His words were characteristic of him.  He left the entire control of the ranch to this girl of two-and-twenty, relying implicitly upon her judgment in all things.  It was a strange thing to do, for he was still a vigorous man.  To look at him was to make oneself wonder at the reason.  But the girl accepted the responsibility without question.  There was a subtle sympathy between uncle and niece.  Sometimes Jacky would gaze up into his handsome old face and something in the twitching cheek, the curiously-shaped mouth, hidden beneath the gray mustache, would cause her to turn away with a sigh, and, with stimulated resolution, hurl herself into the arduous labors of managing the ranch.  What she read in that dear, honest face she loved so well she kept locked in her own secret heart, and never, by word or act, did she allow herself to betray it.  She was absolute mistress of the Foss River Ranch and she knew it.  Old “Poker” John, like the morphine “fiend,” merely continued to keep up his reputation and the more fully deserve his sobriquet.  His mind, his character, his whole being was being slowly but surely absorbed in the lust of gambling.

The girl laid her hand upon the old man’s arm.

“Uncle—­what was Lablache talking to you about?  I mean when I came for the field-glasses.”

“Poker” John was gazing abstractedly into the dense growth of pines which fringed the house.  He pulled himself together, but his eyes had in them a far-away look.

“Many things,” he replied evasively.

“Yes, I know, dear, but,” bending her face while she removed one of her buckskin gauntlets from her hand, “I mean about me.  You two were-discussing me, I know.”

She turned her keen gray eyes upon her relative as she finished speaking.  The old man turned away.  He felt that those eyes were reading his very soul.  They made him uncomfortable.

“Oh, he said I ought not to let you associate with certain people.”

“Why?” The sharp question came with the directness of a pistol-shot.

“Well, he seemed to think that you might think of marrying.”

“Ah, and—­”

“He seemed to fancy that you, being impetuous, might make a mistake and fall—­”

“In love with the wrong man.  Yes, I understand; and from his point of view, if ever I do marry it will undoubtedly be the wrong man.”

And the girl finished up with a mirthless laugh.

They stood for some moments in silence.  They were both thinking.  The noise from the corrals behind the house reached them.  The steady drip, drip of the water from the melting snow upon the roof of the house sounded loudly as it fell on the sodden ground beneath.

“Uncle, did it ever strike you that that greasy money-lender wants to marry me himself?”

The question startled John Allandale more than anything else could have done.  He turned sharply round and faced his niece.

“Marry you, Jacky?” he repeated.  “I never thought of it.”