“It must have been a great place twenty years ago,” he amended his first unqualified enthusiasm.

“Why twenty years ago?” The Native Son gave him a quick, half-resentful glance.

“Twenty years ago there wasn’t so much barb-wire trimming,” Luck explained from the viewpoint of the trained producer of Western pictures.  “You couldn’t place a camera anywhere now for a long shot across the coulee without bringing a fence into the scene.  And the log stables are too old, and the new ones too new.”  He pulled up and stared long at the sweep of hills beyond, and the wide spread of the meadow and the big field farther up stream, and at the lazy meandering of Flying U creek with its willow fringe just turning yellow with the first touch of autumn.  He looked at the buildings sprawled out below him.

“When that log house was headquarters for the ranch, and the round-pole corrals were the only fences on the place,” he said; “when those old sheds held the saddle horses on cold nights, and the wagons were out from green grass to snowfall, and the boys laid around all winter, just reportin’ regular at grub-pile and catching up on sleep they’d lost in the summer—­Lor-dee, what a place it must have been!”

There was something in his tone that brought the Native Son for an instant face to face with the Flying U in the old days when all the range was free.  So, with faces sober, because the old days were gone and would never any more return, they rode down the grade and up to the new stable that was a monument to the dead past, even though it might also be a sign-post pointing to present prosperity.  And in this wise came Luck Lindsay to the Flying U and was made welcome.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE LITTLE DOCTOR PROTESTS

The Little Doctor stepped out upon the porch with the faint tracing of a frown upon her smooth forehead, and with that slight tightening of the lips which to her family meant determination; disapproval sometimes, tense moments always.

She stood for a minute looking down toward the stables, and the wind that blew down the coulee seized upon the scant folds of her skirt, and flapped them impishly against the silken-clad ankles that were exceedingly good to look upon,—­since fashion has now made it quite permissible to look upon ankles.  Her lips did not relax with the waiting.  Her frown grew a trifle more pronounced.

“Mr. Lindsay?” with a rising inflection.

Luck turned his head, saw her standing there, waved his hand to show that he heard, and started toward her with that brisk, purposeful swing to his walk that goes with an energetic disposition.  The Little Doctor waited, and watched him, and did not relax a muscle from her determined attitude.  Poor little Luck Lindsay hurried, so as not to keep her standing there in the wind, and, not knowing just what was before him, he smiled his smile as he came up to her.