Cuter old settler waggled his ears.  He was a companionable horse, never kicked human beings, and bucked but seldom.

“Yep,” continued Racey, sitting back against the cantle, “she’s a long creek that don’t bend some’ers or other.”

And then the creek that was his flow of thought shot round a bend into the broad and sparkling reaches of a much pleasanter subject than the one that had to do with Harpes and Tweezys and Joneses.  After a time he came to where the pleasanter subject, on her knees, was weeding among the flowers that grew tidily round Moccasin Spring.  Baby-blue-eyes, low and lovely, cuddled down between tall columbines and orange wall-flowers.  Side by side with the pink geranium of old-fashioned gardens the wild geranium nodded its lavender blooms in perfect harmony.

The subject, black-haired Molly Dale, rested the point of her hand-fork between two rows of ragged sailors and Johnny-jump-ups and lifted a pair of the clearest, softest blue eyes in the world in greeting to Racey Dawson.

“This is a fine time for you to be traipsing in,” she told him, with a smile that revealed a deep dimple in each cheek.  “I thought you promised to help me weed my garden to-day.”

“I did,” he returned, humbly, dismounting and sliding the reins over Cuter’s neck and head, “but you know how it is Sunday mornin’s, Molly.  There’s a lot to do round the ranch sometimes.  Now, this mornin’—­”

“I’ll bet,” she interrupted, smoothing out the smile and frowning as severely as she was able.  “I’d just tell a man that, I would.  I would, indeed.  I’m sure it must have taken you at least half-an-hour to shine those boots.  Half-an-hour!  More likely an hour.  Why, I can see my face in them.”

“And a very pretty face, too,” said Racey, rising to the occasion.  “If I owned that face I’d never stop looking at it myself.  I mean—­” He floundered, aghast at his own temerity.

But the lady smiled.  “That’ll do,” she cautioned him.  “Don’t try to flirt with me.  I won’t have it.”

“I ain’t—­” he began, and stopped.

Molly Dale continued to look at him inquiringly.  But as he gave no evidence of completing the sentence, she lowered her gaze and resumed her weeding.  Racey thought to have glimpsed a disappointed look in her eyes as she dropped her chin, but he could not be certain.  Probably he had been mistaken.  Why should she be disappointed?  Why, indeed?

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

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

“Shucks, look at the Rainbow.”