It is nearly a month since we saw this daughter of the prairie garbed in the latest mode, attending the Polo Ball at Calford, and widely different is her appearance now from what it was at the time of our introduction to her.

She is returning from an inspection of the wire fencing of the home pastures.  She is riding her favorite horse, Nigger, up the gentle slope which leads to her uncle’s house.  There is nothing of the woman of fashion about her now—­and, perhaps, it is a matter not to be regretted.

She sits her horse with the easy grace of a childhood’s experience.  Her habit, if such it can be called, is a “dungaree” skirt of a hardly recognizable blue, so washed out is it, surmounted by a beautifully beaded buckskin shirt.  Loosely encircling her waist, and resting upon her hips, is a cartridge belt, upon which is slung the holster of a heavy revolver, a weapon without which she never moves abroad.  Her head is crowned by a Stetson hat, secured in true prairie fashion by a strap which passes under her hair at the back, while her beautiful hair itself falls in heavy ringlets over her shoulders, and waves untrammelled in the fresh spring breeze as her somewhat unruly charger gallops up the hill towards the ranch.

The great black horse was heading for the stable.  Jacky leant over to one side and swung him sharply towards the house.  At the veranda she pulled him up short.  High mettled, headstrong as the animal was, he knew his mistress.  Tricks which he would often attempt to practice upon other people were useless here—­doubtless she had taught him that such was the case.

The girl sprang, unaided, to the ground and hitched her picket rope to a tying-post.  For a moment she stood on the great veranda which ran down the whole length of the house front.  It was a one-storied, bungalow-shaped house, built with a high pitch to the roof and entirely constructed of the finest red pine-wood.  Six French windows opened on to the veranda.  The outlook was westerly, and, contrary to the usual custom, the ranch buildings were not overlooked by it.  The corrals and stables were in the background.

She was about to turn in at one of the windows when she suddenly observed Nigger’s ears cocked, and his head turned away towards the shimmering peaks of the distant mountains.  The movement fixed her attention instantly.  It was the instinct of one who lives in a country where the eyes and ears of a horse are often keener and more far-reaching than those of its human masters.  The horse was gazing with statuesque fixedness across a waste of partially-melted snow.  A stretch of ten miles lay flat and smooth as a billiard-table at the foot of the rise upon which the house was built.  And far out across this the beast was gazing.

Jacky shaded her eyes with her hand and followed the direction of the horse’s gaze.  For a moment or two she saw nothing but the dazzling glare of the snow in the bright spring sunlight.  Then her eyes became accustomed to the brilliancy, and far in the distance, she beheld an animal peacefully moving along from patch to patch of bare grass, evidently in search of fodder.