house.

“Esquibal’s baby, Doc. It looks like pneumonia. I’m afraid she’s dying, and it took so long to come.”

Doc Merrick, tall, splendidly broad and bronzed, lived at the pass through the grace of God and the rare air of the mountain top, with one active lung, two active dogs and three inactive servants. Already he was buttoning his coat with one hand while he handed Raquel a cup of hot coffee with the other.

And then, with two hot-water bottles for the Pathfinder, they were outside again. And they had need of the hot water, for the force of the wind broke the momentum of the long coast from the pass, and they reached the arroyo without any speed and a cold engine. They had to stop, to back, and to rush at the heavy drifts that had piled up.

It seemed an eternity until the car plowed up to its own shed and slid in. When they reached the casita, the doctor went from one cot to the other and then set to work over wee Luisita.

Raquel and Mom, who had come without being summoned, were at his elbow, Elena and Pancho were thrust into the next room, where Panchito slept safely. If once Elena’s volcanic weeping were to start it would be beyond control.

It was seven o’clock in the morning when the doctor beckoned Raquel outside. Mrs. Daniels had gone home about dawn. Inside the two little girls slept quietly. With every care they would recover.

The world was one glittering expanse of snow, gleaming whiteness stretching everywhere, clear and cold and quiet under a dazzling sun. The mountains looked like a frosted Christmas card.

Raquel was tired. Even her youthful face was drawn in that searching light.

“Well, well, young lady, you mustn’t look so sad. Think of what you have accomplished in the last twelve hours. Come, a little breakfast will fix you up,” and Doctor Merrick put a hand under her elbow. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

“Just a branding iron.” Raquel lifted the heavy bar. In the snow at her feet a large letter H was cut diagonally. She rubbed it out with her boot, and shouldering the iron walked up the hill with the doctor.

So Pancho was the rustler! Living right here on Dad’s land! She had noticed the iron in a corner back of the kitchen stove as she sat tending the fire and boiling water during the night. Well, at any rate, Pancho cared enough about his babies to have forgotten such incriminating evidence. He had left it right out where it could be seen. Ordinarily such a discovery would have driven any ranch owner wild, but now, somehow, the struggle for the children’s lives during the night had made other things seem unimportant.

As she passed the bunk house, Russ and Jami came out.

“We’re startin’ out to see how the steers on the mesa stood the storm.” Russ looked at the Boss for confirmation, and Raquel nodded.

“Russ, did you ever see any Lazy L whitefaces, or cattle that looked like Ranchos whitefaces, branded like this?” She held up the iron.

“About a month ago George and I found a heifer at the spring below La Bolsa. It was one that I had branded last summer and was burned over like this.”

Russ swore a round range oath. “Beg your pardon, ma’am, but—” and he sputtered.

“Don’t say a word, Russ. I found it in Pancho’s cabin this morning. Wait till the little girls are well and we’ll fire him clean off Los Ranchos. Dad always said he was mean, but never thought that he would steal.”

After breakfast Raquel slipped into her icy room, crept between blankets that Mom had warmed in the kitchen, and slept for six hours. She woke refreshed, so invigorated by the bracing air that she did not feel the exertion of the night before at all.

Georgie was in the kitchen, on his knees behind the stove, where he had a pair of twin lambs, poor little early offspring that Russ had rescued from a snow drift. Their mother’s body over them had saved them from her fate. Mom and Georgie had poured warm milk from a spoon down their throats, and the little pink noses were beginning to quiver with returning life. They made awkward movements in their soft nest, and blindly adopted the nursing bottle for their mother.

The blizzard took heavy toll over all that part of the state. But Los Ranchos suffered less than most ranges because the cattle were in excellent shape and better able to weather such exposure. The wisdom of Mr. Daniels in acquiring the new piece of range was shown, for the cattle had had fresh grazing for a month before the blizzard; also, that tract of land happened to be protected from northerly winds, and ranged up into the foothills where there were many sheltering canyons.

Raquel, Pancho Esquibal, Angel, Russ and Jami, in a week’s time covered all the lowlands and found not more than twenty casualties.

“We’ll have no trouble rounding up our thousand head, or more,” Russell told her. They were in the middle of February then.

One day the cold weather was gone. The sun shone with surprising heat, the roads were dried up. Raquel drove into town for the mail. She had not been in for a month, although some one went for the mail every week.

There was a big packet, but Raquel did not open it after she saw a letter to her mother on top. She turned and flew straight back to the ranch. Mom was in the kitchen with the lambs, now frisking blithely in the life-giving sunshine that poured through the door. The two other little lambs of the blizzard night, Luisita and Josefita, more languid, but not so white, played beside them.

“You read it, Raquel.” Mom’s hand shook as she held out the letter.

Dad had made his second trip over on cattle transports. Both times they had narrowly escaped being attacked by submarines, and Dad was full of the stupidities of some folks when it came to handling cattle.

“I don’t blame the poor critters none for bein’ seasick,” wrote Dad, “and I wished for Raquel many a time to help me try to quiet them with that way she has when they get frightened.

“Now, Raquel, as soon as you meet the note, deliver the Government as many steers as you can as soon as possible. You’ll be gettin’ a request some time this spring, so be ready. These boys have to eat if we’re goin’ to win this war. Why, I talked with a soldier that said he hadn’t had anything but fudge for a week!”

At that Raquel laughed until she was weak. But the letter had stirred her seriously with a passionate desire for action. The winter seemed as if it would never end. But now the time was coming for which they had been waiting. In two weeks they would begin to pick out their cattle for shipment.

Now the real test for her was at hand. She felt somehow that it was going to be a test; that unforeseen obstacles were waiting. But if other women and girls were taking the place of men all over the country, doing things that they never had done before, she, Raquel Daniels, brought up on the range, used to handling cattle all her life, would be pretty good for nothing if she couldn’t do her bit.

And then she opened the letters from Anne and Miss Carter which came in the same packet.

“We have not forgotten you here at The Towers,” wrote Miss Hetty. “The mistletoe is still green, and so is your memory. I see that the Government is counting greatly on its Western ranches for war supplies, and I envy you your chance to help.”

That was nice of Miss Carter to write her. But my, how far away school seemed now! She could think only of the spring roundup, and the cattle to be shipped from Los Ranchos.

Anne’s letter, however, read aloud to Mom, roused vivid and affectionate memories. Anne loved the Indian necklace, and the mistletoe, “which furnished kisses to lots of parting sweethearts at a big party we gave here New Year’s Night. Did you get the books, darlin’, and the other things? The etching was from Barry, you know. He sailed last week.”

“Didn’t you answer Anne’s letter yet, honey?” Mrs. Daniels looked up in reproof.

“Of course I did, Mother, the next week. Tooth took it in for me.” Georgie had risen stealthily and was creeping from the room. Raquel overtook him at a stride, caught his woolly collar, and from the crumby recesses of an inner pocket of his sheepskin jacket drew forth her six weeks’ old letter to Anne.

She cuffed him, and returned to Anne’s letter, feeling a strange disappointment that Barry should have gone overseas without having had her thanks, without having read her letter to the family at least, for she had been too shy, too “provincial,” Lois would have said, to thank Barry herself.

“The girls at school write,” Anne concluded her letter, “that no one has heard a word from Lois Wainwright since the first few post cards she sent from El Paso. I wonder where she is and why she doesn’t write. I understand that Miss Carter has suggested to your Jimmy that if Lois’ father does not recover she return to school where she can be among old friends. Mr. Wainwright’s lawyers in Boston haven’t even heard from him, and have no idea where he is, as he had said he might go to California, or to the Orient. Did you know that they were in El Paso for some time after you returned home?”

Raquel sat motionless. She felt vaguely covered with a sense of great wrongdoing. Just what it was she did not at first seem to see clearly. Oh, yes, she should have told Jimmy, for then he would have found out where Lois and her father were; he could have seen them while he was stationed so near El Paso. He had been only a few miles away all the time!

Never before in her life had Raquel suffered such a sense of sick shame as came to her then. Once, when she was eight years old, she had stood by and watched her pet coon suck a dozen of Mom’s imported white leghorn eggs, which she had put under a setting hen the day before. Raquel felt now somewhat as she had after that performance.

Russell was standing in the door waiting for Raquel to look up from the letter at which she had been staring for so long.

“Could I speak to you a moment, alone?” He jerked his head towards the store room.

“Now, this here Pancho,” he began when the door was closed behind them, “this here Pancho, it’s time to vamoose him. Roundup’s comin’ on, and if he thinks we ain’t on to him he’ll try some more of this cattle brandin’ business and if he does I’m li’ble to fill him full o’ lead.

“I recommend that we have a understandin’ with him, now that the little gals is well agin, and that you as Boss of the Lazy L backs me as foreman and ridin’ boss, and fires him.”

“Yes,” assented Raquel, dully, “yes. It’s only fair to Dad.”

The interview in the saddle shed was not a happy affair. Pancho, suave, confident, plausible, with a trace of insolence, could explain everything.

The branding iron had been found on the range the day before, was brought home and, on account of the illness of the muchachitas, had been forgotten. That was why he had not mentioned it at the time.

“But why not since?” asked Raquel.

Esquibal quivered with righteous anger. What! They doubted him? Never before had the word of an Esquibal— What should a stray branding iron matter?

“Nothing much except that practically all of the brands in this part of the country are well known,” Raquel replied, “as you know, and this seems to be a new one. And as you also probably know, it has been used over the Lazy L. In fact, it covers it very nicely.”

At that Pancho Esquibal started involuntarily.

“You do not mean you suspect me—me—of stealing cattle?”

“Forget that stuff, Pancho,” advised Russell coldly. “What proof you got that this isn’t your doin’s?”

“What proof have you it is?” Esquibal shot back, while Raquel waved away the discussion with an impatient hand.

“Oiga, Pancho. It may be as you say. But the matter of the gas you sold does not look very well for you.”

It seems that Señor Daniels had told him to sell the gas when any one needed it, and that he could either turn over the money, or have it taken out of his wages. There were the cans. The Padroncita could count up just what had been sold—if she wished to deduct it.

Raquel hardly knew what to do. She shared with her family the sentiment for Elena and the children. Pancho was a valuable hand, and it would be difficult to handle the roundup without him. The chances were he’d stay put for a while anyway.

“Well, Pancho, I don’t want to be unfair, and we’ll wait till Dad comes home before we carry out that firing sentence. We’ll see what rebranded cattle come to light in the spring roundup.”

Esquibal bowed, and without a glance at Russell turned on his heel.

“We’d better have turned him off. That’s a snake meaner’n a rattler. He gives no warnin’.”

“Dear Jimmy,” Raquel started her letter off bravely that night. But after two hours of struggle she folded what she had written and sealed it quickly within an envelope. It had been hard, and she ended by telling him plainly:

“I did a very mean, crooked thing. I knew Lois was in the West with her father. She left school when I did. But I didn’t tell you because I guess I didn’t want you to go to see her. She didn’t care for me at school, and we were not roommates after all.

“I certainly didn’t love her, and that’s the truth. But I should have told you and then you could have looked them up while you were at Fort Bliss. I heard from Anne Marvin that no one knows where they are just now. But I suppose you’ll see them on their way back, and maybe you’ve heard from them yourself by now.

“Well, I suppose you will be awfully disappointed in me, Jimmy. I guess I’m mean and vindictive—no good.—As ever,

“Raquel Daniels.

“P. S. She’s prettier than ever.”

CHAPTER X
THAT DANIELS GAL

“Tomorrow’s the great day, Mother Daniels. We begin roundin’ up. Four weeks isn’t too much time.”

February found the winds still sharp, as they blew down from frozen drifts on high slopes and in the shade of deep canyons. But the sun of midday was warm and the ground was as dry as if it had not been covered with snow two weeks before.

Three weeks of exhausting riding made the roundup nearly complete. It had meant hard work for the six cowhands, bringing the cattle together by ones, twos, sixes, out of canyons, off the open range, up on the slopes, and driving them down steadily toward the big fenced corral that lay ten miles from the house.

Ole Hossfoot had come down to help, and chose to ride night herd with Russ. Esquibal worked so faithfully and efficiently that Raquel’s suspicions were allayed, and she was ready to forgive him almost anything when he cut out fifty head of steers from a big bunch of yearlings and cows that were to calve that spring, and did it all in the space of a day’s marvelous riding. The cattle were in surprisingly good shape, clean, rangy, well grown.

“It’s a beautiful breed, that whiteface,” said Raquel to Ole Hossfoot.

“Mm—mm,” he assented, “that red color’s nice. But to tell the truth I can’t see nothin’ beautiful in a cow. Can’t seem to get enthusiastic over ’em none. Take a hoss now—,” and he was off, expatiating on the beauties of the wild horses that had been breeding over north, come down from Colorado, Montana, Nebraska.

“Soon’s this roundup’s over that’s where I’m going to get a new horse,” Raquel decided, fired by his descriptions.

During the first week of the roundup, Raquel returned to the ranch house to sleep. But as the outfit worked farther away from home at the beginning of the second week, she rode up with a pack on her pony to the door of the Raquelita, the roundup ranchito twenty miles from the house, where the boys were now bunking. From the dust that followed her emerged the Ford, driven by Jami, with Mrs. Peevey and Lena in the back seat.

“Here you, Russ, Mom says to eat these dried fruits or you’ll never get over those boils.” And she threw a sack of provisions on the floor. “We’re going to live high now, with Miz Peevey and Lena to cook for us.”

During the first week of the cow working, Raquel had telegraphed a commission firm in Kansas City that she could ship one thousand head of cattle by March first. She then advised the railroad office at El Paso to have cars ready for her by that day. She found, however, that it would be impossible to get any cars at all until March fifteenth, as both Arizona and New Mexico ranches were shipping.

She went all the way into La Cruz to call the freight agent at El Paso on the long distance telephone, and he assured her that he would do all in his power to get her cars earlier, but that she should surely have them not later than March fifteenth. So she notified Kansas City of the change and, not waiting to hear from them, returned to the range.

It seemed then as if the extension of time had been providential, for every kind of upset and delay descended on them. Twice there were stampedes at night when the animals were “spooked” by no one knew what. One night a bunch of three-year-olds carried away corral and wire fence and fled into the hills; and they had to be pursued and brought together all over again.

The overworked cowponies had to be reënforced by a half dozen fresh horses from the big house. Russ rode night herd, falling asleep in the saddle.

Had it not been for Ole Hossfoot’s vigilance and his stories that kept up their spirits, they could not have brought the herd together again in so short a time. At length twelve hundred head were rounded up from the plain and from canyon and basin where they were hiding.

Early the next morning they were to be driven over to the ranch corrals. A circle of soapweed flares was lit; as fast as one burned down some one would touch a match to another. The leaping flames warmed the sharp air, and signaled Mom, fifteen miles away, that all was well. They lit up a sea of whitefaces and kept away those sinister, lurking dog shapes that prowled in wide circles about the outfit.

Georgie slept, toasting his soaking feet by a bed of dying coals. Raquel drowsed near. Good fortune seemed to be with her, for there was no stampeding, no restlessness. Between eleven o’clock and midnight, as was their habit, the cows got up to graze a bit on the grass which lay beneath their feet. They swallowed it unchewed, turned around, and lay down again, amidst a gentle stirring and rumbling.

With a prayer in her heart for no more mishaps, Raquel slept the dreamless sleep of weary muscles and the boundless, pure air of the prairie. Five or six hours later, just as it was growing light, she woke to hear the milling about of the cattle, the mooing, and the call for fresh feeding grounds.

That night found them within four miles of the house, so Raquel rode on to El Rancho, as the boys would have the stock safely corralled before noon next day. March fifteenth was still two days away.

But the next day at La Cruz, Raquel was to learn that business was not accomplished merely by giving orders, sending telegrams, securing promises. “No cars available for the fifteenth,” was the message she got over the telephone from the El Paso freight agent. There was no further word from the Kansas City commission firm, so she hurried back to Los Ranchos to advise with Russ.

“The first time I’ve had my feet under a table in more than two weeks,” she said as she sat at lunch with Mom. The sound of a car was heard outside. Panchito came in to say that un caballero wished to see the padroncita.

Raquel went out to find a sporty-looking gentleman in a plaid ulster sitting in a rented car. He jumped out and introduced himself as buyer for the Kansas City firm with which she was dealing.

“Was in El Paso, Miss Daniels. Am buying to supply the Government. Just thought I’d run up here and see you personally in regard to your wire.” He showed her a copy of her telegram to his firm.

Feeders would bring only thirty-five dollars on the hoof, he said. Feeders, as all cattle country folks know, are cattle shipped straight from the range to be fed up by the packing companies on corn cakes and hay until their meat is hardened and fit for market.

Raquel was disturbed and disappointed, but quickly calculated that as they had brought in two hundred extra head they could ship every animal, make enough to meet all expenses, and still have forty thousand dollars clear. That would take care of the note, the option and the interest.

“But I can’t get cars until after the fifteenth, anyway,” she told him.

“Oh, I think I could swing that for you, Miss,” he replied easily. “If you’ll just say the word on this deal and close right now, I think we can manage to have those cars on the fifteenth.”

Caution made her refuse to close any deal until she had thought it over, and could make other inquiries. She agreed to meet him in La Cruz two days later.

Turning to the stock page of her paper that evening she found feeders quoted at fifty-five dollars a head for the coming week. The rise in beef that took place during the war, and that later was to bring every head of stock to seventy-five and ninety dollars on the hoof, had begun.

Raquel was amazed. She sent Georgie riding in to La Cruz the first thing next morning to telegraph inquiry to Kansas City and to wire El Paso about her cattle cars again. He was to wait until three for the answers.

Georgie returned at four, and Raquel, who had been down at the shipping pen ever since he had left that morning, met him at the big gate. She seized the message he held out. It was from the El Paso freight agent, stating that he could not let her have any cars until after April first. On account of the war all transportation was congested and every available inch of space had been tied up, by orders from “up above.”

Raquel’s fighting blood rose. She had felt all along that there was “something up.”

“‘A. B.’ is back of this,” she said with tightened lips.

“He’s in Kansas City, Sis,” Georgie told her. “I heard ’em saying over to Red Dog. Shipped round March first along with his cattle.”

“Well, I’ll go down to town and see why I can’t get my cars when I ordered them a month ahead of time.”

It was unthinkable! She must have accommodations. What if she should mismanage things—fail? She shook such a thought away from her. Surely the freight office and the commission man were not trying to take advantage of her just because she was a girl! Wait till tomorrow.

A glorious day dawned and the old car did not ease up on sixty miles an hour until they reached La Cruz. Raquel was not thinking of stone-bruised tires now.

She got El Paso on the telephone.

“Mr. Massey? We’ve done business with your road for years. What is the matter about our cattle cars? Is that true? Why is it impossible to let us have them?”

“Miss Daniels? I can’t say ma’am. It seems queer, I know. I had the reservations for you for March fifteenth all right; then I got orders clearing the way for shipments for ‘A. B.’ Meyers; then two Arizona ranches were set ahead by orders from up above to March fifteenth, that date given you. Unless you can get at it from higher up that’s final, I’m afraid.” He spoke regretfully, for Mr. Daniels and Los Ranchos were popular.

Raquel came out of the booth fighting mad. Yet her heart was sick, for she felt in this mixup something that was not quite straight business. What, what must she do? She was to see the Shift commission man at two-thirty. He would return to El Paso at four-thirty. She might have to take his offer rather than have any slip up. With half a mind to go down to El Paso herself, she put off the decision till after three.

She went into the post office, and collected her mail, hoping to find some inspiration there. Among the papers was a letter from Jimmy.

“By the time you have this,” he wrote, “Raquel my dear, I shall be back at Fort Bliss. Won’t that be great? Being just outside El Paso, I’ll be able to get in there fairly often. Why can’t you come down for a bit of fun? I’m dying to go to a movie!”

Quick! Back to the telegraph office she flew. A message was soon speeding over the wires to Lieutenant James Hovey, Fort Bliss. “What’s holding back my cars?” was the query. “See what you can do for us and wire if it will do any good for me to come down.”

While she waited for an answer she took Mom to lunch, and afterwards wired another Kansas City firm. She sent the message to an old friend of her father, Edward Lisle by name. A prompt reply came whizzing back from Kansas City. At two o’clock, as she leaned over the telegraph counter, the following message was handed her:

“Can not offer market price for Government supply feeders, but $50 a head on delivery, and $75 for fattened cattle of Lazy L grade.”

“Edward Lisle.”

What an offer! With a whoop of joy, Raquel rushed out across the street to the car where she had left Mom with her bundles.

“Thought the bottom had dropped out of the cattle business, Mom, but it’s O.K. still! Just let me meet this note and the Government can have all we make above expenses afterwards. There’s something wrong somewhere, though. I don’t know what or why. But I figure ‘A. B.’s’ got something to do with it. Now if Jimmy can just get us some cars!”

At two-thirty exactly, in the lobby of the dingy little hotel, Emporio Magnifico, she informed the commission agent that she could not close with him on his terms.

“Well, Miss,” he replied angrily, “have your own way. But I could get you your cars and you’d have a quick turnover. Which is better? Thirty-five thousand in hand when you want it, or delay? I tell you straight, my girl, you’ll find it a pretty hard job gettin’ any transportation at all for the next two months without some kind of pull. I know.”

“All right. That’s my problem,” Raquel came back, “but I’m not selling my father’s cattle for fifteen dollars less than I can get. I’ll tell you good day, sir.” And she left him standing there.

But out on the street her elation faded as she recalled suddenly that now more than ever she must have cars. Would Jimmy be able to do anything for her? He had not mentioned her letter, nor Lois. Maybe he hadn’t received it.

Well, he would do all he could for Dad’s sake, anyway. And dismissing her fears with a shake of the head, she crossed the street again and went into the bank. Every one in town knew Raquel Daniels, and she knew every one. But today she missed many a pleasant smile, and deprived several ready youths of the opportunity of lifting their sombreros.

In the sanctum of the President, back of a little door marked “Private,” she shook hands with a rotund little man whose nervous manner was in strange contrast to her own quiet air.

“It’s about the note, and the interest, Mr. Putney,” she said, thinking to herself, “My, he’s afraid of something else now—his new directors; probably ‘A. B.’”

“Yes, yes. Not due for two weeks, my dear Miss Raquel.” Mr. Putney had never forgotten his Eastern manners.

“No, sir. I was just going to say I’ll meet it on time. But I was just wondering if there were any slip-up in getting my cattle cars on time if I could get a few days’ extension?”

Mr. Putney looked worried.

“I trust such a thing won’t happen. It would be most unfortunate, Miss Raquel, indeed, even for a stockholder of your father’s assets. For the new directors have—well, ah—intimated that no extension would be considered.”

Raquel was looking quite as self-possessed when she walked out of the bank as she had when she walked in, but within her breast was a turmoil. Back to the telegraph office she went.

Eagerly she tore open the yellow envelope that was eventually handed across the counter.

“Don’t worry,” it ran, “will find out what’s what and get some action. Can’t get away just now but will come up first chance. Jimmy.”

Raquel felt suddenly that it was surely mighty nice to have some man folks to stand up for you and help you out sometimes. Leaving word with the operator to have any further messages telephoned to Red Dog, she turned the nose of her car out on the sandy mesa that rose gently to the foot of her purpling mountains.

She would need five days to move in before April first. Two to get the cattle into the railroad; two for transit; one for immediate payment. She had four days’ grace. Why had she trusted any one? Engrossed with her thoughts, and with the mechanical necessity of driving, she did not speak until the little lighted casitas of Red Dog shone ahead.

With their friendly twinkle a light of inspiration seemed to penetrate the problem in Raquel’s mind. Her next move was all at once clear. But she’d take no one into her confidence!

She’d do like Dad. For all he seemed to talk so much and so openly of his affairs, when you stopped to think it over he never did really tell anybody anything they couldn’t find out for themselves.

When she looked back on the days that followed they seemed like a dream—of tense waiting, and daily trips from the big corral over to Red Dog or La Cruz to find the occasional hopeful bulletins from Jimmy.

Then, on the night of the twenty-fifth, a ranger brought word that a Mr. Hovey was calling her from El Paso. She drove into Red Dog to talk to him over the telephone.

“Drive your cattle down tomorrow. There will be cars for twelve hundred head at the La Cruz yards between six and seven tomorrow morning.

“Don’t ask how I did it! Just pull—that may not last more than twenty-four hours. Will be up next week.” Jimmy’s far-away voice ended in a satisfied chuckle.

At dawn with the bells of Los Ranchos tolling, all hands went down to the big pens. The cattle had been resting and fattening for the past ten days inside a half-mile fence. There was some pretty riding and roping and some fancy cow work as they were herded up for the drive down to the yards at La Cruz.

The hardest part of the drive was getting them up to the pass and over it. But they made it by four that afternoon, and dropped down to the mesa beyond Red Dog.

“There goes Daniels’ gal,” said the saloon keeper as he peered out. “Seems like she’s kep’ agoin’ spite of old ‘A. B.’”

“La Raquelita is not through yet. The ganado are not shipped,” said a swarthy sheepherder drinking there. “Many things happen on the road.” There was a sneering smile on his face.

“What the ——, you yellow-livered woman beater, you!” roared Red Dog, and pushed the man out through the door before he thought to ask him what that meant, if anything.

And, being quite drunk himself, Red Dog fell asleep with his head on the table, instead of riding after the dust of the Daniels girl’s outfit.

Camp was made three miles out of La Cruz, and never before had a shipment of cattle seemed so momentous to Raquel.

“This is the most important shippin’ Los Ranchos ever did,” she grinned at Russell over the soapweed fire.

“Well, the worst is over now,” he assured her. “Why don’t you go on in to town in the car and get a good night’s sleep? Nothin’ will happen and we’ll be right there in the mornin’, ready to start shippin’ at six.”

A cold, biting rain had been falling off and on ever since they had left Red Dog—one of those miserable March visitations which even the land of sunshine must endure if there is to be grass on the range. Raquel was drenched from her waist down. Her boots had not been off for three days. And now she was drying them on her feet before the fire so that she would be able to get them on again after she did take them off. She hated to leave her outfit now, but she was dead for sleep; and besides, there were things for her to attend to in town.

“All right, boys, I will. Tomorrow’s Tuesday. We ship our cattle. They arrive Thursday. And Friday morning, April first—and incidentally my birthday, boys”—as if they didn’t know it—“I step into the First National Bank for a few moments, and when I come out you can celebrate.”

They smiled gallantly, and Russ looked enormously relieved. No one knew what the faithful cowboy had suffered during all these negotiations about cars. Raquel’s apparent confidence had preserved the morale of the whole outfit, although they knew nothing of the financial drama that was being played.

So “La Raquelita” drove off through the misting rain. Her feverish eyes concentrated on the washouts in the road ahead, for the ruts were running rivers. She did not see the horse and rider, poncho-covered, cowering behind a mesquite bush not fifteen feet from where she passed. It was the dark sheepherder of Red Dog’s saloon. He rode a horse branded with a large leaning H, that showed up clearly for a moment when the searchlight of Raquel’s car swerved sidewise as the car skidded in the mud.

“What was that?” Raquel wondered. But as her eyes were on the road in front of her, so were her thoughts concentrated on what lay ahead, and she lurched on.

At length she reached town, and a paved street. How grateful was the hard little bed at El Emporio Magnifico, and the hot little room, bursting with its sheet-iron stove!

Eight hours later Georgie stood by Raquel’s bed, shaking her to wake her up. He shook and shook. “What was that? What? The steers stampeded?—Wait now, let’s get this straight. Last night, after I left?

“Oh, stop sniffling, Georgie. What’s to prevent getting them back for a late shipment tonight?

“Nearly half the rodeo?—Well, let Russ tell me himself then!”

Raquel sprang from bed. She was shaking with the shock of this misfortune. This was more than a cowman’s luck. This was—disaster. Just to miss the amount of the note! No use trying to dicker at the bank. She was dressing rapidly, as these thoughts flashed through her mind. Six hundred head at fifty dollars a head, was thirty thousand dollars. Where could she get ten thousand more?

There was a knock at the door and a fat letter was pushed beneath. “Registered letter come last night for Miss Raquel Daniels,” announced a hoarse voice that sounded like music to Raquel. Something had to happen. This must be it. She had almost forgotten——

“And that was all there was to it, Jimmy,” said Raquel exultingly a week later. She had reached that point in her story of the deal as she and Jimmy sat before a fire in the ranch sitting-room.

It was a week from the Sunday after Raquel’s birthday. Jimmy had come over for a day.

“Go on,” he roared. “It may be all as far as you are concerned, but you haven’t told me yet a word of what really happened in between.”

“Well, when I got down to the yards, there were Jami and Russ lookin’ as if they’d lost their last friend on earth. They had six hundred head of cattle ready to ship, but six hundred more were out on the mesa. They figured it would take a week to get them in, scattered as they were.

“Some one had deliberately spooked them, of course, and only Mom here knew who that some one was.” Mom had come in and was rocking with expressive contentment. You could generally tell Mom’s emotions by the speed of her rocker.

“It seems that that same night about eight o’clock,” Raquel went on, “Elena came up here crying her eyes out. She’d just come back from La Bolsa, and didn’t know we’d gone with the cattle. Wanted to know where I was and when we were taking el ganado down into town to the railroad.

“She said that Pancho was a bad hombre, and though he had threatened her she would not keep silent any more. Dad had always been kind to her, and we cured her little girls just a few weeks ago.

“Well then, she would tell everything. Pancho was not only working here at Los Ranchos; he was also working for ‘A. B.,’ and always told him just what Los Ranchos was going to do. It was Pancho who stampeded the cattle in order to hold things up as much as possible.

“And when I got ready to sell to some one else rather than the man whom ‘A. B.’ dealt with, and had managed to get the cars which Pancho said he didn’t think I would get for a long time, Pancho got a message from ‘A. B.’ to keep the cattle from being shipped.

“He and her first cousin—the La Bolsa sheepherder, brother of the half-wit we met the day of the hunt, Georgie,—well, they did it. Were going to do it, she said.

“It was the poor innocent half-wit who had taken the sheep over to La Bolsa. They hadn’t been stolen by the lion at all! Pancho had made Gabriel drive them over in the old oxcart. Remember how Old Cap carried on, Georgie, at the start of the hunt, and how he wanted to chew Gabriel up?”

“Yes, yes, but get on and tell about the bank part!”

“I’m coming to it! Jimmy! Will you keep still a minute! Well, poor Elena, she nearly had an ataque when she found we’d already gone. I tell you I am getting to the bank part!

“So I told the boys to go ahead and ship what was there, because the boys at the station had orders not to hold the cars longer than twelve hours. Jami and Angel went along with ’em and arrived in Kansas City Thursday all right.

“I guess even that was a disappointment to some folks, ’cause that meant thirty thousand dollars, and any one can raise five or ten thousand, some way. But I didn’t have to! Yes, some folks were sure disappointed that day.”

Jimmy exploded in a curdling yell of impatience, but Raquel continued, ignoring the interruption placidly.

“When I walked into the bank at ten-thirty in the morning, April first, lookin’ very sour, and handed out a draft on the National City Bank, New York City, for thirty-five thousand dollars, signed by Barry C. Marvin, Sr., of Boston, there was surely some surprise. I wish you could have seen Mr. A. B. Meyers’ face, and Mr. Putnam looked pleased in spite of himself, though he was actually apologetic to ‘A. B.’”

“You see, that was the idea that came to me the night Mom and I were motoring home from La Cruz. I said to myself, ‘I’ll tell Anne’s father all about it. Maybe he’ll advance me the money. He can’t lose in the long run. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll help. So I wrote him a letter right away.

“I didn’t dare to hope for it, or scarcely think about it, even. I went ahead to ship our cattle, so that whatever happened we’d be all right.

“Then, when they did finally manage to break up our herd that morning and I was trying to think there in the hotel—I just couldn’t admit failure, even though it seemed to stare me in the face—why, that wonderful letter of Mr. Marvin’s came pokin’ under the door.

“It meant that I didn’t fail Dad; and that we could let half our range rest for the next year. That even if we get another dry year we’ll have fresh pasture. And we’ve got the calves to put on it and that’s more than ‘A. B.’ has. And if this war lasts those calves are goin’ to be badly needed next winter.”

“Rakie, you’re a financier! I am lost in pure and simple admiration. And luck’s with you, too. The market’s gone up.” Jimmy pointed to a place he had marked in the paper.

“I know. We can ship a thousand head in another week, including the six hundred strays. Russ has got all but a few of them back now. They just did us a good turn by savin’ half our shipment out for a higher price. In fact, delayin’ the cars brought us fifty-five dollars a head for those we did ship instead of fifty, and we’ll get sixty for this next bunch.”

“Well, you owe that to ‘A. B.’ too, I suspect,” said Jimmy. “The delay in the cars, I mean. I found out that it was he who pulled the wires over the freight agent’s head, without lettin’ him know that it was the Daniels’ ranch he had it in for, of course. Just slippin’ friends of his in ahead. I found out, too, that his El Paso bank holds a couple of notes of the agent’s.

“Your order for cars could just as well have gone through at any time, barring the usual delays, I imagine, for when my friend, the Major, got down there the morning after you wired me, the order was forthcoming from the agent himself without any difficulty. There was a loud-mouthed fellow in a plaid overcoat in the office at the same time, blustering about something or other, but the agent just waved him aside.”

“That miserable commission man!” Raquel exclaimed. “Didn’t Dad warn me? Offering me fifteen dollars a head less than the market, and trying to tell me he could get me cars if I’d just close the deal right off.—You know, I was pretty near ready to take his offer there for a time. Everything looked so discouraging.” She made the admission shamefacedly.

“He thought he could put anything over on you because you were a girl and he would just pocket the difference. He thought he had you either way. If you had agreed to sell you would never have got your money in time to meet the note. Wonder if Pancho knew anything about all this?” Jimmy turned inquiringly to Mom. “Where is he?”

“He hasn’t come back. Elena doesn’t know where he is. Over at La Bolsa, I guess, gettin’ ready to brand all the strays and drifters from Colorado down he can lay his hands on, with that big old Flying H. Ain’t nobody but Pancho would be that cute to make him such a handy brand.” Mom had been silent as usual but there was nothing in the proceedings or conversation that she had missed.

Had they been able to see Pancho at that moment—and it was too bad that they could not—they would have beheld a most chagrined hombre. Leaning over a little table in a barroom in La Cruz, he was glaring angrily at the cattleman who sat opposite him.

“I have done all you said. Hol’ back the cow work three, four week; I stop the sheepment. I want my money. My esposa, my wife, she no speak to me. She’s good amiga to el padron, la padrona; she think he can not help take her father’s Rancho. Me, I take what coming to me. I want my money now.”

The cowman shook his head imperturbably.

“When I get mine you get yours, understand, sabe? I got nothing out of this. The deal’s off. The hombre who was to pay both you and me on the cattle deal didn’t pull it off, though I fixed the cars for the——,” and he swore an ugly oath.

“The sale didn’t go through. He didn’t get any commission, see. And you let that gal ship half anyway. What you kickin’ about anyway? You got a ranch to work, ain’t you, a place to start you a herd? What’s the matter with the Flying H, that little private brand o’ yo’rn?”

And with a laugh and an oath that but faintly expressed his disgust at the situation “A. B.” waved Esquibal off and rose from the table.

It seemed that Raquel and Jimmy, too, had come to a time of settlement—about the question of Lois. Jimmy had not mentioned Raquel’s letter, but now, as they sat alone once more before the fire, while Mom got supper and the boys were out at the chores, Jimmy told her that he had heard from his uncle.

It was while he was in Kansas, he said. His uncle had missed him in El Paso anyway. They had been up in Colorado, but found it too cold there. They were leaving for California, and would see him on the way back. It was very possible that they might go on to the Orient.

It was plain that Jimmy was keenly disappointed to have missed his uncle and Lois, and also to learn that she had failed him, and had been unkind to Raquel. It worried him, too, this uncertainty as to their plans. It was not a bit like his uncle, he said. But it was like Lois, Raquel could not help thinking.

CHAPTER XI
THE WILD HORSE

Suddenly one day they were in the midst of spring. It was impossible to believe that there had been such a blizzard only six weeks before. The sun shone with a desperate heat for early April, the arroyos dried up, the open range was calling.

Now the time had come, Raquel decided, to make that trip over into the reaches of the upper Pecos where a bunch of wild horses had been running free for several years. These horses had straggled down from Montana and Wyoming, it was said, through Colorado and New Mexico, and had multiplied on the unfenced stretches of Texas range.

Ole Hossfoot had reported that a band of fine horse stock, partly mustang, was going to waste over there. The wild horses used up range that was needed for beef stock, and the hand of the cattleman was set against them.

It was almost impossible to capture them, and if a stockman did take the trouble what could he do with them? They brought less than a cow at the stockyards, and you couldn’t sell an “unbroke” mustang for anything. And so many of these fine, free animals ended with a bullet between the eyes.

Yet there they were, ready to be gentled into prize ponies for any one who would take the trouble. It would be an undertaking thoroughly to Raquel’s liking, to capture a few of the swift, untamed creatures.

“I’m going over there and get me a horse, Mom. We’ll need more horses for the roundup, and there’s as good stock built up by wild living as any bred cowhorse I know today.”

Mrs. Daniels sighed.

“Does seem like you’re never satisfied unless you get a new piece of wild, buckin’ horseflesh under you, Raquel.” It was as near a reproof as she had ever come.

But she said no more when she saw them getting ready.

“If I remember the lay of that country over there,” Raquel told Russell, “there are at least two canyons where you could close the end and corral a few animals anyway. If it takes over a week we’ll not linger. But I have my heart set on getting a horse from off the plains with a little raw mustang in him, a little Arab stallion and some native blood,—a real wild horse.”

Jami, Georgie, and Angel, who was a good roper, were to go. Jami and Angel rode, but Raquel and Georgie took the car as far as the Shandy ranch, sixty miles from the Lazy L. There they left it under a shed while they rode out to look over the country on horses borrowed from their ranch neighbors.

Old Shandy, a man not more than forty who looked sixty, rode with them, leading the way towards the distant pastures where the wild herd ran. They stood upon the crest of a slope, looking away over rolling distances bound to the north and the east by low-lying foothills.

The range was magnificent with young gramma grass, and thick patches of bunch grass. Behind a clump of Spanish dagger where the soil was still soft from the recently melted snow was the print of a horse’s unshod hoof.

Further along they came across a hoof print larger for a wild horse than any they had ever seen. Both Raquel and Georgie were delighted. But it was growing dark, too late for any more land looking that day, so they turned back to Shandy’s, where they were to put up.

Shandy and his old woman—really old, alas, at thirty-eight, and childless—were so excited with the unusual experience of having company that they talked, no doubt, more than they had in six months.

Raquel had brought provisions in the car and over Mrs. Shandy’s protests insisted on bringing them in. They were not going to eat the Shandys out of house and home without warning that way.

She helped Mrs. Shandy fry the bacon and peel potatoes, while they set beans to soaking for the next day. There was a sack of cornmeal, one of dried peaches, and a case of condensed milk, for the Shandys, like most ranch folk, kept no milk cattle.

They ate hearty dinners at five, and by eight were all stowed away, too sleepy to talk, in their hard beds, anchored under the equally hard “comforters” provided by Mrs. Shandy, and the Navajo rugs which Raquel had packed in the car.

Raquel and Georgie slept beside each other in a tiny room off the kitchen, which was living-room, bedroom, and dining-room. In adjoining rooms were Jami and Angel, who had arrived just in time for supper. The doors were all left open to get the heat from the kitchen and soon a variety of snores could be heard.

Raquel giggled and stuffed the cast-iron quilt into her upturned and defenseless ear. She fell asleep to a smothered din of snores from within the house, and the yap-yapping of coyotes and the long howl of a lobo outside on the mesa.

The day broke with glorious weather. In a sky of turquoise blue great cumulus clouds piled. A soft wind blew off the rolling prairie, where already tall grasses swayed to the base of tawny foothills. Upon a hummock a scouting party sat motionless in their saddles, looking down towards the northwest.

“That’s no horse, Jami. It’s a charred tula, and right next it is a white-faced heifer.” Raquel was positive.

“’Scuse me, ma’am, but that’s a dark palmetty and a bunch o’ daisies.” Jami grinned with superior wisdom and handed Raquel his field glass.

Even the expert range rider can be deceived at a distance of three miles. Not a sign of wild horses had been seen, and after two days of beautiful, clear weather the horse hunters were none the richer.

But luck was coming on the heels of the wind. Across the mesa top came Angel and Georgie at a dead run, and in a few minutes pulled up beside Raquel and Jami.

“Sighted,” burst out Georgie. “Foller me.” He wheeled and was off, pursued by racing centaurs.

Up they came behind a grassy hill and hardly had their heads topped the summit when a thunder of hoofs arose, a wind as of a cattle stampede, and almost over their toes a bunch of horses went hightailing, burning the wind with their arrogance and joy.

The leader was a great roan stallion, the herd mainly young horses, a bunch of mares, and half a dozen two-year-old colts. Beside these there ran free as though riding herd upon its companions a milk and sorrel pinto that flashed before Raquel like a painted tiger-lily.

The sight of it left her breathless. Not until the whirlwind had faded away in the distance did they stir or speak.

“There’s my horse. Oh, I want him.” Raquel scarcely spoke above a whisper.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to slip a rope over his head for you, Raquel,” promised Jami with a fine air of assurance. “I aim to get me that slick brown mustang. I always wanted one, and I might as well take my broncho bustin’ now, ’cause after I hit thirty I’ll be put out o’ the runnin’ anyways.”

Raquel turned on the boys earnestly. “Boys, we’ve got two good ropers here, Jami and Angel, and we ought to get us a few new ponies from this bunch. But—I don’t need to tell you—let’s have no hard throwin’, please. Don’t break down any horse. Let’s have ’em sound of wind and limb or not at all.

“If they’re any killers amongst ’em leave ’em alone. We aren’t training for the state rodeo; and we’ve got plenty of broncs at home that you can scratch to your heart’s content right in the home corral. Remember Snakey and Diablo. And the roundup will furnish enough fightin’ steers to satisfy even Jami. And say, Angel, let’s see that rope of yours do its stuff.”

Then began the real work. Deploying off in twos, they gained by different routes the mouth of the north canyon where foothills enclosed an amphitheater of waving range. At the end was a natural corral, a rock bound prison, and across the narrowest part of this the boys built a pole stockade, with a narrow opening. Leading up to this gate was a runway, along the top and bottom of which they strung barbed wire.

Just outside the stockade they put up a saddling pen. It took the entire day to finish, and while the boys were working, with Mr. Shandy’s help, Raquel and Georgie rode herd back and forth about two miles from the mouth of the canyon to keep off any approach of the wild horses at this point.

From a high rock Raquel saw down in a coulee a bunch of mares herded together, and two tiny colts, not more than two or three days old, basking in the hot sun. They wobbled and frisked on their uncertain legs, perfect little mustangs. They seemed to grow stronger every minute as they soaked up the sunshine.

As the sun began at length to sink, the lord of the herd came thundering up to pick up his mare and they all went off together towards the foothills, but fortunately not towards the box canyon which Raquel had picked out to corral them in.

It seemed to Raquel that she could not wait for morning, and that she tossed and turned for hours that night, dreaming of the painted mustang, before sleep came. As a matter of fact she slept almost at once and the dreams all took place in the few restless moments while sounds from adjoining rooms were waking her up.

Once again they were out on the plains, searching for a glimpse of the wild horse and his herd. It was noon before Raquel got so much as a sign of their dust, ’way over towards the east. But they were not able to get within a mile of the herd that way. Whenever one of them came up around a slope or rock, the band was already scattered or had shifted to some spot out of sight. Yet they kept always to windward of those keen nostrils.

They agreed that they could put in two more days waiting. But luck was with them in the morning. Warm and still, without any wind to carry scent or sound to quivering noses and pointing ears, the very air favored their purpose.

There they were, the spirited creatures, feeding in that hollow. And at a signal five cowponies flashed over the rim and drew a flying cordon about the startled and almost instantly speeding band.

The colts ran with frantic and manful leaps alongside their mothers but the pace was too great and both were left behind in a few moments. The mares whinnied despairingly, broke gait, faltering, to be nipped back into line by sharp teeth on flank and shoulder. One, however, wheeled about and tore back after her baby, and the race passed on.

With the whole prairie to circle in, it was almost too good to be true that the dark stallion should make for the box canyon.

“But the wise old boy may know a trail out,” Raquel speculated as she pressed her pony closer upon the western flank. Jami had ridden so close that he was swinging his rope over a three-year-old. There, it circled the mustang’s outthrust chest.

The stocky, well-trained cowhorse that Jami rode was bracing himself for a full stop as if he were going to throw a steer. But Jami spurred him on and pulled back slowly and surely till the astonished three-year-old was compelled to drop behind while his wild fellows disappeared ahead.

Raquel, who was gaining on the race, scarcely took her eyes from the milky, red-spotted flank of the pinto. As she drew in nearer the running horses she could see him plainly. The beautiful throat was swelling, the wild head up, the long, plumy tail raised in defiant flight and streaming on the wind of his speed.

“You beauty,” she sang to herself. “Oh, if I can get you I’ll make you love me!”

They were at the canyon’s mouth. There was no drawing back now. The chief stallion tore straight ahead. Jami was trying to cut out the stragglers, a two-year-old filly, an old mare, a year-old colt that they would not want; and finally he succeeded in riding between them and the main group, driving them off down the canyon again.

It was almost too simple. The wild horse, unlearned in the ways of man, made for his close refuge, and, pressed towards the long runway, saw no other way of escape. He swerved into the trap.

Not until the sides of the chute touched his flank did the fleeing leader show terror. He stopped amidst flying clods of earth, trembling violently. His magnificent speed had failed him; he would fight. Rearing on his hind feet he pawed at the barrier of saplings; he used his hoofs like hands, wrenching and pulling with terrible strength and dexterity at the poles that would not break.

Then suddenly he leaped almost straight up into the air and clear of them—only to feel a hot stinging circlet (Angel’s reata) close about his throat.

The pinto meanwhile had raced straight ahead, followed by three of the band. The gate had been quickly closed and the wild horses raced madly round the corral.

Outside there were a few moments of terrible danger as the enraged stallion rose in the air to fight this thing around his neck, and this creature pulling at him. As the black horse rose over him with murderous hoofs flaying the air, Angel abandoned his reata and, pulling his pony up almost over backward, beat a swift retreat and saved both pony and himself by a hair’s breadth, while Georgie with unexpected presence of mind laid a stinging lash along the wild horse’s flank. The big stallion turned and thundered his way back down the canyon.

It was all over in a moment. Raquel meanwhile rode along the corral rail, panting with the race and the excitement. The pinto would not be roped. Again and again her cleverly flung reata hovered, to be fought aside, bit at, and writhed from.

Neither Angel nor Jami, who came up shortly with his prize, could capture the milk and sorrel horse. But Angel roped and threw a pretty little mare that had been caught in the runway and within an hour had her saddled and bridled. He rode her at once up and down the canyon.

“I’ll tell you boys, just leave me here. Leave me alone with the pinto. I can handle him, alone, and bring him back. Just let me try it,” Raquel pleaded.

And so, unwillingly enough, the boys returned to the Shandy ranch, and Raquel stayed behind with the pinto. For an hour after the sound of the departing party had died away Raquel sat quietly beside the corral fence. Then she began to move along the side, speaking gently to the pony she rode so that the watchful creature quivering over against the rock wall would grow accustomed to the sound of her voice.

She came and went while the wild mustang watched her from the far end of the trap corral. She threw grass over the fencing, and waited. She spoke to the pinto, and waited. And finally she rode her pony through the runway and into the corral.

The little wild horse stood perfectly still. He was curious. But he would not let them come near him and, as the strange creature drew closer, he whirled about only to find that suddenly a whirring thing settled over his head. Though he fought desperately and shied and wheeled to the other side of the enclosure, and rose up in many straight-legged, round-backed buckings, it remained there.

When his fear and his fury were spent a bit he heard the voice of the creature again. There was something in it that arrested him. His trembling stopped. But as he felt the rope pulling on his neck he fought again furiously, and rose up to tear it from him with his forefeet.

There was danger in his eye. But the rope pulled him sharply down; a swift twirl round a snubbing post and he found that in spite of running, charging, plunging, biting, he was still held by the thing round his neck.

It took an hour to learn this. The soft-voiced creature spoke gently to him from time to time whenever he stood still. She had dismounted and stood not far away. There was danger in that contest between the girl and the horse. But if there had not been something of a conquest the pinto would not have meant so much to Raquel.

Finally, although he trembled, he stood still when she came near. She laid a hand on the rope and drew it taut, while the other crept up towards his velvet muzzle.

Over and over the girl’s fingers crept up the rope, and the sun was sinking when at last her soft palm came to rest over his spotted nose. The wild nostrils widened, a great exhalation of fear was released, but Raquel’s reassuring touch, gentle as a breeze, remained. Her hand crept to his neck, patted the sturdy shoulder.

Dusk was falling when Raquel rode the wild horse up to the very door of the Shandy adobe. His flanks were wet, yet Raquel wore no spur and guided her mount with a rope bridle. “I did not even need the bit,” she said at once. “Custer’s pony is back there tied in the canyon corral. Will you ride over and bring him back for me, Jami?”

She turned the pinto into a walled corral, staking him with a twelve foot rope. She caressed his nose as she said good night. He drew back, but submitted with a curious widening of the eyes. He had had a rope about his head, had carried a weight on his back, but now he did not want to fight this creature who had conquered him. Something of that trust which the horse can feel for man had entered his free, wild heart.

It was three days later that Raquel rode into the home corral on her milk and sorrel steed. They had spent one night on the open meadow, one at La Raquelita, making about twenty miles a day. With a thrill of exultation Raquel slipped from the pinto’s back.

“You’ll have your own corral, querido, never fear.” She spoke softly into his creamy ear while she deftly loosed the cinches, unsaddled, and set saddle and blanket on the ground behind the newly gentled animal. The neck rope was thrown to the ground so the pinto should learn that where it rested he remained. Raquel moved towards the gate. The horse’s intelligent eyes followed this new being who so compelled his obedience and his devotion. He ran a few steps after her, but the gate brushed his breast, and he drew back with a look of the frenzy he was to forget. Then the quiet voice which already affected him so, and which he was to learn so to love, stopped the quick beating of his heart.

“Adios, compadre. We’ll have many a fine time together, little Paintbrush. That is your name.”

Mom was at the kitchen door, her eyes crinkled with pleasure.

“So you got you a little pinto, honey? Always did want one more’n any color horseflesh, didn’t you?”

And there was much talk round the table of the beauties and powers of this remarkable mustang, and his gaits.

“Why, he’ll trot like a lobo, and stretch out like a deer, and he can bound with the antelope. I tell you folks the Paintbrush has copied every runnin’ creature, and he’ll do it all for me when I have won him entirely.”

CHAPTER XII
DROUTH

“That makes three hundred, Russ,” counted Raquel, while a wriggling leggy calf, baaing frantically for its mother, was caught in the “squeezer” as it tried to slip through the cattle chute.

Russ pulled the calf out and in a moment had the little whiteface on its side in the corral. There was a smell of singeing hair, an enraged moan from the waiting mother cow and, as her baby struggled to its feet, a little Lazy L branded on its flank, she charged wildly.

Everybody scattered and Georgie got under the corral fence just in time to escape a competent pair of horns. The calf looked wildly about, discovered its mother charging the world, and with a bawl butted into her side.

Immediately her frenzy disappeared from the range mother. She became quiet and peaceful and loving, and began vigorously to lick her son into shape, while he healed his hurts with nourishment.

“Oh, you old cow-mother you. That’s just the way I feel; peaceful and lovin’.” Raquel grinned at Russell.

It was a glorious day, the first of May, although the sun was too hot for eight o’clock in the morning.

“Do you know, Russ, the Lazy L cleared just sixty-five thousand dollars on that bunch of cattle we shipped two weeks ago. The market raised from fifty to sixty-five dollars a head and is still going up. If we’d sent them all off at first we’d have lost—let’s see—just nine thousand dollars.

“All of that’s gone into Liberty bonds now. We’ve paid Mr. Marvin back, with interest, and the rest is in the bank for operatin’ expenses.

“But the question is, where are we goin’ to get more cattle for the Government? After this next bunch we can’t ship anything but veal until September.”

“I don’t know, ma’am. Cattle is gettin’ scarcer and scarcer already with this war. And if we don’t get some rain, what cattle we got left won’t be fit to put on ice.”

The roundup, which was nearly complete, had totalled Los Ranchos already some twenty-five hundred calves. As a number of the great pastures of Los Ranchos were fenced the cattle were being branded in lots. The roundup proper, which takes place once a year and for one purpose only, that of branding all cattle, is a thing of the open range, where there are no fences, and cattle must be rounded up for fifty miles. There is much riding, a big outfit is necessary, and it takes longer than when it can be done by pastures. In the old days Dad would be out on the range for five and six weeks at a time, and cattle from ’way up in Colorado would have to be cut out of his herd, “drifters” that had traveled a couple of hundred miles.

Russ’s gloomy prediction almost came true during the hot weeks that followed, hot weeks without so much as a tiny cloudlet appearing in that matchless blue of sky. The young grass that had sprung up from the moisture of the rain on the night when they had driven their first shipment of cattle down into town, had already shriveled. The mesas that in other years had been flowered meadows, knee deep in gramma grass, were now one with the desert, yellow and dry, except for the tender green of the mesquite.

Raquel stood at the edge of the alamo grove, looking out over the desert. Above her head the young leaves of the alamos were shiny and green. Raquel looked up to them admiringly.

“You-all just go on a-diggin’ for water till you get it, don’t you, old trees? I wonder how deep those great old roots of yours go. The same with that mesquite out yonder. The most of that little bush is down under ground, nosin’ maybe forty feet to keep those pretty little leaves green like that.

RAQUEL RODE OVER SOUTH TO A WINDMILL

“I wish grass could help itself that way!” She spoke mournfully, for in the past two weeks the last of the small water holes had disappeared. And the big reservoirs were low. Not a breath of wind strong enough to turn the windmill had there been in weeks. And now the little shiny leaves overhead hung motionless.

Jami and Georgie had gone out to drive up the straggling cattle that were coming in for water. Raquel’s forethought in regard to the tank in the grove had proved wise, for quite a pool had survived in the deep shade of the trees.

Now, as she watched, a straggling line of cattle came up the slight incline that set the grove off from the desert, and broke clumsily into a run as they saw the water they had been smelling so long. They plunged down into it, burying heads and shoulders in its heavenly wetness. One old cow was so exhausted that she could not rise from her knees and would have drowned on the spot if Raquel had not shouted for help to pull her out.

That afternoon Raquel rode over south to a windmill, now idle but still dripping a few drops that in the course of hours would fill a small trough. Here stood a line of patient cows licking the drops as fast as they fell.

This had always been one of the best wells. Raquel was miserable as she saw the thirst-tormented creatures waiting there so patiently. Formerly there had been back of the shack near the windmill a small pipe line leading down from one of those tiny springs in a cañoncito above.

Remembering this, Raquel tore up to the spot. She was riding the pinto, who had become her inseparable companion, and who followed at her heels the moment she dismounted. Rummaging under the dead grass and leaves she soon found the end of the pipe, but not a drop oozed from its dust-clogged mouth. It was choked, that was clear.

Climbing up above, Raquel found that under a shelving rock there was moisture. Her groping fingers felt water in the deep crevice, unbelievably cool in its natural rock filter.

It took but a long piece of baling wire and a few minutes to clean the pipe, to join it with another length that reached crookedly down to the trough, and to watch the tiny stream trickle forth—to be sucked into thirsty, heat-caked muzzles, before it fell.

While she waited there was a continual straggling procession of cattle coming up for water. And now one of those piteous tragedies of the cow country passed before Raquel’s eyes.

A drouth-crazed cow came weaving towards the trough. Ten feet away she stopped, lifted her nose to sniff that scent of water, then stumbling a few steps she buried her muzzle in the dust, lapping it feebly, and fell over dead.

It was impossible to keep some one at each trough all the time, Raquel reflected sadly as she rode homeward. Her depression was not only because of the suffering, but because it meant terrific loss to the cattle country. And it meant that the Government’s demand for beef could not be met.

As she rode Raquel’s eyes traveled anxiously over the plains in search of wandering stock. What cattle she saw were making toward water holes, some of them with stumbling calves at their udders, trying to moisten their baby mouths as they followed along. The little pipe line would take care of them, Raquel reflected gratefully, until the boys could bring them into the home corral.

Not more than a mile from the house she came across a big she-mule, tenderly nuzzling a baby burrito, that butted feebly and in vain for its dinner against this barren foster-mother.

“So you stole you a baby, you poor old childless thing, you.”

Raquel dismounted and picked up the fuzzy, rabbit-eared little bundle, weak with hunger. She laid it across her saddle, much to the pinto’s distaste.

“Hey, there, Paintbrush! Slow there, boy. It’s all right.” She vaulted quickly into the saddle and trotted away with the burrito in her arms and the bereaved kidnaper following close behind.

“Any of you boys see this baby’s mother?” Arrived at the home corral Raquel lifted the woolly little creature, that looked like nothing so much as a giant jack rabbit, into Georgie’s arms, and he bore it off to the house to give it warm milk.

As Raquel stepped into the kitchen Mom handed her a letter from Dad. He was proud of the way she had handled the loan.

“And do your best, my girl, to save every head of beef this summer. These soldier boys have greater need of meat now than they’re ever likely to have again.”

June was drawing to a close, a June in which roses had little part; and only the hardiest of flowers bloomed in Mom’s patio.

“Mother Daniels”—things were serious when Raquel spoke so—“I don’t believe we could ship more than eight hundred lean, very lean, feeders, off this range if we tried. So I have a plan. Tell you when I get back.” And she flung off to Red Dog in the car.

“Here comes that Daniels gal,” drawled Red Dog, lounging in his doorway. “I see her in town t’other day.” He bit off a chew of tobacco and looked in at “A. B.,” who leaned against the bar. “A. B.” apparently did not hear.

“She seemed to have a lot o’ business in the bank, depositin’ her profits and the like.” Red Dog thoroughly enjoyed making this communication and was no whit disconcerted that it was received in silence.

“I hear she’s going across the border after stock next....” Still no effect. “You-all don’t seem to have such a lot of business over towards La Bolsa these days as a while back. Ain’t you on good terms with Esquibal no more? I thought he was stockin’—I mean runnin’—La Bolsa.”

A steely gaze bore into Red Dog’s eyes.

“Some folks don’t know when to mind their own business,” remarked “A. B.” with dangerous softness. “Can’t seem to sense when talkin’ ain’t healthy.—But as long as you’re so conversational today you might just add what cattle the Daniels gal aims to buy.”

“Oh, as to that I don’t know nothin’ for sure,” replied Red Dog unperturbed. “All I know is I heard old Don Justino Chaves say that she was the only person could afford to bring over a bunch o’ cattle from Sonora that his primo’s holdin’ down there.”

“That so?” replied the cowman. “Is that so?”

“Now what in th’ name o’ the Gila monster did I go and tell him that for?” regretted Red Dog as he watched “A. B.” swing into his car and move off towards town without so much as a backward glance. “I’ll get myself into trouble yet braggin’ about that little gal.”

Down in town the boss of the Lazy L was just making a request that left the good Mr. Putney aghast.

“But five thousand in currency, my dear child! Money is meant to be kept in banks! Why endanger yourself by taking that much cash with you?”

Raquel waved aside his qualms with such effect that within fifteen minutes she strode out the door of the main bank of La Cruz with the amount she wanted in bills and gold, stowed away in a money belt about her slender waist. Nothing but cash talked in Mexico, she had always heard Dad say.

And so it came about that Raquel, with Georgie as first aid, made ready to set out for the Mexican border on a shimmering, blinding, July day.

They would ride into town. From there they would ship their horses to the border, riding in the box cars with them, for Raquel had determined to take the pinto with her. There might be a lot of riding, she explained. But the truth was she didn’t want Paintbrush to be separated from her, to forget her and all she had taught him.

“We’ll be back inside two or three weeks at the most, so don’t you fret, Mother honey. I had it straight from Don Justino, who has just come up, that his cousin has several thousand head waiting there at his rancho just across the frontera. Don Justino promised him to find purchasers as soon as he got here.

“He says that everything is quiet along the border now, and there’ll be no trouble. It’s only the rich refugees who are worried.

“Gold, American money, is the only thing that counts in Mexico, and I’ll be back with a herd if they’re as Don Justino says. When you get my wire have the boys meet us at the border.”

CHAPTER XIII
ACROSS THE BORDER

It had not been difficult to arrange for passports. The consul in El Paso did that with unusual alacrity when he understood for what purpose the young Americanos desired them.

The rancho for which they were headed was about ten miles from Agua Prieta, a tiny border town. They would go as far as they could by train. Had Raquel not wanted to ride Paintbrush on the expedition the trip could have been much more quickly made by motor.

But how fortunate this apparently impractical desire was to turn out! The pinto stood the trip very well indeed, and came daintily down the runway of the box car at the small tank stop, their last station. Georgie’s pony followed with the air of a veteran traveler.

And so on a hot day in July down the dusty little street that was Agua Prieta (which means dirty water) rode two boys who might easily have passed for natives. They were Raquel and Georgie.

“You boys! What do you want in Mexico?” The dignified but far from clean official who examined passports in an adobe hut eyed them a trifle suspiciously.

“Buy cattle? Very, very good. Muy bien. But you’d better tend to business and get back where you’re going, pronto!” he thrust at them brusquely.

“You leave that to us.” Georgie spoke confidently. Raquel was only a girl after all and her voice would give her away. She had decided to pass for a boy, so to Georgie was delegated the gratifying office of making arrangements as far as possible.

They trotted out of the dusty little town and loped away across the desert with full saddle bags and light hearts. Long alkaline stretches reached before them, stunted palms and huge Spanish daggers sped merrily behind them.

The ranch of Don Martin Amador, cousin of the Don Justino who had arranged the purchase with Raquel, appeared to be a primitive and rough place, a station for native cowpunchers, no more. They came upon it according to directions, as there was no other place in sight for miles and miles. There were two windmills, many fine pens and corrals, but no cattle in sight.

As they rode up to a barbed wire gate no servant was to be seen, and only when they pounded on the bright blue door of the adobe house, did they get any response. Movements, then steps, were heard. The blue door opened and a jovial and intoxicated caballero appeared.

“Don Martin Amador? But, yes. I am Don Martin Amador. You come from Don Justino?” He smiled indulgently. His most estimable primo. What a pity there were no more cattle to sell.

Raquel was aghast. He had no cattle to sell? She put the question incredulously. “But I came only because I was assured by Don Justino that you were waiting here for the purchaser he would send.”

“Si, si. Yes, yes.” The comprador he had sent had arrived three days before and it was already two days now since the cattle, one thousand head, had been driven away, down to the railroad. One could see for oneself the corrals were empty.

“El Americano who bought them, Don Señor Meyers, was a most estimable gentleman, and he had the most estimable whiskey.”

There was no doubt about it. Her father’s enemy had been there first. He had beaten her. He couldn’t have been told about the cattle by Esquibal this time. It must have been by Don Justino himself, in whom she had always believed.

At her evident distress Don Martin felt at once most sympathetic. If they would but wait till his son returned from El Paso, where he had accompanied Don Señor Meyers with the cattle, in order to collect the balance of the money and deposit it in his bank there, his son would escort them to a large rancho to the south where there were hundreds—thousands of head of fine cattle.

“When will that be?” Raquel caught at a ray of hope.

A week, maybe two. Don Martin was comfortably soothing, stretched out again in his chair, with a whiskey at his elbow. One knew how it was with a young man, getting to the city from this so dry rancho. Things to drink, and see, and beautiful ladies.

Georgie rolled his eyes lugubriously, and heaved an eloquent groan.

But Raquel was thinking rapidly. Here they were. Why go back empty handed, if there were other cattle that she could get?

Could not Don Martin direct them himself to the rancho of which he spoke? Their time was limited; they had expected to be back in the city in not more than ten days. Considering that they had had Don Justino’s word of honor as to the cattle, and the disappointment——?

“But, yes,” said Don Martin, “myself, I no longer ride. But I can give directions where easily you will find El Rancho del Desierto (the Ranch of the Desert), where one Faustino Mirabal has upwards of two thousand head of very good cattle.” Twenty leagues from that place, it was. They could not miss it

“Very well, then,” Raquel decided at once.

It occurred to Don Martin to offer his callers some refreshment. He suddenly bellowed forth, and finally from the rear of the casa appeared a very ancient old woman who set about laying a table. A boy came to water their horses and turn them into a corral.

After they had eaten and the disappointment had worn off a bit, Raquel’s spirits rose again. She would not return without cattle. It might take a little longer than she had expected, but she couldn’t be hindered as easily as that. And so she took careful directions—from Don Martin, from the old servant, from the boy.

Again they were in the saddle—steady lope and trot and walk and lope, across burning deserts, cactus covered, with mirages unfolding on the flats before them.

Sundown brought them to a rambling hacienda, where curious, tousled heads and frightened faces peered from a dirty doorway. An old man slept on his haunches against the wall. There was a well in the courtyard, and a pretty girl of eighteen or so brought a brimming olla of cool water. She offered it to the handsome young Señor, first, blushing and casting down her eyes. Such young caballeros did not step often into their desert courtyard.

“El rancho de Faustino Mirabal?” But Señores, this was it. Faustino—he was not there. The cattle? They were scattered on the desert and yonder in those eastern foothills. It would take many, many days, many vaqueros for a rodeo.

What a pity! But the young sir could easily find all the cattle in the world near Nacozari. El Rancho Escondido, the Hidden Ranch, was wealthy, protected, and lay in the hills where there was much pasture.

Raquel had tightened her belt for action. She had no thought of turning back now. El Rancho Escondido or some other rancho, it would be.

“We’ll ride all night, Georgie, after the horses have rested,” she decided. “It’s easier riding in the cool of the night than sleeping on the hot sand, after a day in the sun, and when we stop for breakfast we can rest till afternoon, then push on to Nacozari.”

She turned to uncinch the pinto. The Mexican Señorita came close to her.

“Oiga, Señorito Raquel,” she breathed in a low voice, “listen, young sir, Raquel; do not ride by night; do not ride by the road. Stay here—in the court yard you may rest, and at dawn I will direct you by a short cut through the hills to Nacozari. You will be more rested and it will save time,” she added persuasively, “and——” she hesitated, but at an encouraging smile from Raquel added rapidly, “soldados, young Señores, soldiers; a new army of Mexico forms and, if you do not avoid their path, you will of a certainty be compelled to go with the soldiers who gather secretly between here and Nacozari.

“By tomorrow they will be further south and east,” she added as Raquel and Georgie remained silent, momentarily stunned and uncertain what to do or say, “and the way will be clear again.” She stopped and looked dramatically about, although Raquel and Georgie would have been willing to testify there was no one within twenty miles. Then she closed her lips with an effort and seemed alarmed that she had said so much.

“Muy bien, Señorita; very good then,” Raquel answered, making up her mind at once. “If you will be so kind, we will stop here and leave early in the morning for Nacozari. We have food in our saddle bags, so do not let us trouble you.”

But the girl brought a snowy cloth of drawn work, spread it upon a soap box by the well, and gave them hot frijole beans, and tortillas; and they in return gave the dirty black-eyed little children some dried figs and dates from their supplies.

Dreamless sleep came to them on their folded ponchos; under Raquel’s head her money belt; above, the brilliant stars of those clear skies. At dawn the Mexican girl knelt, shaking them, while the ragged little children and the old man still slept. “Drink, and take these tortillas.” She pressed the thin corn cakes upon them. “I will go with you as far as I can to point the way.”

She led a fuzzy little burro out of a windowless room that opened on the courtyard, and the three went off towards a hill to the south. An hour later they parted, the girl’s directions pointing their route through a pass southward.

Looking backward, it all seemed like a dream to Raquel. It had been a gay ride down to Nacozari that she and Georgie had undertaken that day, through the same kind of country they had grown up in—hundreds of miles of it! Only this was hotter. Then suddenly bursting into Nacozari, the little Mexican town so like a motion picture setting—green plaza, statue in the center, the deep galleried hotel covered with a profusion of scarlet roses. Supper, and cool white beds in cool white rooms, after a chat on the veranda in the dark with some Mexicans lounging there.

“You seek the cattle ranchos?” queried a mine foreman of communicative disposition. (No one else had seemed to know anything about anything.) “A bad time.” Raquel had become used to this attitude. People were constitutionally discouraging down here, it seemed.

“They’re mostly run off into the hills,” continued the foreman, “but there is fine country over there, southeast, and at El Rancho Escondido the old Don Señon Torreon still has more cattle than he can count. Si, Señor.”

For a slight consideration he himself might even ride so far with the young Señores; did they have any American cigars? No? A pity. But for two dollars gold he would be happy to tell them exactly how to reach El Escondido—even take them part way.

With the caution of the rider whose saddle is more valuable than his horse, Raquel and Georgie took their saddles and bags up to their rooms. Raquel went over their light equipment, putting everything in shape for the trip next morning. At the bottom of her bag was a bulky little lump which she found was made by two cans of sterno and a tiny can of powdered coffee. Mom’s contribution! Sterno had always seemed wonderful to her. No wood to tote, no fire to lay.

Raquel smiled. Little need of that. She took the three little tins out, then impulsively put them back.

“They came this far. Let them stay.”

It was after dark when they arrived at the hotel and with the faint dawn they left. No one had noticed them. The old Chinaman who shufflingly served them a good and plentiful breakfast, gave never a second glance to the pretty youth and the younger boy who ate so much and paid so promptly. There were plenty of beautiful boy faces in Mexico, soft-eyed, long-lashed.

So no one questioned them, no one detained them. The conscientious American officials of the great mining company at Nacozari never knew that an American girl had passed right under their noses down into a hornet’s nest of banditry and revolution, nor did Raquel suspect the forces that were already drawing in around her and Georgie.

She loved the increasingly tropical look of the country as they trotted and loped, and walked and cantered, over palm-covered mesas, through palmetto groves by streamlets shrunken with the heat, until they came at dusk upon the approach to El Rancho Escondido.

It was then that the spell of old Mexico fell upon Raquel, wrapping her in romance. Even Georgie was not indifferent to the charm of the picture before them—crumbling walls laden with purple bougainvillea, with creamy roses, caressed by a mellower moonlight than northern nights know.

And that night as she lay in her balconied bedroom, cool linen sheets inviting rest, Raquel went dreamily over the welcome given them by their host, the courtly Don Nestor Torreon. The fine flavor of Spanish courtesy she knew—it was a possession of peon and prince—but this was an aristocrat, who kept here on this isolated estate the customs and manners of other times. The carven table, laden with ancient, hand-hammered silver; the quiet unobtrusive service. There was a servant to every task, it seemed, a thing to which the sturdy young Americans were unaccustomed.

Although there was decay about El Escondido, disrepair and cobwebs, the linen was spotless, the silver shining, the food delicate and delicious. Don Nestor, his fine old head courteously inclined, listened attentively to Raquel’s statement of her mission.

“I have cattle indeed,” he told them, “I do not even know how many. They are scattered in the hills, out of the way of revolution. For two years we have never rounded them up; they have been branded in lots, as they were found. Some were never branded.

“Discounting losses by theft, banditry, accidents, and then taking away ten per cent, I estimate, Señoritos”—he bowed first toward Raquel and then toward Georgie, who swelled with manliness—“I estimate that I have at least thirty-five thousand head of cattle here in Sonora, bearing the brand of El Rancho Escondido.”

Raquel gasped. What a princely possession! And he owned the range. Tomorrow Esteban, his foreman, would ride out with vaqueros to bring in several hundred head. It would take some time, Don Nestor believed, to get together a thousand. They had better wait a bit there and let them collect as many cattle as possible. He would be glad to sell at their price.

Don Nestor had no family, alas! Wealth was nothing to him. How did they plan to drive the cattle out? He had heard that revolutionists were again gathering in Sonora. He was so isolated, he paid little attention.

“One always hears that, Señor,” Raquel replied laughingly, “yet business in Mexico still goes on. I, too, heard rumors as we rode along, yet all was quiet. I think we can drive straight back through the hills the way we came. We will need vaqueros from here. And my brother here is two men himself.”

It was enchanting to rest in the charming old house next day; to listen to Don Nestor’s tales of the past, of Spanish legend, and Aztec lore, and old Mexican tradition, and to hear the natives strumming the guitar and the violin, from hidden court yard and balcony. It was pleasant to feel the lazy, sweet plentifulness of everything.

And then, that night, after the third day, suddenly there were shots. Don Nestor came trembling up the little flight of stairs that gave upon the court yard, knocking at their doors. He was in nightshirt and cap, a candle in his hand.

“Awake,”—they did not need to—“dress, dress, my dear Señorita. But of course I understood from the beginning you were no man!” he exploded irritably. “Bandidos, robbers, revolutionists, already upon us! The infamy! Manuel, the overseer, will ride with you to a refuge in the hills. Pronto, Queeck, Señorita!”

And there was a last glimpse of the old man descending through a trap door into a hidden cellar, carrying baskets of family plate, and a chest of some precious treasure. He refused to leave with them. He could not, he said, ride so far anyway.

The hurried flight from the corral on restless, waiting horses—Raquel was never to forget it. Georgie seized his own horse and Manuel was saddling a mount of Don Nestor’s for Raquel, but already she had a blanket over the pinto, the bit in his mouth and her own saddle in place.

They raced through the gate just as a party of marauders rode up to the front of the hacienda and surrounded the place. They rode breathlessly through the night, up into the foothills over a rocky trail. The heaving horses climbed as only a panic-pushed animal can. There was a short pursuit and shooting but Manuel shook it off by cutting sharply upward into the hills over this unfrequented path.

At last a high road following the top of the mesa was reached. The horses stopped short, breathing violently. Georgie pressed close to his sister’s side.

“Raquel.” Unconsciously he spoke in English, although they had agreed always to speak Spanish in Mexico, for policy’s sake. “Don’t worry. I will never leave your side a moment. I’m responsible for you.”

“Sh-h, Georgie. It was I who brought you down here. I should have looked into conditions more.... It will come out all right.

“Manuel, where are we going?”

“To a little rancho, Señores, about a mile from here. There we can stay till it is safe to return to El Escondido.”

“What barbarities!” Manuel crossed himself piously. “I fear for the shock to the padron.... We’d better travel ahead now.”

“I don’t like him very much,” Georgie said in a low voice.

“Why, Don Nestor trusts him absolutely,” Raquel replied. Now that the shooting had stopped she was seized by a spirit of adventure. Everything always came out all right.

They had reached the deserted house, perched near the edge of a sharp cliff, the height of which could not be seen in the darkness. Manuel motioned them to dismount. He took the horses round to a corral, somewhere in the rear of the house, while Georgie and Raquel went inside.

They chose the larger of the two front rooms, and were about to close and barricade the door behind them, when Manuel returned and quickly stepped inside.

“We’ll sleep here,” Georgie said. There were two cots covered with sheepskin robes, which they could see dimly by starlight. “You can call us if necessary.”

“Don Nestor told me not to leave your sides,” replied Manuel courteously but firmly, “and his orders are never to be disobeyed. I shall lie before the door so that any one who enters must do so over my dead body.” Manuel spread his blanket, and made ready to lie down on the floor.

“And any one who goes out has got to step over your live body, huh?” thought Georgie. Instinctively he drew nearer Raquel. “My brother can protect me, Manuel,” he said craftily. “We don’t want to deprive you of a bed. We’d really feel more comfortable if some one was outside.”

“What is that light over there?” suddenly pointing through the window to a distant hillside, where firelight flared up for a moment, then died down.

Manuel shrugged. “Quien sabe? There are probably sheepmen, vaqueros, even bandits, in these hills.” Without troubling to look, he lay down in his blanket.

Raquel and Georgie lay quietly down side by side. They were both wide awake; could never sleep, they thought. And yet, somehow, after their wild ride, the quiet of the house must have had its effect, for soon both brother and sister lost consciousness.

How long a time had passed as she slept Raquel could not have told. She became conscious of some one fumbling about her. Wrapped in that heavy torpor of first sleep, she could not move. Then hands touched her, crept about her waist. The touch brought her instantly fully awake, but an instinct kept her motionless; the hands felt for the pockets of her money belt.

It was all she could do to keep from springing up, but she still feigned heavy sleep. The figure kneeling beside her rose and, silhouetted for a moment against the dim light outside, slipped through the door. Raquel sat up quickly and drew her little automatic from her boot; then she reached for Georgie beside her.

He was not there. Her groping hands could find no boyish figure by her side. Afraid with a fear such as she had never known before Raquel on her hands and knees tremblingly felt over every inch of the dirt floor. Then, crouching, she made towards the door, her eyes now accustomed to the darkness, and slipped through.

A mad torture possessed her. What had become of Georgie? Had Manuel hurt him? The night was so dark that only instinct could direct one. Even the stars had gone out. Raquel, hugging the walls of the house, moved slowly around towards the corrals—or where she supposed the corrals must be.

But she had completely circled the squalid little building and was back at the front door without having passed any corral.

“Why didn’t I stay in the room?” she thought. “I’ll get back there, and when that beast Manuel returns I’ll shoot at him, frighten him good, or wing him and tie him up. Then I’ll find Georgie.”

Her left hand crept cautiously to the door jamb. A man’s hard hand closed quietly over it. Raquel shot from the hip. She could kill a striking rattlesnake without raising her arm. The shot must have come as a surprise to that sneaking figure in the darkened room. There was a groan; then silence as Raquel again flattened herself against the outside wall.

A momentary fear that she might have “winged” Georgie was quelled by a clear “coo-ee” coming to her out of the darkness, from back on the hillside—the cattle call in Georgie’s unmistakable treble, with that rising inflection at the end.

He was alive then, and near. She hardly dared move, for the chances were that Manuel was simply lying low. She had aimed for his right shoulder—or where it should have been.

Backing away from that hateful house she retreated through the dark in the direction of Georgie’s voice. About fifty feet back on the hillside she ran into the corral. She heard the sound of horses and gave the chirrup with which she always called the pinto. It was a sign for both Georgie and the horse. She was rewarded by having the spotted pony’s nose laid eagerly in her outstretched hand, while another soft “coo-ee-ee” sounded about thirty feet away.

Kneeling above Georgie’s prostrate body Raquel found him bound hand and foot, and only one skilled in the handling of rope could have loosened the lariat in that darkness.

“Oh, what a sock on the head,” groaned Georgie. “He knocked me out while I was asleep, that coyote of a Manuel. Oh, Rakie, are you all right? Feel and see if the money is in my boots yet. Gracias a Dios. We must beat it, Sis.”

“Hush, don’t be a burro!” Raquel scarcely breathed the words as she helped her brother to his feet and towards the corral. On the hillside where they had first noticed a light a flame was now flaring up regularly.

“A signal,” Georgie whispered, close to Raquel’s ear. “Manuel had a small fire here that he put out just before he went back to the house.”

They found their own horses and mounted them. Cautiously Raquel pulled open the corral gate. There was a sudden rush out of the gloom and two men threw themselves simultaneously at the heads of the two horses.

But just as quickly the pinto reared and pawed, then shook himself violently free, while a well directed kick from the toe of Raquel’s boot caught her assailant under the chin, and the two were off in the night, followed by shouts and several shots.

Then all was still except for the thudding hoofs of their own horses. They were given their heads, Georgie’s pony in the lead.

“They’ll be making back for El Escondido,” thought Raquel, as they had headed in that direction, it seemed. But a few moments in the dark convinced her that she was hopelessly confused.

The animals slowed up at last and began a careful descent. It was not very steep but it required careful going, in the pinto’s estimation.

The sky was growing lighter. Suddenly they could see all about them. They had descended into a deep canyon through which ran a clear stream in a sandy bed. The canyon was filled with vegetation—palmetto, scrub oak and the brilliant blossoms of the bird of paradise tree. The horses did not offer to stop until they had reached the stream bed in the bottom of the canyon, out of sight of any one from above.

They dismounted and drank with the horses, which considerately took a little pool down stream. Georgie looked dazed, and pallid under his deep tan.

“Poor Georgie dear,” choked Raquel in swift anxiety. “Tell me, what happened? You look as if you didn’t feel well, dear.”

“He knocked me out, Raquel, while I was asleep. First I knew, I found myself on the hillside all tied up like a calf for the branding, my head splitting—feel this lump—and a bad taste in my mouth. I was scared stiff, knew something was up, and laid low waiting to see what would happen.

“A couple of fellows came up to the corral. Manuel spoke with them. I couldn’t catch it all. But ‘Americanos, ransom, money belt, and muchacha,’ all came in. Then Manuel went back to the house and I passed out again.

“Gee, Rakie, I was scared for you!” Tears came into the eyes of Raquel’s staunch protector. “Then he came back and went over me and didn’t find any money belt at all. I s’pose he had already looked and found you didn’t have the money.

“A boy who had waited for him at the corral came up and they talked. He told the boy that you were a girl, and therefore more valuable, and he was going to keep you there himself. He said he wouldn’t hand you over without better terms.

“Oh, snakes, Rakie, I don’t know how I stood it! And just for a lot of cows——”

“That was pretty bad,” Raquel admitted, “but we’re safe now anyway. Tell me the rest.”

“So then Manuel went back. I heard your automatic, and yelled without waiting. I had to know if it was you, and to let you know I was there all right.”

Georgie was tired with his recital and lay back wearily. He wanted only a drink of water, but Raquel took some figs and tortillas from the saddle bags, and ate them while the horses grazed near by. Georgie slept, but Raquel kept anxious watch.

When he woke later in the morning she explained that she wanted to reconnoiter a bit, and would climb afoot up the canyon. Some time later she returned. “We’re lost, Georgie,” was her report. “But I could find the way back to Escondido by just following up the canyon to the source of the stream, I think. Then when we get past that mesa our sense of direction should locate us. It wouldn’t be safe for a few days yet though.”

Georgie’s reply was a light-headed laugh.

“I shot Manuel four times while you were gone,” he said, “and there he comes again.” He pointed wildly over Raquel’s shoulder. She turned involuntarily, but only the cool green of the palms was there. She took Georgie’s feverish head between her hands. The boy was delirious, quite out of his head.

Of that day and the next Raquel can not think even now without distress. She moved farther down the canyon with the horses and her now unconscious Georgie, for she was afraid of being pursued even to this retreat. The place must be known because of the water here. Yet here they must stay. She could not take Georgie out into the blazing sun, away from the only water and shade of which she was sure. She bathed his face and his body in the cool stream, and laid him on a soft sandy place.

On the second day Georgie, quiet and pale, woke to his senses from a long sleep. He felt perfectly all right, he insisted, and was hungry. Raquel had been expecting this, hoping for it. And she had caught a strange little creature like a possum, and had had a stew simmering in her little pan for several hours.

They drank deeply of the spring water, filled their canteens, then ate the remaining figs. They had decided to make a break for Escondido that night. They would have to have food. The little animal she had caught was the only edible thing that Raquel had seen.

The horses were saddled and they rode up the canyon looking eagerly from side to side in an effort to recognize the trail by which they must have come down into this pretty little valley. But a morning’s search discovered no place where it was possible to ascend. Many an easy slope made a promising beginning, only to end against a cliff or a jumble of insurmountable rock. Shortly after noon they came to the canyon’s end. It was a cul-de-sac, closed by insurmountable cliffs, over which leaped the little stream in a lacy waterfall a hundred feet above their heads. It was discouraging. They must ride out then through the other end of the canyon, where the little stream meandered forth into the desert and was swallowed up by the thirsty sands.

And so night found them, these two young adventurers, making their way over a brilliantly moonlit waste—quite alone—lost on a Mexican desert.

CHAPTER XIV
HIDING

“You find the water for us, pintito mio.” Raquel spoke with an effort at lightness, but in her heart she was praying. There was very little water left in the canteen. Just a warm swallow gurgled when she shook it.

All day, even during that unbearable noon hour when the swifts and the homed toads remain motionless, they had kept moving steadily across the cracked and blistered spaces. They moved as in a dream, but vaguely conscious of their burning shoulders, their pinching stomachs, aware only of great thirstiness. It seemed as if all the moisture were being sucked from their bodies. The dryness was greater than anything they had ever known even in their worst times of drouth.

They had allowed themselves to be led astray by two mirages. Once to their left they had distinctly seen the green line of trees that means a river bed, and had hastened confidently in that direction only to find after an hour that the green had disappeared completely. Then there was a house surrounded by alamos. It vanished before their eyes. Perhaps Paintbrush saw the house too, for he quickened his pace when Raquel turned in that direction, and shied when it seemed to be wiped away from before them, leaving only the ashen white sky.

Again they had seen a windmill. That was in the afternoon. But there could be no windmills here, Raquel knew, so she forcibly kept Georgie from riding towards it. Paintbrush had gone obediently toward the green trees because Raquel had guided him in that direction. That was enough for him. But he reared with impatience when Raquel turned aside after Georgie, to pull him back from seeking windmills. The pinto’s sharp senses gave him no promise of water in that quarter.

And now he pricked up his ears as if he had completely understood Raquel’s words. She threw the reins loose upon the wild horse’s neck. His pace quickened to a smooth amble.

Before them a lavender haze of dust blended desert and sky. The pinto kept straight ahead and, after an hour or more of choking, silent progress, suddenly cactus and maguey became strange new shrubs, an upheaval of distorted rocks appeared, and they were treading their way among bowlders that grew bigger and bigger.

They were in a little canyon. Its floor was sometimes a stream bed and the coarse-grained sand made heavy going. The horses were plodding, the riders dazed with heat and a shimmer of light brighter than any they had ever known.

At length Paintbrush came to a stop in the cool blue shadow of a high rock cliff. He lifted up his head and sniffed with distended nostrils. Looking up Raquel saw that the rock was strangely smooth, like lava, and porous looking. There were curious hollows and holes, and small caves in it.

She slipped from the back of the little wild horse and instinctively, trustfully, shakily went over to the largest of the holes. It was a natural wall fountain, and within it was cool, clear, sweet water. Twelve inches of it in a wide basin!

The horses were waiting obediently, deferentially. Raquel pulled Georgie away from the water and made him lie down between drinks, while she bathed his head and face.

Later on, while the horses grazed on the tufts of sweet grass growing in the crevices of the rock she searched up the canoncito and found plenty of ripened tunas on which birds were already feasting. She knocked the strawberry-red pear to the ground with a stick to avoid those murderous little needles with which the cactus covers even its fruit, and rolled them into her handkerchief.

Georgie was weak but much restored, and grinned cheerfully as he devoured the twelfth prickly pear.

“But somehow my stomach craves solids, Sis,” he admitted.

“Little likelihood of solids, my lad.” Raquel was spreading her blanket for the night.

They slept, and woke, and slept again, through the warm night. The air was light as a feather, dry, sweet, cool enough. It was uneasiness, hunger and fatigue that made them restless. Dawn seemed long in coming, and shortly after they were making their way again up the canyon. Some habitation must be found. One cannot live forever on cactus fruit.

Then, rounding a corner of the strange porous rock, that made the landscape appear like some other planet, they came upon a thread of blue smoke and a delicious smell of cooking food.

There perched on the side of a rock was a tiny house of branches and a little Mexican woman boiling coffee on a small fire before her door and baking tortillas on a sheet of iron over the coals. She was patting more flat corn cakes between her hands as she tended her cooking.

“Buenos dias, Señora.” They cantered up beneath her little house.

“Good day,” she replied incuriously, quite as if strangers dropped down upon her for breakfast just at any time. She did not look up, but went straight on with what she was doing.

A MEXICAN WOMAN WAS BAKING TORTILLAS

“Could—could we get something to eat from you?” There was a faint catch in Raquel’s voice. The smell of food suddenly made her stomach do queer things.

The little old wrinkled woman looked up, and took them in with her glance. Then a veritable chatter of bird talk burst chippering from her. She was for all the world like a little black-and-white woodpecker. But pobrecitos! They were not soldados at all! Nor to be treated like bandidos! Right out of the cradles they were. As pretty as girls. And starving! “Sit here,” and she dusted the earth that it might be cleaner. She placed a soap box between them and produced miraculously from within the house of twigs a spotless square of drawn linen for a cloth.

All the coffee, all the tortillas they wanted, they could have. But beans? Just twelve, or twenty-four for dinner, or thirty-six for la cena. Take instead this pinole, freshly ground. She stirred some white meal into a pan of boiling water and not long afterward offered them tiny portions of the most delicious cereal they had ever tasted.

Before that meal everything else in the world seemed to have drifted far away. But now they sat happy, safe, with rising spirits again, and remembered about everything.

First of all Raquel pulled from within her belt a coin that made the little old lady’s eyes widen almost with fear. She shook her head violently. But no! She wished no pay for food. When Raquel had succeeded in making her understand that she must take the money and that there was more of it where that came from she accepted it with a profusion of thanks.

Good American gold—it would take care of her and her esposo for years! They sat and chatted, while the old Señora smoked many cigarettes. Her man was beyond in the hills with the goats. He had to keep them moving and out of the way of the bandits that had been hereabouts of late. The abandoned creatures had taken all her garden before it was ripe enough even.

The nearest town? It was her birthplace, her home where she lived when this summer home grew too cold. It was eight, ten leguas over there, to the west. But revolutionists occupied Moctezuma now. El Rancho Escondido? She had never heard of it. But then, she had never traveled so far. Only between here and Moctezuma in all her fifty-five years.

Follow the canyon and you would come to the silver mine above, where there were rooms to sleep in and food without a doubt, and where they could take shelter until the soldiers had left Moctezuma.

So they bid the little old bird woman adios. “Go with God,” she called after them.

The rainy season had come in the mountains, and the hillsides were covered with lluvia de oro, rain-of-gold; the ground beneath their feet with lilies and Indian paintbrush, that little red and yellow broom for which the pinto had been named.

The deserted silver mine they found a few miles above: a cluster of buildings at the top of a high round hill, a natural fortification. As they rode past the hacienda several people ran out, two men and a woman.

“De donde viene? From where do you come?”

“We got lost, escaping bandits. We fled at night from El Rancho Escondido. Can you tell us how to get back?” Raquel spoke as one of them and they accepted her as such. The little fellow with reddish hair, and bluish eyes—he was a guerito, blond and somewhat like the Mayordomo’s son.

No, they did not know of such a rancho. But one thing they knew. To avoid the desert one had to return north up the valley of the Moctezuma, and that was now held as far as Nacozari by the revolucionistas and the maytorenistas. Yes, there were plenty of cattle in these hills, if one would round them up. Sell them? But why not? Something for nothing.

The boys had better get down and stay there at the mina for a while until the way was clear. But, yes, get down; though there was little enough to eat, what with bandits and all. Maybe they were bandidos themselves, the woman suggested questioningly. Veritable nenes, babies merely out of the cradle, were so desperate and abandoned nowadays.

Raquel felt queerly sick. Disappointment very nearly brought tears to her eyes. She brushed her smarting lids with the back of her hand, and then, and then——

“It is the heat, pobrecito,” said the kindly old woman, gathering the wilted figure into her arms, while Georgie stood aghast and helpless at this sudden weakness on Raquel’s part. He followed the old woman inside the main building, which was nearly as hot as outdoors.

A corrugated iron roof crackled and sizzled like a stove above them. There on a clean cot with sheets the old woman laid Raquel. She had seen at once that the pretty boy was a girl. She was shocked. What! Riding astride, wearing pantalones! She had heard Gringo girls did that!

“Hush,” whispered Georgie, who by now had recovered his presence of mind. “We are rancheros. My sister came to buy cattle, and when the rancho was attacked by soldiers, we had to get away in the night. Of course we lost our way.

“But we will soon get out,” he added with a confident swagger. “I guess they’re making a fuss about us up there by now. The Mexicans better leave us alone.”

Within the house, the old woman was bathing Raquel’s head, and when she opened her eyes wearily for a moment, the Mexican held to her lips a gourd of some cooling drink. When she had drunk it, she sank back into a heavy slumber which lasted until nightfall. Outside their door, a young Mexican lounged against a post. When no one was looking, he moved his foot and, stooping, picked up a silver coin that he had covered when it fell from Raquel’s pocket. “Froylan,” called a voice; “Froylan.” And he sauntered off.

Georgie led Paintbrush and his pony up to a corral on the mountainside, and gave them grain. Then he returned to sit near the house, and to talk with the men and women. Great tales they told, squatted there on their haunches against the wall—how bandits had come a few days before, and held up the engineer and the manager of the mine, and gone away over the mountains threatening to return in a week and kill all Americanos. They had shot a man because he would not hand them an orange, or allow his granddaughter to kiss them all around.

“How far is it to Moctezuma?” Georgie asked again. About twenty leguas they agreed, and a legua was a bit more than a mile.

Raquel was awakened by the crackling of the iron roof, cooling after sundown. It sounded like a bombardment of rifle bullets. She was weak; never had she felt this way before. Strange! Acting up like a little, old baby! But after supper she was able to sit and listen to the conversation of the group that passed stories there under the stars. Her thoughts were on her own problems, however, and she was miserable at the situation. She was not only further away than ever from getting any cattle into the States—but here they were fleeing bandits.

“No doubt but that we’ll get out safe all right,” she reflected gloomily. “We can hide here as long as necessary. I suppose they’d send out for us eventually. But Mom! She’ll be crazy by this time. Let’s see. It was ten, eleven days yesterday, since we left.

“She’ll think of the Columbus raid and all the stories she ever heard, about Americans being held up and killed. And the truth of it is,” she confessed to herself, “anything is likely to happen.”

Georgie leaned over and whispered. “There are lots of cattle in these mountains. Suppose it’s too far to drive them up to the border?”

“I’m thinking of getting ourselves up to the border just now,” Raquel answered in a low voice. “Whatever happens, Georgie, stick by me close, and should we get separated, we’ll both make for El Escondido. Remember now.”

“Trust me. But we’re safe here. These gente are as friendly as can be. Gee, this is exciting. Why, it’s worse than the Indian days and the cattle country wars, when Dad was a kid. You wouldn’t believe it if you heard it—people hiding and all like this in the mountains.”

“I should think people would believe anything these days, with all the world at war, when no one ever expected it,” Raquel replied bitterly.

The talk of the Mexicans burst upon their attention. “And it was a lad just like this one, a young gringo about the age of this boy.” The Mexican minero nodded toward Raquel. “They stood him up against a sand bank and shot him because he defied them. They thought to hold him for ransom, but when the American troops came over the border they grew frightened, and so killed the poor young one to get rid of him.”

“Well, what can the Americanos expect? They have not recognized Carranza yet? What protection should they look for?” A flaming-eyed sallow fellow spoke up. Georgie’s eyes were popping. He was shivering in the heat of the tropic night.

“Cállate, pendejo viejo. Be still, old fool,” snapped the old mosa, “can’t you see you are frightening the poor lads to death. They are not such as the wild mountain youngsters who join the bandidos before they are yet a dozen years from their mother’s milk.” She drew a protecting arm around Raquel’s shoulders, and rising, motioned her into her own quarters.

Raquel slept in Old Antonina’s house that night, with Georgie on a palm mat beside her. The cook house with its mud roof was cool as a cave and much pleasanter than the iron roofed hacienda. In the early morning Raquel woke to find Antonina sitting beside her cot braiding her long hair, still thick and dark.

“Ah hah!” said the old woman, “you couldn’t deceive me, little one, even though your hair is cropped like a boy’s. Now, why you go about as a youth I do not know, but believe me, Froylan, who sat by the door last night, had his eyes on you.”

She paused significantly. She enjoyed dramatizing life, old Antonina. “And Froylan is a bad one, without conscience, without honor, and without money. Which last is perhaps the most dangerous in this case.”

“What do you mean, Señora?” Raquel asked.

“That you must not stay here, for Froylan will surely try to get ransom money out of you. I don’t trust him. I think he would just as soon be a bandit as a miner—rather!”

“But why should he imagine that he could get any ransom money for me?”

“Grrr,” growled the old woman. “You might deceive these poor country folk, about here. But I have traveled, me. I have been to Douglas, Arizona, and seen the Gringoes; and Froylan has been even to El Paso.”

As they sat at their breakfast of piñole and black coffee a young girl looked in the doorway. She was frankly curious to see the strangers and made conversation which did not in the least deceive the cynical and astute Antonina.

“Soldiers came up to Divisaderos (a small place a few miles below the mine), and took away Don Refugio to shoot him. But he swore he was a Carrancista, and so they spared him. Froylan is so brave,” she said. “He went before dawn up into the mountains to see that bandits have not mutilated or molested his cattle.”

“Hmph,” said Antonina.

But when the girl had left she quickly made a little bundle and, after a casual inspection outside her house, beckoned Raquel and Georgie to follow her. They walked slowly past the hacienda, then strolled in a leisurely way up toward the mine, not speaking.

Turning aside before they reached the main shaft, the old woman ducked into a narrow and villainously rough little canyon. She parted the scrub oak, brushed through the cactus, Georgie and Raquel following, and in a moment they stood within the entrance of an abandoned shaft.

The change in atmosphere was so intense that the young Texans gasped. It was as if a thin, invisible curtain hung over the mouth of the tunnel, dividing the oven heat of the day outside from the cool, dank rush of air coming up from the bowels of the earth.

“This is certainly great.” Georgie had kept silence as long as possible. Antonina shook her head warningly.

“Talk low. They can not find you here. Only one or two have known of the old workings of the mine. And my fine Froylan is not one of them. It is as I suspected. He flew forth before daylight to find some desperado or other to come and capture you.”

“How do you know that is what he went for?”

Antonina ignored the question with a disdainful wave of the hand.

“But when he returns you will have left. You must stay here till I can see what to do.”

“What about our horses? I would rather be captured than have anything happen to my pinto.”

“That little grandson of my husband, José, he will herd them on the hillside. He knows how, and tonight he will bring them to the tunnel here.”

“But where are we to go?” Raquel trusted the old woman and was eager to be on her way, even though fleeing bandits and kidnapers. But both she and Georgie were tired from their experience in the desert, and she felt that a few days rest would make them fit again.

“You may rest with my old comadre, Dorothea, in the valley. Then on to Moctezuma, from where you must find your way back north, my child.”

With a finger to her lips she ducked quickly and was out in the blinding glare of the morning. Georgie and Raquel sat taking stock of things.

“Well, it’s better here than on the desert, or in that tin-roofed oven. We can rest here,” Georgie observed cheerfully.

Raquel was worried about Paintbrush. She had gone up to the corral to caress him and talk with him before she slept the night before, but he would be expecting her during the day sometime. Would he behave with the little boy? Or would he hunt her out here?

As the long day wore on they drowsed and rested. The heat waves before the tunnel entrance grew whiter and more shimmery. They retreated farther down the inclining shaft and explored as far as they dared. Coming back to that white light at the mouth of the shaft they found Antonina with lunch and a package.

She brought the most delicious of enchiladas, savory with cheese and wild onion, swimming in red hot chili. That she had gathered the ingredients together was a miracle, yet she apologized for the lack of eggs to top the dish. In spite of the weather they ate every mouthful with relish.

“Froylan has just ridden away with three evil-looking men in the direction of Divisaderos, chasing you,” said Antonina. “You must leave tonight over the rocks where José will guide you. But you, Señorita, ought to leave your fine clothes and take these pantalones of the people, these teguas.” She opened the bundle and took out the native sandals, a cotton shirt and trousers.

José was to take them to the house of Dorothea. She would set them on the road to Moctezuma when they were ready to leave. They were to ride fast to the house of the priest and stay there till the silly soldiers had departed to play their game of hide and seek in other parts.

“The soldiers, they do little harm to each other. It is the gente, the people, who suffer, their houses burned, their crops destroyed.” She was indignant, the good Antonina.

She embraced Raquel fondly, taking her to her bosom and kissing her upon both cheeks. Raquel pressed a gold piece in her hand. Antonina wept with joy. She had mothered the young Americans from the goodness of her heart.

The escape had been so easy—the pinto’s nicker after dark as he was brought to the mouth of the old tunnel shaft where they hid, and sensed his mistress within; the soft dark night, skies like ink in which millions of stars seemed to be throwing out sparks, and shooting back and forth across the heavens.

Oh, that sense of nervous expectation as little wiry José led them down a strange trail and over a hill! But they rode unmolested through the dawn, and the sun was already high before they stopped at a small house, located just there in the foothills for no apparent reason.

José left them there with the friends of his grandmother, an old woman and an old man, who scarcely addressed either Raquel or Georgie all day, but put them in a wee room off the main room. There Raquel lay on a canvas cot and fell asleep, her brother on the floor beside her.

Not till after dark did they set out again. They had only six or eight miles still to go. Their spirits rose and they hummed as they rode along. They were on their way back; probably they could locate El Escondido again as they got farther north.

Raquel’s thoughts returned to Don Nestor and the wonderful opportunity for buying cattle there. Now that they felt safe, somehow they did not worry so much about what Mrs. Daniels would think.

“Oh, she’ll know we’re all right,” Georgie asserted confidently. “She knows we can take care of ourselves.”

They were passing an occasional rancho, and a glow of lights began to appear before them among the trees. Suddenly a turn in the road brought them upon a startling scene. Before them rose a large and pretentious adobe casa, from whose gayly lighted windows floated music and sounds of merrymaking.

Outside the house there stood and lounged about several companies of soldiers. To what faction they belonged neither Raquel nor Georgie could tell, and before they could beat a retreat two sentries had sprung out from among the acacias bordering the road, and were holding their horses’ heads.

“Quien vive?” was the hoarse demand on both sides. “Who goes there?”

“Dios y sus Santas! [God and His Saints!]” quavered Raquel. “Carranza,” shouted Georgie simultaneously at the top of his lungs.

“Ha, a very pretty answer,” replied one of the soldiers, “but off you get, both of you, and into the house yonder till the commandante sees for himself if he has any further need of you.”

And at the points of their bayonets they drove the two toward a corral gate, and through, where they were at once surrounded by other soldiers.

Paintbrush laid back his ears and rose wickedly on his hind feet as a soldier laid a hand on the bridle. Had the man not ducked out of the way the pinto would undoubtedly have annihilated him. Raquel slipped quickly to the ground.

“Let me, Señor. He is not a broncho, only a wild horse but newly gentled. I am the only one who can manage him.”

“Put him up then,” growled the soldier, “and that one too,” pointing at Georgie and his little brown pony, which Georgie was stimulating to a very pretty exhibition of bucking and fancy rearing, through pricking and a few tricks which the good little beast knew well.

So they were permitted to stable their ponies within an inside corral, high-walled, over which there was no escape, and as they came out, they were surprised to find that for the moment their guard had disappeared. Knowing that there was no escape over the high spiked wall, he had returned to his gambling game at the gate. Beside them was an open window, unbarred. Instinctively Raquel pushed Georgie through and followed on his heels.

They were in an end room, dimly lit with candles, and piled with soldierly equipment. A doorway opposite led out upon a large patio, around which ran a gallery. They slipped across and looked out. They were at the kitchen end of the house and a grape arbor offered a covered passageway across the rear of the court yard.

A dance was in progress at the front of the house, and the rest of the place seemed deserted. They could see an empty bedroom across the patio. Slipping through the arbor they peered in a doorway. On the bed lay various feminine garments. In an open wardrobe hung others.

“Let’s dress like girls,” whispered Raquel to Georgie, “and then perhaps we can get by.” It seemed a daring idea. She had entered Mexico disguised as a boy; now she would escape “disguised” as a girl!

Reaching through a window she lifted from a chest a mass of rose-colored ruffles. It was a skirt which looked like civil war days. A petticoat lay beneath it. Raquel pulled off her pantolones and sandals, standing there in the dark, with the music of the mandolins and fiddles and the gayety up forward going on all the while.

She slipped into the skirts and stepped within the room to complete her toilette. She peeped at herself in a little old mirror atop a high chest of drawers. Horrors! What a dirty face! But there was a basin, water, and towels in the room, and powder on the bureau beside the colorete which some soft-eyed belle had used that night.

Raquel threw a mantilla out for Georgie. He wrapped it about him and stepped into the room.

“Roll up our clothes and hide them in a corner of the arbor,” whispered Raquel.

While he was doing this she bathed, powdered her face, touched her cheeks with the rouge, her mouth with the red stick lying there. On the bed lay a black lace scarf which she seized. But what could she do with bobbed hair in this land of long-haired Señoritas? It would never escape notice.

Peeping cautiously into a drawer for hairpins she came across a carved high comb. A little deft work with comb and brush, a thrust of stout hairpins to fix the comb in the tangle of her back hair—there! It was ready to drape the black lace scarf about her face.

The effect was magical. The wavery little mirror gave back above a tiny rose bodice and billowing organdie skirts, a lovely face, rare, piquant, like the grandmother of old. In the closet was a pair of slippers, shiny and tiny. But they slipped on.

“Must have been too large or too small for the happy child they belong to,” surmised Raquel. She hoped that the owner of the clothes would not catch a glimpse of her. She felt as if she were dressed for a fancy dress party with these full skirts, for at home, she remembered the narrow slit skirt was the fashion.

“You look like a princess.” Georgie was watching the finishing touches. But there was no time to lose and she began to search desperately for something for Georgie to wear.

There was not a thing but a little old gingham dress, such as any little kitchen helper might put on. So Georgie was squeezed into that, and with a mantilla clutched under his chin he made a typical little muchacha.

They stepped bravely out through the door, looking for the best way to escape. There was a large closed gate at the back of the patio. It led into still another court, and outside that was the open. But they could not get away without their horses and how to get into the corrals again?

Although there was no outside gate in the corral where they had been obliged to stable their horses, the corral opened into several other yards.

“Perhaps we could make a break through in front if we can get back through that window,” Raquel suggested.

It had taken them more than half an hour to dress as girls. Perhaps the same soldado would no longer be there in the corral. They slipped across the court yard, into the first room they had entered. The window was barred, from the outside!

All Spanish houses are built on very nearly the same design; realizing this, they crept out on tiptoe and went forward to try the windows of the next room. They were open, but barred with iron, for this was an establishment of some pretension.

As they stepped again into the patio they stood for a moment in the stream of light from a doorway into the sala de baile, the dance hall. A figure lounging there glanced over its shoulder just in time. He darted out and made a low bow before Raquel, laying at the same time a detaining hand on her arm.

“Not so fast, Señorita. Why are you so late? What! you are not thinking of leaving before you have begun? The honor of the first dance must be mine. Come, it is a chotess.” And he swung her irresistibly through the door, and out on to the floor where a dozen girls were being whirled from one soldier to another.

“Varsouviana, valse.” The chief fiddler announced the dances.

A timid little girl peered through the door from under a black shawl for a few moments, and then flattened herself on her haunches in a shadowy corner of the court yard.

There was nothing else for it. Raquel must play up. Terrified at first, her feet nevertheless whirled obediently in the steps of the old-fashioned schottische she knew so well. Her thoughts collected themselves. Her poise returned as she whirled about. These fellows seemed to mean no harm; at any rate, just now they were bent only on having a good time.

“You dance divinamente, Señorita,” whispered the young Mexican who had captured her. “From where do you come? Surely you are not of this barbarous locality? What? Yes?” He shrugged. “But of different quality from the other girls with whom I danced earlier in the evening.” He was bored with the native belles who coquetted about them.

“Well, it is fortunate for you that you live about here,” went on the teniente, “otherwise you would never return home tonight. No one may pass through the lines about Moctezuma. There must be no possible communication with the north—with the United States. The General Carranza has not yet been recognized by that government, you see, and we are not any too friendly.

“All gringoes are being detained, and not too well treated!” he laughed. “But that does not concern you, Señorita bella. The commandante has given orders that this vicinity be molested no more. I understand they suffered much during the last Villa raid in Sonora.”

“But tell me,” he pursued, “is it native to Sonora of the south, your beauty? Myself, I am from Chihuahua, where the girls are very indifferent, but I have heard that the southern provinces, el distrito Sahuaripa especially, is famed for its lovely ladies.”

The attentions of the young lieutenant had not gone unnoticed. Other uniforms were gathering round. The girls were buzzing with curiosity. Who was this newcomer? That dress? Was it not exactly like one of Caterina’s? But this one had a gracia in wearing clothes, surely!

Raquel caught the undercurrent of murmuring as she passed and repassed the other couples. In an interlude, another Mexican youth in uniform bowed low and swung his arm within hers as a square dance began, and she smiled gayly, clasping the hand of one after another in the figures of the dance.

Indeed, Raquel was having a good time. But she was alive all the while to the necessity of escape. And although she smiled enchantingly, if discreetly, according to the etiquette of that region, and spoke scarcely at all, she clung ever so slightly to the Chihuahuan.

“May I see you home, Señorita?” he leaned above her persuasively. “My aide can bring your horse to the door. The duenna may follow.”

Her eyes flashed consent. “I must go now,” she whispered. “I have come without permission”—and that’s true enough, thought she. “My little sirviente waits outside. Let her go with your man to show him our horses. Come, I will call her.”

The lieutenant was carried away. He stepped with Raquel out into the patio. At Raquel’s call, an obedient little figure rose from a corner, a bundle under its arm, and was despatched through a side room with a soldier summoned there. It had all worked out too beautifully!

Raquel requested the lieutenant in a low voice that the horses be brought to the back gate. It would be better were she not observed. Sensing intrigue, the daft youth consented. It was all to his liking. He felt that he had indeed made a conquest.

She led him through the patio, within the arbor, where her dignity held him off, and then they passed through the gate, through the outer court, the second gate—Raquel drew a breath of infinite relief. The horses, led by a black-topped little girl, and followed by a peón soldado, came round the corner and stood before the house.

Raquel spoke to the pinto and he pricked up his ears and came close. She stroked his head, and nuzzled his chin.

“Come,” said her escort, “let me put you up.”

“The little girl first,” said Raquel, “she does not ride so well, and must go astride.” What would happen when her little wild Paintbrush felt the flap of skirts upon his flanks for the first time? Many a good horse had gone crazy with less, especially at night.

She spoke again to Paintbrush, softly, as she allowed the lieutenant to lift her up on the saddle sidewise.

The pinto leaped as a skirt struck his flank, came down trembling.

“Es broncho,” Raquel called out to the astonished teniente, as she brought down her quirt unobserved on the other flank, “he is afraid of my ruffled skirt.” And she shot ahead into the darkness with her small handmaiden following, and disappeared from sight before the startled and angry youth could dash over and grasp the reins of his own mount. He followed hot on their trail, taking the road toward Moctezuma, but they were gone, gone into the darkness, though he searched the streets till after midnight and made inquiries.

CHAPTER XV
WHAT BECAME OF RAQUEL

Where was Raquel? When she realized, as Paintbrush raced through the darkness, that she had outdistanced not only the teniente but Georgie also, she stopped and gathered the flimsy skirts tightly about her waist so that they would no longer terrify the pinto. Making a wide circle, she returned in the direction from which she had fled.

But in the dark she could not find her way, and after an hour she came to the bank of the river that flows west of Moctezuma. Here in the trees she was forced to hide till daylight. As soon as she could see she changed back into her boy’s clothes, having discovered the bundle which Georgie had thrust into the saddle bag.

Alas, when morning actually came she found she was north of the town, and could not go back again, for a cordon of soldiers rode back and forth across the outskirts all day.

She was hungry and thought thankfully of the lunches she had providently packed in both Georgie’s and her own saddle bags the afternoon before. Her saddle bag now looked curiously lumpy. “Mom’s sterno,” she thought ruefully. But investigation brought to light some delicacies which Georgie had evidently filched from the party the night before—delicious loaves of brown cane sugar and sweet native cakes.

As soon as it grew dark she crept into town afoot and ventured upon the streets. Not a soul was abroad. The soldiers had the occupants thoroughly well scared, and Raquel was roughly ordered to get back into the house when she peered from the shadow of a sheltering doorway. So she had to retire within a strange house, climb over a wall, and make her way through dark lanes down to the spot on the riverbank where she had left Paintbrush tethered.

That was perhaps the most precarious experience of the entire adventure, that careful, creeping journey, stumbling from bush to bush; and what joy finally to hear the pinto’s nicker, to fall upon his neck! She slept on the ground near him; if he had lain down she would have pillowed her head upon his flank. As it was, when she woke in the morning he was standing almost over her, keeping watch.

And so it was every day, hiding by day, hunting by night. Finally hunger forced her away in search of food, which she bought easily at far-away houses, returning always to her covert among the trees by the river.

Finally on the evening of the fourth day the detachment of Carrancistas left Moctezuma, and that night she slipped into town to make a thorough search for Georgie. First to the priest’s house, of course. The housekeeper was irate at being roused after dark.

What, a miserable child! Yes, one had hung around there for a few days, three days, but she had sent it away. An ugly little girl in a gingham dress—yes, color-de-rosa.

Well, Georgie wasn’t held by her teniente then. Somewhat relieved, Raquel gave the woman a piece of money that made her gasp, and a note for the child should she come back. “He,” Raquel amended, confiding that it was really a boy, and that he might be dressed as one if he came back.

Hardly knowing what to do next she found her way to the Hotel Moctezuma, and under its flower-hung balconies found rest for the night. While she waited for the man servant to carry water up to her room she inquired from the moso in a low voice if he had seen anything the last few days of a boy of twelve—a guero, a blonde, with front teeth wide apart.

At that description the man started involuntarily, and then shook his head stupidly without answering. Raquel pressed upon him a piece of money which loosened his tongue. He motioned her to follow, picking up her saddle and bags to carry them to her room. When they had entered he whispered cautiously, “What do you wish to know, gracioso Señorito?” Yes, such a lad had been at the hotel last night and had been attached as orderly for the officers and soldiers. The lad had inquired of him, old Pacifico, where a Rancho Escondido was. He had never heard of such a place. And the soldiers had departed that day, taking the boy with them.

Raquel went to bed trembling with relief. Sleep came at once, but she woke before dawn. There was a plentiful breakfast served on a white cloth by candle light, and then she was off.

Before her lay seventy-five miles before she could reach the Ranch of the Desert, their hidden rendezvous. Good old Paintbrush—how splendid were his sinewy legs! At regular intervals she dismounted, took off his saddle, cooled his back, smoothed the blanket. When they came to a stream she washed him off.

Late the next afternoon the road brought them up to one of those ruined houses that lay in the wake of soldiers, dotting the revolution-ridden land. The whole front of the dwelling had been torn away. There it stood, its poor mutilated interior still adorned with framed pictures, a cupboard still standing in the corner, a table in the center of the floor. It looked like a stage set, its homely intimacies bared to the passer-by. It must have been a good country home once, like the comfortable peasant homes of Europe.

“I’ll sleep on the other side,” thought Raquel. She wanted to reach Nacozari before noon the next day; to start out from there again for El Escondido. How would she find the ranch if she did not run across some one to guide her again?

On the other side of the house she found the remnants of a family living in what remained of the house. She stood upon a threshold that remained with no enclosing walls.

“Entra, entra, come in,” an old crone cooking over a little fire in a corner called hospitably. Through a far doorway Raquel caught a momentary glimpse of an exquisite madonna face, its perfect oval framed in long braids. It vanished with terror-stricken swiftness.

“Could I perhaps get something to eat, and rest here tonight?” Raquel asked wearily. “I am on my way north. Do you perhaps know where El Rancho Escondido is?”

The old woman looked up at the lad, dressed like a peon in his denim pantalones, in the teguas of the mountaineer. Something in the fine tired face, the sweetness of expression, assured her of the innocence of their prospective guest and she swept a place by the hearth.

But surely! And what did the lad know of the Ranch of the Desert? It was long since she had heard of that place, she said, but right well did she know where it lay.

With the despatch of the ever-ready bean pot she set a plate of food before Raquel, talking to her while she ate. The girl with the madonna face slipped timidly out of her room.

And so strangely, in this chance manner, Raquel learned the way to the Hidden Ranch. The old woman had once gone there, years ago, when she lived in Nacozari as a servant to the padrona.

The muchacho must follow this road up the stream bed, said the old woman, until he came to the canyon of Nacozari, not twenty leguas above. He should go through the town, she said, and above the place where the houses of the American superintendents had since been built Raquel would see a fair road leading east over the hills.

“Follow it across the sand dunes,” she said, “and when you come to the stream, ford it. But be careful of quicksands. A desert of sand dunes lies beyond, with not a palmetto, not a cactus on it, unlike most of our Mexican deserts. Go straight across it,” she continued, “a few miles only. Keep the trees of the river at your back and two dark dunes ahead for a guide. Over the last dune El Escondido spreads before you, a paradise, as well you know if you have been there.

“There is another way. But it is much longer, and only those who know it well and have traveled the road could possibly find the way among the trees and the hills. It was made after my time, this road, and I do not know it. That is where the rancho gets its name. It is indeed escondido.

“You are fatigued,” added the old woman. “Spread your blanket in that corner.”

Raquel slept, grateful in the thought that Georgie was ahead of her rather than behind. But where was he? And where the steers she had come to find?

CHAPTER XVI
GEORGIE GETS LOST

Three days after the gay ball at the military quarters of the Carrancista detachment a little Mexican girl wept disconsolately in the doorway of the priest’s home. The priest was not there; he had never returned since the first morning the little girl had presented herself. But she persisted in coming back. The housekeeper was quite annoyed. She had fed her, and now the ugly, rawboned child was crying. Roughly she swept her back into the house.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“I wait for my big brother. Has he been here since I came yesterday afternoon?” The little girl wiped a smudged face.

“Your big brother? How do I know who is your big brother? Many men and boys come, but none ask after an ugly little girl. Here, take this for your dinner and don’t come back for a week.” And she thrust the child out through the door, with a palm leaf basket full of tortillas, sweet cakes and fruit.

George Washington Daniels retired into a quiet lane behind the church and gorged himself with food, topping off with figs and grapes that drooped conveniently over the wall. It was the first really full meal in three days. Comforted, he dropped asleep, and when he woke the grief of the past few days had left him, shaken off with that miraculous ease with which youth divests itself of sorrow too long held.

There was no use waiting here longer for Rakie. She must have got away to El Escondido. The last he’d seen of her was that flapping pink skirt as she shot past a window, and though he’d followed the hammer of the pinto’s hoofs for several miles—well, anyway half a mile—it turned out to be the lieutenant and not Rakie at all, and he’d had to escape in the other direction. There were soldiers there and the sentry had calmly made him get down and sent him off without his horse. It was Custer’s pony—the best of his string. What would he say? By golly, the horse thief! He’d get that animal back some way!

So Georgie had lived in the streets and haunted the padre’s house. On this night, however, he started out determined first of all to get rid of this hated girl’s dress. The bundle of clothes he had thrust entire into Raquel’s saddle pocket.

But he had not completely stripped off his own possessions, although he had no money; for round his waist was a belt with a knife, and several little treasures from which he never parted—a pocket compass, his watch, a burning glass. Now at dusk he was able to make a trade with a lad about his own size whom he found in the street, and shortly thereafter he emerged from behind a wall, clad like any other Mexican youngster, with a wide straw sombrero, calico pantaloons, and a blue gingham shirt, while the pink gingham dress lay in a huddle behind the wall.

He stepped forth into the orchid twilight of the little Mexican city, whose dusty streets, flat roofs and goats laden with water-filled skins, might have been those of a village on the Nile, though he did not know it. The quiet dusk was broken only by the screeching of the parakeets and the twitter of the birds in the court yards of the larger houses.

Georgie wandered along till he stood before a picturesque building with wrought-iron balconies. It was the hotel. Here the officer in charge of the troops sat at dinner. Georgie could see him through the window, a large fellow, coarse and drunken.

“What can the Americanos expect in the way of protection?” The words of the fiery-eyed miner up in the mountains came back to him. No use asking for any help up to the border from him. He pressed his face miserably up against the gratings and stared through unseeing.

Where was Raquel?

CHAPTER XVII
FATE PLAYS A TRICK

It was nearly noon when Paintbrush trotted quickly up the last rocky bit of road that led through the narrow defile into Nacozari. Across the valley the great works of the Nacozari Mining Company lay idle. There was not a sign of life about.

The gay little plaza, washed green with the rainy season, was deserted, but the torn grass and the débris littering the place showed that an army had bivouacked there. The doors of the hotel were closed and locked; the gates barred. On the main door hung a placard ordering that the hotel and mine were to remain closed awaiting the return of the regiment; it was signed by the Colonel. It was a bad place to stay around, and as Paintbrush had had his fill at the river, Raquel swung past the fountain and turned up the hill on which the officials of the company had built their residences. It looked like a California suburb on the hill—pretty bungalows, tennis courts, a rudimentary golf course. There were groves of citrus fruits. It was all very pretty.

Raquel dismounted, took off Paintbrush’s saddle and blanket, so that he could roll on the grass, and then stretched herself beneath the trees. Here in this hidden spot she and Paintbrush could rest without being seen.

She slept and dreamed—dreamed she heard some one crying pitifully, in a heartbroken way. Could it be Mom? The thought jarred her into consciousness, and she leaped to her feet. But there was not a sound in this deserted place, except the faint yapping of some little cur dog from a far hillside, where the huts of the peon miners clung like swallows’ nests.

The drip, drip of water from near one of the houses broke the stillness. Raquel stepped quietly over to where a pipe and faucet rose from the grass near a balcony. As she laid a hand upon the faucet a door on the balcony before her opened and a slight girlish figure stepped out.

Speechless with amazement, they stood face to face for a moment, the girl on the balcony wavering slightly back and forth. Then with a moan she tottered and fell forward. Raquel pulled open the screen door with a quick movement and reached the girl’s side; she caught her before she could fall to the floor.

It was Lois Wainwright! Thin and pale she was, but still lovely, though her closed eyes were red with weeping, and blue hollows smudged her cheeks. The shock of it almost stunned Raquel. Lois! How could she be here, of all places!

Lois’ eyelids began to flutter and Raquel, lifting her in wiry arms, half carried, half dragged the limp figure out on the grass. She bathed the white face with fresh water from the faucet and fanned her briskly with a palmetto leaf. Lois’ eyes opened slowly, almost reluctantly, and she sat up, looking hungrily into the face peering down at her.

“Raquel Daniels,” she faltered. “So it really is you? I was afraid to look again. I hardly dared believe it.” And she turned her head away as tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Come, Lois,” Raquel spoke quietly, patiently, as to a child. “Come, dear, you mustn’t cry. Tell me, is it possible that you are all alone here? Where is your father?”

“Take me away, save me!” Lois’ eyes widened with terror. “Papa, papa—is dead. He died suddenly.” She could say no more. She was almost unstrung with strain, fright and grief. A few babbling words about the Chino cook who had gone away with everything and the Mexican boy who was coming back to take her off into the mountains roused Raquel to the necessity for getting away.

Could she get Lois to El Escondido? How was it possible with one so weak and broken? Leading her gently back into the house, Raquel glanced about the attractive bungalow. How pleasant it would be to stay right here, if they only dared. But she herself must return to the Ranch of the Desert to find Georgie, and she couldn’t leave Lois alone. No, Lois would have to go with her.

But there was little food in the pantries. They had been looted; doors were ajar; cupboards open. She found, however, in the places where it always occurs to womankind to look, whole-wheat crackers, some cheese, and a box of guava paste. She threw them into a sack, leaving the tinned milk and sea foods which were most likely to be spoiled. She dashed back to Lois, who, with frightened eyes, was hastily stuffing clothes and toilet articles into a suitcase.

“You can’t take that, Lois.” Raquel spoke gently. “We have no way of carrying it, dear. I am going out now while you put on some riding clothes—that linen suit would be best—to see if I can’t rout out a burro, or a mule, to carry what we need—unless I can find another horse for you to ride. Quick, Lois! We must be quick.”

Lois, with a swift obedience that was touching, and with a piteous reliance on Raquel, began at once to get into her things. She seemed afraid to speak aloud, but she did not want Raquel to leave her there alone for an instant.

“Don’t go, don’t go,” she pleaded, in a whisper. “Wait for me.”

Raquel helped her. They left the wardrobe full of lovely, flimsy frocks, the bureau drawers full of scented undergarments. Lois snatched her father’s picture from the dressing table and Raquel, on impulse, pushed the silver articles into the wardrobe and turned the key in the lock. It was a stalwart piece of furniture. The owners would be back some day and might return the things if they had not been filched.

In the corrals they found not a horse nor even a burro. Nor did a quick survey of the hill top discover a single animal. There was nothing to do but find some horse for Lois to ride. They could not get away without it.

It was dangerous to stay where they were. The troops might be back at any moment. No one knew what treatment the girls might receive. They could not hope to hide here forever. Bandits looking for ransom were everywhere. What chance would there be for a fragile, lovely creature with golden hair like Lois? Raquel was frantic with the dilemma. She reasoned to herself, “Perhaps it’s better at that to stay here. Here it’s cool and comfortable; there’s something to eat; wouldn’t it be better to take our chances so long as we’re alive than to go out on the desert with only the pinto to carry the two of us, and water and food?”

Then she remembered the threatening placard on the hotel door; she thought of Georgie. It was a terrible decision, but they must go.

She brought the pinto up to where Lois was waiting on the porch and spoke to him. She tied on the bag of food and put Lois’ things in her saddle bag, then she half lifted Lois on his back and took the bridle to reassure the horse, still wild at heart when any one but his mistress came too near.

On a last impulse Raquel turned down the hill again toward the plaza, hoping to catch a glimpse of some stray horse. Perhaps some second-rate animal had been left behind, tied in a corral, or hobbled on the mountain side.

As if in answer to prayer she heard a nicker and, down at the end of the plaza, under a flaming paradise tree, she caught sight of a large roan horse, awkwardly jumping toward the fountain in the center of the square. His front feet were hobbled.

She helped Lois off again and left her in the shelter of the trees. Then Raquel ran out and up to the animal. He was thoroughly manso and offered her his hind hoof for inspection. He had cast a shoe, but that was not what made him limp. A nail had become thrust into the tender part of the hoof just enough to hurt when pressure was put upon it. Raquel pulled it out and the friendly creature stretched out his head and wriggled his lips in appreciation.

“And they left you behind for that, old boy!” Raquel talked to him as she quickly untied the hobble ropes. “Too lazy to find out what made him lame! Can you beat the ways of a péon with a horse? You were most certainly picked up over the border anyway, old boy. What a find just now, when I’d have given several kingdoms for a gentle horse.”

The brown horse still limped, but only slightly. There was no saddle, no blanket, in sight. They could go by the bungalow again and pick up a blanket, and Raquel remembered a decrepit old saddle hanging in one of the stable sheds behind the house.

Every minute seemed an age, yet it was only ten minutes after they left Lois’ house before they were back; and a few minutes later Raquel had the new horse nicely blanketed and saddled with the patched-up saddle, roping the cinch rings together. A rope bridle was rigged from the pieces with which the animal had been hobbled.

With Lois mounted, they went quietly side by side down through the grapefruit grove, plucking a number of the big fruits as they passed. Behind the last house should be the trail which Raquel’s host of the night before had described. She could not in the least remember what direction they had taken to Escondido before. Now she was too far to the right. “Above the houses,” the old woman had said. Ah, there it was, a fair trail surely! And they were on it, winding over foothills in a northeasterly direction.

All this while Lois remained silent, dazed. But as they dropped down into an arroyo, out of sight of the rest of the world, she whispered timidly, “Where are we going, Raquel?”

“To a ranch called El Escondido, where I hope to find my brother Georgie, and where we can be very comfortable and safe. It’s not far, and we’ll rest by the river we are coming to, and eat something before we start across.”

It was very hot there in the sandhills, with no protection from the blazing sun. Before them a peccary scuttled away with her drove of young. Lois’ face was like the white flower of the Lilia de la Crucifixion.

“Just a coche Javalina, the wild pig of this country,” Raquel reassured her. Pigs did not seem formidable to Lois and she relaxed in her saddle. Raquel was glad that the fierce old sow had not seen fit to charge them, for a horse will run from a peccary.

Over another hill still! But it was the last, and below them ran a sluggish, muddy stream, yellow and swollen with the rains. There were no trees along the river, only mesquite bushes, Spanish dagger and stunted palms. Lois was already exhausted, though they had ridden scarcely an hour, and Raquel felt as happy as a lizard in the sun.

“How much farther?” Lois gasped.

“Come, dear, try to pull yourself together.” Raquel spoke sharply, for a glance at Lois showed her that she was letting go of what reserve force she had.

Lois winced as if she had been struck, but closed her lips tightly and held desperately to the saddle horn. Raquel rode close and put an arm about her. They reached the sandy flats of the river bed and Raquel leaped off, lifting Lois from her horse. Quickly she sought the one large spot of shade beneath a maguey plant and, spiking the burlap sack and the saddle blankets from one thorn to another, contrived a nice bit of shade.

She pulled out a clean shirt that Lois had given her and wet it in the stream; then hurried back to fan Lois. A slight breeze was stirring, and it was surprisingly cooler there in the shade by the river.

In a little while Raquel peeled an orange, making the girl eat it with a few wheat cakes. She herself then ate as much of the slender provender as she dared, and with good appetite, for she had breakfasted before five that morning.

A little color was returning to Lois’ lips. She lay back resting. Presently she looked at Raquel with puzzled eyes.

“You—you act as though nothing had ever happened, I should think you’d hate me. I wouldn’t have blamed you for leaving me there—in that terrible place.” At the thought tears filled her eyes again. Lois was quite unnerved. What she must have been through, poor child!

“There, you mustn’t think of it,” Raquel said soothingly. “Why, I wouldn’t leave a horse to suffer, would I? Much less a person.”

Lois was silent, taking this in.

“And perhaps——” It had been on the tip of Raquel’s tongue to say, “I’d better have left you there. This may be a hard trip.” But she caught herself just in time, and said instead, “Probably you will feel better to get into new surroundings.”

Raquel had left her wrist watch at El Escondido on the night of their hasty flight, but Lois wore a delicate little toy on her own wrist, and it now started bravely ticking when Raquel wound it and set it at two o’clock, which she judged by the sun was the correct time.

Raquel hung wet cloths on the bushes above Lois’ head to create a bit of moisture in that fearful dryness, while the horses flicked their tails contentedly near, backed into the coolness of the mesquite leaves. Presently the girls slept. The shadows grew longer and the little watch said six-thirty when they gradually roused.

Lois’ face was flushed and she seemed scarcely able to shake off the stupor and heat languor which possessed her. Raquel bathed her face in the stream, which was running clearer now, and freeing the horses she led them down to water. The bank seemed firm, without any quicksands near.

Paintbrush was vastly at home and, as the air cooled, was playful as a colt. He rolled his pretty, silky back over and over in the water.

“You wouldn’t think of running off from me and playing me a trick, old boy, would you?” Raquel said to him. “I’ll not take any chances with the call of the wild,” she thought, and staked Paintbrush with the length of her reata near by. The big horse stood gratefully in the water, but seemed unused to open country. “I knew you were stable-bred, old feller, you,” Raquel told him. “Now don’t get caught in the quicksands.”

“Are you just talking to the horses, Raquel?” Lois asked, weakly.

“Of course,” laughed Raquel. “Come down here, Lois, can’t you, and we can take a bath here in the river that will refresh us for the ride this evening.”

“Oh, Raquel,” Lois gasped, in dismay, “I couldn’t ride another step today. Oh, I can’t.”

“You’ll feel better when you have had a bath and some food,” Raquel answered reassuringly.

After they had bathed and slipped on their freshened clothes they felt much better. Lois let down her long hair, and brushed it out. In the rich light of the setting sun it looked like a web of purest gold. But her thin skin was cracked and blistered from the unaccustomed exposure, while Raquel’s face was like velvet, well nourished from within. Raquel remembered a tiny bottle of olive oil in her saddle bag, and she had Lois rub some over her lips and face. She went off into the desert a little way and came back with a small bundle of amole root.

“I pulled this out,” she said, “and we’ll put a bit in water. You try it and see how soft it is. It’s soapweed, you know, and better than any soap I ever saw.”

She lined a little hollow in the earth with stones that were hot from the sun, and in a few moments there was a basin of foamy water.

Lois bathed her hands gratefully. “Oh, it’s like velvet.”

They ate sandwiches of crackers and cheese and guava paste. Lois ate with effort, although the first food she had eaten in days, she said, was what Raquel had given her that day. “There was no one to fix it,” she explained.

“You’ve got to get over that,” Raquel remarked dryly. “If we should get separated I don’t aim to come back and find you all in with starvation because you are too proud, or too lazy, or something, to fix yourself something to eat.”

“Separated?” Lois exclaimed. “Don’t leave me a minute, Raquel.”

Lois was not angry at the rebuke, only surprised at the idea of getting food for herself.

“I—I didn’t feel like eating,” she excused herself. “I’ve never ridden very far before. Couldn’t we stay here tonight?”

Raquel said nothing for a moment, then answered sternly, “Lois, we can’t stop at a good hotel till we feel like going on. There’s no choice. We’ve got to go now. I’ve got to get back to my mother and take her son back to her; that’s the least I can do. She’s back home not knowing what has become of me and my kid brother. Her husband and other sons are at war. She’s alone. We haven’t enough food or fresh water to last another day. Another hot day in the desert would mean—well, we can’t do it.”

And without another word she got up and saddled the horses methodically, for the sun had already set and a baby moon was far up in the sky.

In silence she helped Lois to her feet and upon the horse’s back, then quickly mounted Paintbrush and made for the narrowest part of the widespread stream. The pinto examined the bottom carefully, withdrew from two places that he did not like, and finally picked the widest part of the meandering river as his choice for fording.

The big horse followed obediently in the pinto’s every footstep, which was a good thing, for he would not lead on a rope. Raquel had already tried that and found he pulled back. When they were nearly across, Raquel looked back to see if Lois was all right. She was clinging with one hand to the pommel while the other was thrown back over her tightly closed eyes. Her face was white as death. Raquel would have gone to her side, but the crossing was fraught with too much possible danger to take her attention from it for an instant. The soluble, slippery, red soil, the shifting sand of that country, is too treacherous ever to rely upon.

Suddenly in the center of the stream the pinto sank down above his flanks, rose up with a fine effort of splendid muscles and, bounding clear of the bottom, began to swim toward the main current.

In a moment he was shaking himself nonchalantly on a firm bit of beach. But Lois’ horse stood up to his knees on the far side, refusing to budge. So Raquel had to put Paintbrush across again, which she did easily a bit further up. Lois was transferred to his back and he seemed to realize that he must carry her safely across.

Raquel had no trouble in guiding the big brown, though he floundered dangerously for a few minutes. Ahead of her the pinto swam with Lois bent over the saddle, and then he leaped violently clear of the shaky sands beneath him. Raquel’s heart was in her mouth for fear that Lois, wavering in the saddle, would fall off. But they came through safely, and mounted the long dune opposite the river, to see a sandy desert stretching before them, rosy in the setting sun.

“Raquel, Raquel,” begged Lois. “Let me get off. I can’t do these things. Oh, leave me behind then, if you must go on. I’d rather die.”

“Lois! Hush!” Raquel spoke sternly. “You can do it. You did do it already, and it is easy riding now across the desert,” she added relenting.

As the pinto was too quick in movement for Lois, Raquel changed back to her own compadre. The stars were out; the night had fallen as softly and quietly as a velvet leaf; the little moon rode higher and higher. Behind them the dark vegetation along the river served as a guide to Raquel, and ahead were two dark spots that she tried to keep in position.

“Raquel,” Lois said after a while, “please talk to me. Are we to ride all—all night?”

“Oh, I was thinking,” Raquel answered, contritely. “I was thinking about Georgie, my brother. I don’t know where he is. I hope he’ll be at El Escondido when we get there.

“Why, no, Lois, we don’t need to ride all night, my dear, but we must get nearly across this mesa tonight.”

“Yes, I know you must be worried about your brother,” Lois faltered. “I am, too.”

Raquel was touched, for she had never had a considerate thought from Lois before. She began to feel the charm which Lois had always had for the girls at school. You couldn’t expect such a girl to stand any hardship, after all, brought up as she had been. Anne, now—Anne would probably stand the iron like a good one. Raquel laughed aloud.

“I haven’t thought of school for a mighty long time now, I can tell you,” she said. “But I thought of it just then. Wouldn’t they be surprised, back there, at us being together like this? I mean, ’way off down here.”

So they rode, talking of one thing and another. School—inconsequential things that did not really enter into the drama of their own lives.

But at length the story of Lois and her father came out, bit by bit. After spending the winter in California her father had suddenly decided, Lois said, to return to El Paso; but he stopped off at Douglas, Arizona, with the sudden idea of going on down to the mine at Nacozari. That was in April. His physician had told him that the climate would be ideal. He craved dryness and warmth. He was a large stockholder in the company and a close friend of two of the high officials of the mining company at Nacozari. A few telegrams were sent and down they came.

It was very comfortable for the first two months, and there was a nice young engineer with whom Lois played tennis and croquet. Her father seemed very happy, and breathed much more easily than he had in the foggy climate of California.

Then in May every one else went back north to avoid the heat, but her father would stay. And all at once this new revolutionary disturbance burst out again, and the troops came down into that part of Sonora. And then suddenly—oh, so suddenly, her father died. The Mexicans had buried him up there, on the hillside, and she couldn’t telegraph anybody because all of the wires had been cut by the Mexican general.

She had waited for the officials to come back; and she had written letters, including one to her Cousin Jimmy, and given them to some Mexicans who said they would mail them.

Then the Chinese cook ran away; he was always so frightened that he would hide when he heard a shot. And the Mexican boy had gone and taken everything, and the little girl who had been her maid did not come any more to wait on her.

“What did you do when the army came into town the day before yesterday?” asked Raquel.

“I hid all the time,” sobbed Lois, “in the cooling cellar. But I had to come out for water and everything was quiet—that was when I saw you. I thought you were just a Mexican boy at first, but I could never forget your face. And then—it was you.” She ended on a gulp of intense relief.

The big brown horse began to limp. Raquel looked at Lois’ watch by the light of the moon. It was after twelve, clear and beautiful. They had been riding for four hours. They must have come at least twelve miles, perhaps fourteen, she judged. Yet about them stretched only the silvery desert. The old woman had had the usual native’s idea of distances.

Looking back the way they had come there was nothing to be seen, and ahead of them the two dark spots had grown steadily larger; they were apparently two rocky foothills thrusting into the desert. If they could make that spot tonight, Raquel thought, then by daylight she could see where they were. Lois did not ask again to stop. She did not speak at all.

Two hours more of silent riding passed before they stood in the shadow of a hill at the foot of which the sands of the desert washed like the sea. There they stopped. Raquel dismounted and spoke to Lois, who was sitting drooped in the saddle with bent head. She was past speaking, her eyes closed.

“Asleep in her saddle, poor kid,” breathed Raquel.

Lois slipped gently into Raquel’s arms and was carried to a soft spot where she lay without so much as stirring. Raquel leaned over and listened for a moment to the quiet breathing. Then she lay down close to her charge and fell asleep, while the pinto drooped his head above his mistress.

It was nearly seven when Raquel waked and looked about. She saw that these sentinels in the desert were not real foothills. No little water courses wound their way among the crevices. The horses would have to go dry for a while, though Raquel could scarcely bear not giving the pinto a sip from the canteens. They did not seem to mind it, however, and after all they had drunk their fill last night.

IT WAS STILL COOL ON THE DESERT WHEN THEY RODE AWAY OVER THE SANDS

From the top of the hill she saw far off to the east a valley of trees, in the center of which she knew El Escondido must lie, for behind them rose the foothills, just as she remembered them from that night. Only three weeks before—less than that! But she had lost count of the exact number of days that had passed since then.

She came down and found Lois awake. “Lois, when I have made this grass and wood catch fire, I’ll give you the best breakfast you ever had,” she promised cheerily.

The fire caught from her burning glass. She made a little stove of stones about it, and produced from the saddle bags a tiny frying pan, into which she poured a bit of the oil. From her pockets she took four good-sized, mottled brown eggs and broke them into the pan.

“A ground bird of some sort laid them. I know they’re good,” laughed Raquel. They were delicious and satisfying, making a good meal with crackers and water.

It was still cool on the desert when they rode away over the sands at a pace that brought them by nine o’clock to the end of the desert, where a road led away toward the east. There the sands lost themselves in a growth of stunted shrubbery that rose into a higher vegetation the farther they went.

But the day grew hotter and hotter. And the brown horse limped more and more. “I’m afraid his foot is infected,” Raquel thought. At last the animal stopped, and would go no farther. Lois was herself exhausted, wilted by the heat. The girls dismounted.

Raquel took the saddle off the brown horse, poured some of the precious oil in his foot, bound it so that flies could not get at it, and left him there. He absolutely would not be led another step. “I’ll send back for you tomorrow, old boy, if I can. You can make out without water until then.”

She put Lois on the pinto, who by now had become somewhat accustomed to her, and walked by their side over the heavy sand. Lois looked down at Raquel trudging stoutly along and every now and then throwing out a cheerful word. Lois tried to speak, but tears choked her, and she only shook her head and bit her lips.

Raquel herself was frightened. Dear Heaven! Were they lost? “Just keep your head, keep your nerve, Rakie, old girl,” she said to herself. Her feet were growing tired. She was not used to walking any great distance. The cowhide sandals that she had exchanged for her boots when she escaped from the mine were not stout enough to protect tender feet from stone bruises, or from the blistering heat of the road. In spite of her indifference to fatigue, the pain of her swelling, burning feet became insistent, unbearable. They stopped again to rest, but when she walked on a bit farther the discomfort was as great as before.

“Lois, dear, I guess I’ll get up behind you, and let the pinto give us both a lift for a while.” Paintbrush had never carried a double burden before, and shied a bit at first, but at Raquel’s soothing command trotted obediently ahead. But his pace grew slower and slower under the increased load, and his tender-hearted mistress felt she was asking too much of the faithful animal.

So she slipped from his back again when they had gone less than half a mile, and as her foot touched the ground an excruciating pain shot through it. She had stepped on a cactus thorn which had gone right through the tough hide sole of the tegua, and imbedded itself in the sole of her foot. At her involuntary cry, Paintbrush stopped dead and turned a startled eye upon his mistress. Lois clambered off his back and ran to Raquel.

“Oh, my dear, what have you done? Oh, your poor foot!” Raquel was trying to pull the thorn out through the sole of the sandal. She could not remove the sandal without breaking the thorn off in her foot, when the flesh would close tightly around it.

She explained this to Lois, and they both tried in turn to loosen the incredible spike. But they could not draw it through the tough hide of the tegua and at length had to break it, and Raquel took off the sandal. Her blunt fingernails could not fasten on the stub of the thorn that remained in her foot, but Lois’ long pointed nails managed to grasp it before it could become completely imbedded.

Try as she would, however, Lois could not extract the thorn, and finally she took Raquel’s poor swollen foot in her hands, and placing her mouth over the slowly bleeding wound, she drew the thorn out with her sharp little teeth. The pain for a moment made Raquel’s eyes dim like a hurt deer’s. Lois was tearing her handkerchief into strips, for there was a rush of blood as the spike came out. When she had bound the wound as deftly as any nurse, she helped Raquel to the side of the road where there was shade under a flowering tree. It was impossible to go on. The heat was terrific, and Raquel could not walk.

“We’ll wait till sundown,” Raquel decided. “Lois, what would I have done if you hadn’t been so smart getting out that thorn?”

Paintbrush, glad of a chance to rest, browsed quietly on mesquite leaves and the tender green of a strange plant they did not know. Raquel drowsed, for the pain had taken her strength and left her sleepy.

When she woke after a while, she sent Lois out to forage for prickly pear, “tunas” the Mexicans call them, and told her how to knock the fruit off with a stick. Lois came back with her hat full, and the juicy sweet fruit allayed their thirst wonderfully, and refreshed them somewhat. But there were no crackers left in the saddle bags, and hunger pains gnawed them.

Rabbits were hopping about curiously, and Raquel asked Lois to get her automatic from the bottom of one of the bags. There were, fortunately, a few cartridges left. Raquel shot a foolish young cottontail from where she lay. Lois winced at the sound of the shot, but she went over and picked up the rabbit, quivering as she laid it beside Raquel.

She gathered moss and sticks, and held the burning glass over the heap until it caught fire. While Raquel skinned the rabbit, Lois gathered more fuel. They cooked it at once, and almost starving, could hardly wait to snatch the pieces from the pan. Never had they been so close to stark hunger. A faint color came into Lois’ cheeks, as she ate almost greedily. The two girls finished the rabbit and took a sip from the canteen.

“My goodness!” said Lois, “look—we’ve eaten a whole rabbit!”

Raquel smiled. Lois was coming on. Indeed, a new spirit seemed to have come over her. “Food certainly makes a difference, doesn’t it?” she sighed contentedly as she lay back against the bank at Raquel’s side. “Let’s start on right away. It’s getting cooler.” But her voice was drowsy.

Raquel’s eyes were closed. She did not answer, and Lois fell silent. When night came over the desert it found them both asleep, and covered them with its soothing mantle of darkness. They did not ride that night, though the pinto drooped patiently near, and finally lay down in his saddle, a thing he had never done before.

It was the piercing bright ray of the morning sun that sent a shaft of recollection to Raquel’s sleeping brain. She sat up, startled, and called the pinto a trifle wildly. He came running, neighing gratefully. The girls never knew it, but he had had business with a rattlesnake just a few paces away, and his lightning hoofs had left a mangled thing for the coyotes to turn away from.

He nickered at Raquel’s call. Lois did not stir from her deep sleep. Raquel hated to wake her, but there was no choice and she shook her insistently. Lois sat up quickly. When she was fully awake Raquel talked over plans for continuing the journey. These were complicated by her swollen foot. She knew she could not endure the pain of walking.

“I’ll walk,” Lois insisted. “You know, Raquel, it’s much easier for me to walk than ride. I’m used to walking, truly I am.”

Raquel agreed, because, really, there was nothing else to do. Lois gathered some more cactus fruit. They ate these, drank the last of the water from the canteen, and set out, Lois trudging along so bravely that Raquel did not suspect what an effort it was for her to keep pace with Paintbrush’s steady gait.

It must have been past ten-thirty when, after two hours or more, they struck a hard road. The path from the desert joined it abruptly. As they turned into it, Raquel looked up and down it and recognized with relief that this was the way she and Georgie had come before, when they were guided by the mine foreman. Fortune was with them, for Raquel knew she could never have found the road again except by stumbling on it as she had. Her spirits rose immeasurably, and Lois’ too, when Raquel told her that they were now on familiar ground. Paintbrush also sensed that they were nearing their goal. Perhaps he knew, for he was almost frisky when the little party halted, and Lois somewhat awkwardly uncinched him and pulled off his saddle and blankets with willing but clumsy hands.

“You will not have to walk any more, Lois dear,” Raquel said. “Paintbrush will carry us both the last three miles to El Escondido.”

They rested a full hour, for Lois was not so hardy a walker as she liked to believe. Then the two girls saddled the pinto again, Lois lifting on the heavy saddle and buckling the cinches with much effort after Raquel had smoothed the blanket. Lois climbed to the saddle, with the aid of Raquel’s boosting, and Raquel pulled herself on behind. Thus it was they covered the last blistering miles.

All at once they were there. A lovely paradise opened before them. They rode through the grove before the front of the hacienda. A windmill was lazily pumping water that overflowed tanks and troughs, and slipped clear and brimming through the acequias, the irrigation ditches that nourished the fields of El Escondido.

On through the arched gateway to the courtyard, where there was a strange silence and not a sign of life. Raquel called. There was a flash of a bright skirt, and a young Mexican girl appeared from the hacienda.

“Concha,” cried Raquel. “Don’t you remember me? It is Raquel Daniels.” She pronounced it in the Spanish way, Dan-ee-el, with the accent on the last syllable.

Concha hurried forward, smiling with relief. But indeed, she did well remember el señorito. So he had escaped safely? That was good. No, she shook her head commiseratingly, the little brother had not returned. Raquel’s heart sank. He must be with the army. He must.

And Don Nestor, she inquired. How was he? And where were all of the sirvientes?

Don Nestor was ill, Concha recited. He had been ill nearly three weeks—ever since the night of the raid, and was still lying in the basement where he had taken refuge. He could not himself walk up the escalera, and who was she, Concha, to carry him! Indeed, el padrón had shouted at her with terrible wrath when she had offered to push from behind. Piedad was cooking for them, but then el señorito remembered how fat was Piedad. He could scarcely move himself further than the kitchen door, and was of no assistance in the dilemma.

All the others had departed. Manuel had not returned after that night. Concha always had suspected Manuel anyway, and that hussy Maddalena, who had disappeared too. Worst of all, her novio, Concha’s novio, whom she was to wed next month, had been seized by the troops and carried off, she knew not where.

Concha’s tongue was all for running on, but Raquel interrupted with the request that a room be made ready at once for the señorita with her. The one she herself had had before, Raquel suggested. Concha disappeared round a corner of the house, and in a moment was heard unbarring the strong front door from within.

The girls stepped into the cool dimness of the zaguan and passed through into the patio. Raquel caught Lois by the arm for, now that they had arrived at their refuge, she gave signs of collapsing. With Concha’s aid, Raquel got Lois upstairs and to the high white bed. Her face was pinched with fatigue, and gray; her blonde hair hung in dry and brittle wisps about her face. She was covered with dust. This was not the delicately lovely Lois Raquel had known, and her heart was touched with pity as well as concern.

“Concha, ve, see! She faints. Get me quickly some water, some wine if there is any still, and tell Don Nestor I will be there at once as soon as I have attended my friend.”

Concha clattered down the stairs, and Raquel slapped water upon Lois’ temples and wrists. Her own sore foot was forgotten. It was the second time Lois had fainted, and Raquel was not accustomed to such things. She pulled off the poor child’s boots, and laid her head on the soft pillow.

When Lois had a few sips of the wine that Concha brought, she revived. “So sorry I’m such a bother, Raquel,” she said weakly. “Perhaps I can do better from now on.”

“Hush, dear.” Raquel, who had never been demonstrative, even with Mom, whom she loved so dearly and loyally, took this girl in her arms as if she had been a sister. “You are going to be all right.” And she knew that the last bit of hurt and hatred had melted away.

“I must go down to the old Don Nestor, who is ill in the cellar of his house,” she explained to Lois then. “Concha will stay right here and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Then she slipped out, though her foot was still burning and swollen, not stopping even to wipe her face, but only to take a deep draft from the stone water jar hanging in the shade of the galeria.

Down in the wine cellar, which had but a single window high up, a barred affair opening on some hidden inner court, lay Don Nestor on a freshly made pallet. Raquel spoke to him from the trapdoor above.

“It is I, Raquela,” she said. “I have returned safely, Don Nestor.

“Gracias a Dios,” replied a fervent voice from below. “Come down at once, my child, I have worried terribly about you. That I could have sent you off with that rascal Manuel whom I trusted so! I have lain here worrying. Had anything happened to you, I could never have forgiven myself.”

He seized her hand as, stepping from the ladder-like stairs, she limped towards his cot.

“Myself? It is nothing. We will speak of that later. But the lad?”

Questions flew back and forth as Don Nestor heard from Raquel her experiences of that night, of her subsequent adventures and the finding of Lois. Always, in spite of herself, Raquel returned to the fact that it had been agreed between Georgie and herself that they would make their way back to El Escondido if they became separated. She was near tears at not finding Georgie there.

“But there is no occasion, yet, to despair, for the muchachito would undoubtedly be obliged to stay with the soldiers for a while. But I am sure they would not harm him,” Don Nestor reassured her. He listened with interest to the account of their experiences with Manuel, upon whose head he invoked frequent holy imprecations.

It was Manuel, he told Raquel, in detailing his own experiences with the soldiers, who had brought about the raid. Manuel was not, it had transpired with the discovery of his perfidy, an honest man at all. He was a rebel—a bandit—who had fled Chihuahua two years before, and sought refuge in Sonora. He had taken Don Nestor in completely. While he attended the affairs of El Escondido, he maintained contacts with other miserable fugitives in the hills, and fomented trouble among the contented natives. News of his agitations had reached the governor, and it was to arrest him that the troops had come. After their first anger at the discovery that Manuel had flown, the troops had not molested El Escondido.

He knew these things from Concha and old Piedad, Don Nestor explained. They had conversed with him daily from the top of the escalera. Ill? It was his wretched ankle, dear Señorita, which he had broken in his hurried descent into this soterreno that terrible night. True, he had been somewhat ill with the shock and the excitement, for he was no longer a young man, and it was impossible for him to ascend the ladder with this useless foot.

Concha had explained to the lieutenant that the padrón could not see him (Raquel could imagine the dignity which sustained Don Nestor even under the trying circumstances of being detained in his wine cellar), and the soldiers had departed with apologies, profuse apologies, taking with them that fellow José, Concha’s novio, but none of Don Nestor’s good wine, gracias a Dios! Don Nestor had set his ankle himself the next day, and it was nearly well now. But he would run no risks and would not ascend, only to fall back and break it again.

The soldiers had not returned, and he felt that now that Miss Raquel was back with another young lady, he would attempt to go up to the upper chambers again. The gentle old caballero made a gallant effort to rise, but he was weakened by the pain in his injured foot, and his face grew white.

“Oh, Señor, do not molest yourself, I beg of you,” Raquel implored. “We must arrange to get you upstairs at once, for you are very weak and cannot gain strength down here in this air. It is unthinkable. I shall go to arrange it now.” The old gentleman lay back gratefully.

Presently the change was accomplished. Raquel and Concha found a high stepladder which they inclined against the perpendicular stairs that led from the wine cellar, thus making an easy ascent possible. With Concha on one side and Raquel on the other, Don Nestor, his ankle bound straight and stiff, at length climbed to the top where he all but collapsed on the floor. Then he would not move until Raquel had brought up the chest that he had kept beneath his cot all this time.

The girls got him into a chair and thus they drew him to the door of his bedroom, which was on the same floor, not far away. Concha had not even made the bed. Things were just as they had been on the night of the raid, because el padrón was very particular, and did not wish his possessions touched without orders, she explained volubly. Raquel helped her to lay the bed fresh and smooth, and to assist Don Nestor, weak and white, in the light of day, to get in.

“Put my treasure chest under my bed,” he directed, smiling whimsically. “It is many years since I have had a charming woman to think of me and offer me her services. It is many years since my wife died—and my baby daughter.” Don Nestor was deeply affected, and Raquel patted his hand tenderly.

“You must go now, my dear, and have rest,” he commanded. “What! No luncheon yet? Not even a refresco. Concha! Ah, what a place!” And he became at once so agitated and irascible that Raquel left, promising to eat something at once, and to lie down immediately.

Piedad already had arranged a table in a cool corner of the gallery under a honeysuckle vine. Raquel ate the food as in a dream. She had come at length almost to the end of her own resources. She was no longer conscious of her burning foot, she scarcely knew she was ascending the stairs to her room—and then nothing.

Concha undressed the limp, boyish figure on the bed—but, of course, she had known that the señorito was a girl—and tucked her sympathetically under the cool sheet, while she went across to the room opposite to see if that other pobrecito, so white faced, was still asleep.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE MAGIC FLAME

It was many days before either Lois or Don Nestor left their beds. Raquel recovered almost at once, although she still limped, but it was fortunate that the two invalids kept her in the house, for it gave her lame foot a chance to heal.

Lois lay listlessly in bed, not seeming to care much about anything. She made no trouble, asked for nothing, ate without appetite what was placed before her. Raquel could not understand it, and was worried at Lois’ indifference. She had seemed like another girl that last day in the desert.

Truth to tell, Lois was recovering from shock, and kindly nature had merely employed a beneficent anesthesia to give her an opportunity to do so. While she gathered strength, Raquel talked with their host, diverting him from his pain and boredom, so that at the end of the fourth day he was out on the gallery, the ankle almost well. Raquel recounted to him in detail the incidents of her escape.

At the story of the dance at Moctezuma he was highly elated and when she had finished he said:

“Señorita, I have been wanting to ask you to do me the favor to wear for me the costume of the ladies of Andalusia. In my room is a large chest of handsome clothing. It was my wife’s; it is yours, if you will accept it, and the jewels that go with the gowns.” He smiled, a fine, sweet smile, extending his hand deferentially toward her.

“I’d love to put them on, Don Nestor!” cried Raquel, rising. “And I know it will be more pleasant to you than seeing me in these riding clothes.” She still wore the extra linen suit which Lois had brought. “I’ll go now,” she said, “and come back for refrescos here.”

The old gentleman leaned back musing, a blue-veined hand over his kindly eyes.

In the scented twilight of late summer they sat al fresco, the old caballero of Mexico, and the señorita of Old Spain. In white lace mantilla, made creamy by the years, and softest silk, gay-flowered, one would hardly have known our hard-riding Raquel. From her small white ears hung earrings heavy with rubies and wrought gold. Round her throat and wrists rich rubies and pearls gleamed.

“And I would like you to take up over the frontera with you to your rancho as many head of cattle as we can find vaqueros to drive.” Don Nestor was speaking. “It is little enough, querida señorita, after what you have suffered at my hands, through my mistake. There is no question of money. I have more than I shall ever use. I need none here. I am happy, drowsing away my life with memories, away from the world.” He nodded gently.

“But Don Nestor, no, no! I couldn’t accept that. I will be partners with you though, if you like.”

“Then why not let it be a gift for the Allies?” suggested Don Nestor. “I have great sympathy for them. I should like to be of a little service to the world. Come, let us say that we are partners, then,” he acceded.

“Your coming, my dear young friend, has been the one bright spot in many years. It has been very lonely at times. I wish that I might keep you here, but I know that may not be. Some times——”

He was interrupted by the sound of hammering at the front gate, followed by Concha’s running to answer. Concha returned quietly and, standing behind Don Nestor’s chair, beckoned Raquel. In the outer court she found a dusty peón, who regarded her with amazement.

“But it was a boy,” he objected, “to whom I was directed to give this note. And I was also promised that I would receive another peso duro [silver dollar] for my trip. Where is Señor Dan-i-eel?”

But Raquel had seized the note he held in his hand and was reading.

“Rakie: Come get me. I’ve tried five times to run away from this darn army, and they always drag me back. My horse is here too. Give the man a dollar if you see him. Signed, Georgie. P.S. We’re just above Nacozari.”

“I’ll have to go.” Raquel could have shouted. “It’s from Georgie. He’s found, he’s found. I must start tonight, right away. And perhaps we can get back by tomorrow night—the next day anyway.”

The man had left with the note that morning, after ten o’clock, he said, and he was here already. Georgie had given him a silver dollar to carry the message, and said his sister would give him more still if he would guide her back to him.

“Fine,” Raquel agreed and hurried away to get ready, having first excused herself to her host.

Don Nestor must not know of her going. He would be distressed and might object. But she must go at once. Paintbrush was saddled, and the big brown horse which she had herself recovered from the bush a few days before. His foot seemed to have completely healed, and she saw that this would be a good opportunity to return him to the regiment, and would furnish an excuse for her visit.

Back again she rode over the weary miles, only now the way was easier, with a hard road and the peón to guide her. He was a vaquero, he said, and she promised him work at El Escondido if he wished to return with them.

Early in the morning they neared Nacozari. Raquel had not yet determined what she must do in order to get Georgie away. Down the valley she could hear a trumpeter. The regiment was in the town.

She rode bravely into the plaza, which was filled with soldiers. No sign of Georgie, but he’d soon spot the pinto, all right. Straight up to the hotel she rode, dismounted, throwing the reins to her attendant, and strode into the dining-room.

At a table sat the Coronel at breakfast, with his aides and lieutenant. He glanced in surprise at the youngster who intruded so rashly.

“Pardon, Coronel,” Raquel swept her sombrero in salute, “does this roan gelding I have outside belong by chance to you? He was found near my rancho, lame, with an infected foot, which I have cured.”

The Coronel looked annoyed, but before he could speak one of the aides replied: “The Coronel can not be bothered. He has not yet had his coffee. But I will go out and see the horse. There was a roan horse belonging to el General left behind a week or two ago, and he was much annoyed.”

The Coronel was looking at Raquel aggrievedly. “I have not yet had my coffee,” he complained.

“Water boils slowly at this altitude,” Raquel sympathized.

“You talk like a native,” snapped the Coronel. “You mean every one moves slowly at this altitude. You don’t look like a native, though,” he added.

“I have spent much time in the states,” Raquel replied. “I only returned indeed, a few months ago.”

“Is that so?” The Coronel was mildly interested. “I myself went to school in California as a youth. Won’t you sit down and have breakfast with us? That is, if we ever get it! We have been waiting three-quarters of an hour for that dastardly cocinero to boil water for us.

“I die for my coffee!” he exploded with fresh wrath.

“You want coffee?” asked Raquel. What a question! Then a brilliant idea occurred to her, though just how brilliant it was she did not at the moment realize.

“I can give you an excellent cup in a moment, I think. Excuse me an instant, sir,” and she dashed from the room.

She had remembered the three little tins that through all her adventures had lain in the bottom of her saddle bag, Mom’s contribution. Would they still be there? Would the sterno be any good, or would it have evaporated or melted, in all the heat through which they had passed? At any rate, the coffee would keep perfectly.

Just outside the door she stumbled over Georgie. His blessed, freckled face, his wide-toothed grin! Raquel’s chin quivered ridiculously.

“Buenos dias, Señor. Como le va?—Don’t you know me?” Georgie inquired anxiously, for Raquel was standing there, looking at him sternly.

“Shut up,” she said. Then loudly, “Well, el Diente [the Tooth]! Well! I’ll have to get the Coronel to let me take you home with me, young runaway. Here, stay by my horse.”

With trembling fingers she searched into the depths of her bag and, sure enough, there they were, the three little tins. Georgie had followed, and was standing at her elbow.

“Raquel,” he whispered.

“Georgie,” huskily. “Wait.”

A few moments later she was back at the table where the sterno was set up. Opening a can with a stout table knife, she touched a match to it. The fluid flickered, flared, then settled down to burn with a lovely blue flame. She set a little tin of water over it.

The Coronel was enchanted. And as the water grew warm, steamed, boiled, all under his rapt gaze, and as the boy put a coffee powder into a cup, he began to gesticulate wildly. For in a moment here was a cup of steaming coffee, its unmistakable fragrance warming the heart.

He snatched the cup and drained the scalding drink. “More,” he sighed, handing it back to Raquel. “It is delicious!” As indeed it was.

“What may I give you in exchange for that little apparato, my lad!” beamed the Coronel after his third cup of coffee, all his irritability vanished.

“It is yours, Coronel,” Raquel replied. “All I want is a runaway youngster who belongs to our hacienda, but who I see has joined your company. I’d like to take him back with me.”

“By all means,” assented the Coronel, beaming in the possession of this new toy, this delightful tin stove (apparently it did not occur to him that it would ever burn out) which would always give him coffee.

“Unless it is the amusing and indispensable infant called ‘Tooth.’ Him I can part with for no one.”

“Alas, it is he, none other,” replied Raquel, grinning with apparent amusement.

“Oh, well, then, if he belongs at your place. Go with God. Only hurry up.”

“And may he have a horse to ride back?” She pushed her advantage a bit further.

“But certainly. Give him a horse. Give him his horse,” the Coronel shouted, waving dismissal.

The aide went out to authorize Georgie’s departure.

“You had better vamoose, my son,” he advised, “before the Coronel changes his mind. It’s a good thing you returned that roan horse.”

And it was a matter of very few moments before they clattered with indecent speed out of the plaza and away up the road. The vaquero sprang from the roadside when they had gone barely half a mile, and the three of them galloped briskly away and over a hill towards El Escondido.

CHAPTER XIX
CONFESSION

Raquel and Georgie had been back for two days. Already some of the peóns who had fled El Escondido on the night of the raid were straggling in from the hills. They told of the exciting speeches and fine promises made by Manuel, who had also said that El Escondido would be confiscated or destroyed by the government.

But they had learned that he was nothing but puro bandido, not a true revolucionista at all. Upon the discovery of his perfidy they had all come back, with one exception, to support their padrón.

So the work of the ranch was gradually resumed, and to Raquel fell the delightful task of riding over the “hidden range” to inspect her cattle. If she could only get them out of the country she would accomplish her mission after all. It only remained to wait for an opportunity.

Lois went everywhere with Raquel. She had recovered her strength. When Raquel had crept upstairs to the little balcony on the night of her return with Georgie, she had found Lois sitting by her window, dressed and waiting.

“Raquel!” Lois had leaped up joyfully. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back! You found Georgie! I can see it in your face.”

“Yes, he’s down stairs,” Raquel smiled. “I hope you and Don Nestor weren’t too worried over my absence. We got back as soon as we could.”

“Oh, my dear, you must be exhausted. Let me help you into a fresh gown. Do lie down and I will have Concha bring you something to eat. She’s had chicken soup ready for hours, and tamales.” Lois was busy making Raquel comfortable.

“Oh, I’m not so tired,” Raquel protested. “We slept on the way about four hours, at noon time. But I’m awfully glad you’re up, Lois.”

But Raquel was tired; almost too tired to rest. Finally she drank a hot potion concocted by Piedad and Don Nestor, and fell asleep. Georgie was already wrapped in noisy slumber, having eaten a preposterous meal to Piedad’s rapture.

When Raquel woke at noon the next day Lois was sitting beside her. From then on she was rarely far from Raquel’s side. At first it seemed strange to Raquel to have a girl companion constantly with her. At times it brought school days sharply back.

“How different this all is,” Lois said the next morning, as she watched Raquel dress. “I never thought I could like it down here, but do you know, Raquel, I love it.

“I’ve been thinking, lately; somehow I’ve been different; it’s been different with me, Raquel, since that ride we had over the desert. You’ve been so wonderful. I don’t see how I could ever have been so hateful to you. It seems as if it were another person.”

“Well, I guess perhaps I’m a bit different now, too,” Raquel offered awkwardly.

“You see, Raquel,” Lois went on desperately, “I hated you before I ever saw you. Jimmy Hovey always wrote such wonderful things about you and held you up to me, and I couldn’t bear it. Jimmy had always made a pet of me. And I just adored him. But he teased me too, and told me my faults. I guess I always had my own way with papa, but Jimmy would not give in to me. And that used to make me so angry. I can remember crying with rage. And then Jimmy would just walk away, and wouldn’t pay any attention to me. And I’d have to be the one to give in. I just hated it. But I always did give in, because I was so crazy about Jimmy. And I wanted him to like me, and to admire me.

“When I grew older and went to The Towers I suppose it was just because I couldn’t wind Jimmy round my finger that I cared so much for his opinion. Of course I know it did me a lot of good—his trying to discipline me. I got a little practice in letting some one else have his own way.

“But Jimmy shouldn’t have teased me so. He should have seen how cruel it was. And when he praised you it made me hate you. Then, when you came to school, it seemed as if here was one way I could get the better of Jimmy. He couldn’t make me like you if I didn’t want to.

“It was horrid and hateful, I know. Oh, Raquel, can you ever forgive me? I spoiled your school, your only school.” Lois repeated the last words anxiously. Raquel had scarcely spoken during her confession.

“It’s all right, Lois,” she said at last with some difficulty. It was hard for her to understand the complicated psychology of Lois’ experience. “I guess I was hateful to you, too, when you wanted to speak to me there once or twice. And I never told Jimmy a word about your being in the West. That was pretty bad, you know. Because he might have missed you, for all I knew.”

“But, Raquel, he is still there, isn’t he? And we shall see him when we do get back? I’ll tell him just what I did. Because it’s only right he should know. And, Raquel, I’ll tell you something else. I met your brother.”

“Yes, I know that.” Raquel grinned.

“What, he told you? When?”

“When he came up to the ranch for Christmas, he described you. You were looking at a shawl, which he promptly bought for my mother. Just because you were looking at it, I guess.”

Lois blushed. “And we met him by chance driving home from a ranch Christmas afternoon. The driver lost the road and Custer, your—your brother, got out and drove in our car, and showed us the way. I didn’t know it was he, of course. I didn’t know who it was.

“But I was just crazy about him! I am yet! Only when I learned his name, I didn’t know how to act; so, as usual, I was horrid again. And I wouldn’t have done it for anything, if I could have helped it.”

Lois began to cry, her face puckered up like a baby’s. Raquel laughed outright.

“Stop, silly. What do you care? It will do old Custer good. He’s so spoiled by the girls, because he’s so handsome and has such a way with him, that it will just do him good to have a girl a little offish with him. It’ll make him all the more eager; you’ll see. Besides, he’s been perfectly crazy about you ever since he saw that picture of you when you were only twelve years old. I was dying to tell you that when I saw you at The Towers. But of course you wouldn’t have cared then, anyway.”

“Oh, Raquel, is he?” Lois looked delighted. “Of course if it had been anybody but your brother, I wouldn’t have felt guilty and wouldn’t have acted that way. Oh, I’ll have to get back if only to apologize to Custer.”

“Now wouldn’t that make you tired! Apologize!” laughed Raquel. “Custer, fussin’ even Lois! Don’t you do anything of the kind or I shan’t ever speak to you again, or take you home to Los Ranchos with me.”

Lois looked at Raquel with her heart in her eyes.

“You’re going to take me home with you?”

“Why, of course, silly, for as long as you can stand us rough old cow ranchers. And I’m goin’ to ask Anne out, too.”

“Your little friend grows surprisingly beautiful,” approved Don Nestor, taking his sun bath with the birds in the patio. “She was a washed-out little thing for the first week or so. But now she is like the lovely golden-haired ladies of Castile.” As indeed she was, in a gown from the inexhaustible treasure chests.

Lois’ magnetic charm began to reassert itself with returning health and spirits. She was shortly ordering everybody around with her broken Spanish and her pretty ways, and every one rushed about desperately to please La Loisa. The fat Piedad was at her feet, Concha lolled at her elbow, and old Moso was throwing sheep’s eyes all the time.

Even Raquel found it hard not to do what Lois wanted, and was constantly contriving to do things to please her. And Lois herself was full of services these days. The house bloomed with flowers of her plucking, and she managed to amuse Don Nestor greatly with her pantomiming.

With Raquel she was eager, striving. An impression had been made upon her which she was never to forget. She hardened herself to long rides over the hills; she learned to saddle and unsaddle her own horse.

“But I can’t lift a saddle, Raquel.” Lois had been horror-struck at the idea yet, nevertheless, she soon was proud of her skill, and called every one out for an exhibition.

She learned to find water when she was thirsty, if there was any about; to make flap jacks, coffee, even tortillas. The fragile chest, the slender shoulders, began to fill out. Raquel took her into the hills, and made her lie down in the sun till her delicate skin was red. The slight cough, the fatigue which Lois had always felt, soon began to disappear.

“Do you know,” she said, “I haven’t had an ache in my back or chest in weeks now. I just noticed yesterday that it never hurts any more.”

“Why, did you always have pain, Lois?” Raquel asked.

“Most of the time, especially in winter; and all the time after Daddy died.”

One day they had ridden far; they were warm and flushed. Raquel found a shower bath in the hills, a natural warm and cold shower. A mountain stream had divided in its course, one streamlet flowing over hot rocks, the other in the deep shade of the canyon. Both streams tumbled in a pretty waterfall over into the same pool. Here the two girls splashed and played, moiling up the crystal pool, and drying themselves in the sun.

“It is the most fun I ever had in my life, Raquel. How I shall miss it!” Lois sighed.

But it was their last frolic at El Escondido.

When they returned to the hacienda at sundown, Georgie rushed out to greet them with the news that Concha’s novio was back. He had left the army. The railroad had begun to operate that day, and the way was clear to return home!

Raquel hurried in for a conference with Don Nestor. One of the vaqueros was despatched to Nacozari with a letter to Mrs. Daniels, and a telegram to be sent, if the wires were up once more.

The vaquero who had first brought news from Georgie had proved an able cowboy and a faithful retainer, so Don Nestor suggested that he be put in charge of an outfit of men and a thousand head of cattle, to start at once on the long overland drive to the border.

“It’s a long way,” said Don Nestor, “but they will get there some time, and if the railroad will ship more for us—we shall see. Ah, Raquela! So my little mayordomo is leaving me! I shall be lonely till you will come again.”

“But I shall come back surely some time, Don Nestor,” Raquel promised, “indeed I shall—when the war is over, and—and Dad and the boys come back.”

“My house is yours,” Don Nestor bowed low as he repeated the old Castilian saying, “always. And all I have I leave to you when I am no more. When you go I should like you to take with you the chest of jewels and gowns. But the lands are to return to the people, to whom they belong by right.” And Raquel knew that he meant it.

On a fair morning when the land seemed to swoon of its own loveliness, and the perfume of clematis and honeysuckle penetrated even to the high balcony of Raquel’s room, she woke with the realization that this was to be her last awakening at El Escondido.

“Lois,” she called across the corredor, “Lois, are you up? Oh, I hate to go! That is, I would hate to if it weren’t for Mom. I must be shameless, lazing away my time here in Mexico for two months.”

CHAPTER XX
HOME WITH THE HERD

The puffing engine that shrieked and roared its way up the grades and shrieked and protested its way down again, as it crawled mile by mile nearer the American border seemed to Raquel an overworked heart that might stop or burst any minute, and tumble them all into the alkali desert. It belched its soot and cinders through the open door of the coach which swung precariously upon the tail of its coal bin. The occupants were roasted in the heat of its boilers.

Huddled among the Mexican refugees, who packed the sole passenger coach which the laboring train drew through the desert, sat Raquel in her peón costume and Georgie. Between them was a fair-faced señorita—Lois, who clutched her black serape tightly under her chin. Like all the other women, she never removed it in spite of the heat. Like the other girls and women, too, she was nervous with apprehension. Refugees they were all, Maytorenistas, Villistas, any “ista” other than Carrancista. They had been waiting for weeks for the train to run again; and for days had been sitting atop the freight cars with their bundles by their sides, fearful lest they be left behind. They were fleeing to the states for safety, taking no chances, placing no confidence in the momentary lull of revolution.

“Lucky we got seats inside,” said Georgie comfortably. “Gee, I’d hate to be sitting on top of the coach in this sun, wouldn’t you, Lois? I bet that’s just where we’d be, too, if it hadn’t been for Don Nestor’s name; huh, Raquel?

“I heard the Colonel say they were on the lookout for some Americans that the government and the consuls had been pesterin’ them about, ever since the telegraph wires had been mended again. Ha, ha! But he had no intention of lettin’ ’em through so easy. Let ’em wait, he said. It was easier not to know anythin’ about them.

“But the cattle? Sure, they’d carry them up all right. That meant bringing American gold into the country. Mexico for the Mexicans! So here we are, with a thousand longhorns on behind.”

“Georgie, hush up, can’t you? Here, let me pull Lois’ skirt over the treasure chest a little more.”

She would not believe that they were going home until they had actually crossed the border, thought Raquel. They expected to be met at Douglas by the faithful vaquero who had been with them ever since he brought that message of Georgie’s to Raquel. With him was Concha’s sweetheart. They had gone ahead a week before, driving a thousand head of cattle. And—and maybe Jimmy would be there, if the messages got through to Mom.

They were to unload this side of the border, and drive the cattle across themselves. Paintbrush and Custer’s pony and one of Don Nestor’s finest mares for Lois, were in a compartment of their own up in front of the cattle.

The feverish day drew at length toward an end. The sun was still high though Lois’ watch said six o’clock. They were nearing the line. With a great snorting of brakes, and much complaining of wheels, the train from Sonora came to a halt.

A lieutenant came running up from the rear of the coach. The cattle were to disembark, explained the engineer. Si, si, from El Escondido, from Don Nestor Torreon, a faithful supporter of the Government, a man for the people.

Georgie W. Daniels was the first person to touch foot to ground. Raquel swung down next, and helped Lois. The cowpunchers were already bringing their horses down the runway. It was amazing how quickly the cattle were unloaded. And here they were, but a scant half mile from the border, with an hour of daylight still, in which to cross to the United States where they would drive right into the pens at the train yards.

With a great glory of golden dust at their backs, and a noble heralding of mooing and bellowing, with the yell of the punchers, and the shouts of Don Nestor’s vaqueros, the three young adventurers crossed that imaginary line in the dust between Mexico and Arizona which Uncle Sam has drawn with the toe of his boot, and Mexico with her bayonete, while Nature has impartially planted the Spanish dagger on both sides. They came like a conquering army, whooping and singing, and never had a landscape seemed more beautiful than that which lay before them.

And so it seemed to Jimmy Hovey and Custer Daniels, who had stopped the boiling Pathfinder to stand up and look towards that moving cloud of dust.

“It’s them, sure’s whiskey cures snake bite,” exclaimed Custer softly.

“By Jove, it is, all right. They’ve made it!” Jimmy was half wild.

In a short time two girls were being folded to two vastly relieved uniformed breasts.... And, in spite of herself, it was Raquel who cried at sight of Custer’s empty sleeve.

“Just look at that bunch of cattle,” she choked, and buried her face in his shoulder. “There’s another thousand waiting for us in Douglas.”

“It’s not the cattle I’m looking at,” he was holding her tight, “but the gamest, bravest, little old cattlewoman I ever heard of!

“But, oh, Raquel, why did you do it? Down into such a hornet’s nest. It wasn’t worth it, hon.”

“I had to, Custer. Dad asked for more cattle. I had it all arranged to get a bunch just over the border—and along came old ‘A. B.’ and took them right out from under my nose. What else was I to do but go after more?” Still she could not look at his empty sleeve.

“Was that the bunch of cattle you went after?” Custer grinned. “Well, ‘A. B.’ never got them over the border even. About six miles from the frontera they were set on by bandits, and the whole outfit stampeded. Meyers made a great to-do about it; took it up with Washington when he got back. He said the very fellow who had sold it to him and was helping him drive the bunch up, turned round and fell in with the thieves. What do you think of that for a skin game? But, by golly, I’m glad it happened to him instead of you.”

“Well, it seems that I’m indebted to Mr. Meyers for several good turns after all. I sure haven’t lost any money or any cattle this trip, even if quite a lot of sleep has been lost.”

After a moment Raquel spoke again, her wet eyes shining. “Custer, I understand you have an apology to make to Lois! You can make it after supper. Me, I want to get to the hotel, so I can telegraph Mother Daniels.”

Down through the pass swept the old car. The earth dropped away from beneath their wheels as though they flew. Below them spread the Ranch of the Lazy L, its golden pastures knee deep in gramma grass and flowers.

“There’s home, Lois.”

“There’s home.” What a rich and incredible home-coming! Anne would be there with Barry, who had been sent home from the Argonne with a gassed lung. And where would Anne bring him but to Los Ranchos? Already Barry was breathing easier, Custer said.

And there was Mom on the front veranda waving a table cloth! Georgie could see her through the field glass glued to his eyes.

“I’ve brung her back, Mom. I’ve brung her back, and the cattle,” he shouted joyfully across the four miles between them.

“Wait till she can hear you. Wait till she can hear you!” They were all shouting now.

On the back seat, Custer, with a vast contentment held Raquel’s hard little fist tightly in his good left hand, while his eyes rested adoringly on the blonde head in front of them.

Could she ever live up to these Daniels, Lois was thinking. Oh, she wanted them to like her, to be worth the liking! How right Jimmy had been about Raquel. Only he hadn’t said half enough!

And Jimmy smiled back understandingly as, singing and calling out, they swept down nearer and nearer to those clustering creamy walls, lying so golden in the afternoon sun; to that waving banner welcoming them home.

THE END

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Table of Contents

- RAQUEL OF THE RANCH COUNTRY
- CHAPTER I RAQUEL GOES TO SCHOOL
- CHAPTER II HOME AGAIN
- CHAPTER III PROBLEMS
- CHAPTER IV TAKING STOCK
- CHAPTER V DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINS
- CHAPTER VI THE HUNT
- CHAPTER VII CHRISTMAS
- CHAPTER VIII LOIS
- CHAPTER IX THE BLIZZARD
- CHAPTER X THAT DANIELS GAL
- CHAPTER XI THE WILD HORSE
- CHAPTER XII DROUTH
- CHAPTER XIII ACROSS THE BORDER
- CHAPTER XIV HIDING
- CHAPTER XV WHAT BECAME OF RAQUEL
- CHAPTER XVI GEORGIE GETS LOST
- CHAPTER XVII FATE PLAYS A TRICK
- CHAPTER XVIII THE MAGIC FLAME
- CHAPTER XIX CONFESSION
- CHAPTER XX HOME WITH THE HERD
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE