grace and vigour of an unbroken filly at large upon the range.  And, indeed, she had been born in the wilderness, and left it but seldom.  Her father’s ranch lay forty miles from San Lorenzo, high up in the foothills—­a sterile tract of scrub—­oak and cedar, of manzanita and chaparral, with here and there good grazing ground, and lower down, where the creek ran, a hundred acres of arable land.  Behind the house bubbled a big spring which irrigated the orchard and garden.

Teamsters, hauling grain from the Carisa Plains to the San Lorenzo landing, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, would beguile themselves thinking of the apples which old man Ransom would be sure to offer, and the first big drink from the cold spring.

Mintie was about to enter the house, when she saw down the road a tiny reek of white dust.  “Gee!” she exclaimed for the second time.

“Who’s this?”

Being summer, the hauling had not yet begun.  Mintie, who had the vision of a turkey-buzzard, stared at the reek of dust.

“Smoky Jack, I reckon,” she said disdainfully.  Nevertheless, she went into the house, and when she reappeared a minute later her hair displayed a slightly more ordered disorder, and she had donned a clean apron.

She expressed surprise rather than pleasure when a young man rode up, shifted in his saddle, and said:—­

“How air you folks makin’ it?”

“Pretty fair.  Goin’ to town?”

“I thought, mebbe, of goin’ to town nex’ week.  I come over jest to pass the time o’ day with the old man.”

“Rode ten miles to pass the time o’ day with—­Pap?”

“Yas.”

“Curiously fond men air of each other!”

“That’s so,” said Smoky admiringly.  “An’ livin’ alone puts notions o’ love and tenderness into my head that never comed thar when Maw was alive an’ kickin’.  I tell yer, its awful lonesome on my place.”

He sat up in his saddle, a handsome young fellow, the vaquero rather than the cowboy, a distinction well understood in California.  John Short had been nicknamed Smoky Jack because of his indefatigable efforts to clear his own brush-hills by fire.  Across his saddle was a long-barrelled, old-fashioned rifle.  Mintie glanced at it.

“Was that you who fired jest now?”

“Nit,” said Smoky.  “I heard a shot,” he added. “’Twas the old man.  I’d know the crack of his Sharp anywheres.  ‘Tis the dead spit o’ mine.  There’ll be buck’s liver for supper sure.”

“Why are you carryin’ a gun?”

“I thought I might run acrost a deer.”

“No other reason?”

Beneath her steady glance his blue eyes fell.  He replied with restraint—­

“I wouldn’t trust some o’ these squatters any further than I could sling a bull by the tail.  Your Pap had any more trouble with ’em?”

Mintie answered savagely:—­

“They’re a-huntin’ trouble.  Likely as not they’ll find it, too.”