Foss River had now become a glorious picture of vivid coloring.  The clumps of pine woods no longer present their tattered purplish appearance, the garb in which grim Winter is wont to robe them.  They are lighter, gayer, and bathed in the gleaming sunlight they are transformed from their somber forbidding aspect to that of radiant, welcome shade.  The river is high, almost to flooding point.  And the melting snow on the distant mountain-tops has urged it into a sparkling torrent of icy cold water rushing on at a pace which threatens to tear out its deterring banks and shallow bed in its mad career.

The most magical change which the first month of summer has brought is to be seen in the stock.  Cattle, when first brought in from distant parts at the outset of the round-up, usually are thin, mean-looking, and half-starved.  Two weeks of the delicious spring grass and the fat on their ribs and loins rolls and shakes as they move, growing almost visibly under the succulent influence of the delicate vegetation.

Few at Foss River appreciated the blessings of summer more fully than did Jacky Allandale, and few worked harder than did she.  Almost single-handed she grappled with the stupendous task of the management of the great ranch, and no “hand,” however experienced, was more capable in the most arduous tasks which that management involved.  From the skillful organization down to the roping and branding of a wild two-year-old steer there was no one who understood the business of stock-raising better than she.  She loved it—­it was the very essence of life to her.

Silas, her uncle’s foreman, was in the habit of summing her up in his brief but expressive way.

“Missie Jacky?” he would exclaim, in tones of surprise, to any one who dared to express wonder at her masterly management.  “Guess a cyclone does its biz mighty thorough, but I take it ef that gal ’ud been born a hurricane she’d ‘ave dislodged mountains an’ played baseball with the glaciers.”

But this year things were different with the mistress of the Foss River Ranch.  True she went about her work with that thorough appreciation which she always displayed, but the young face had last something of its happy girlish delight—­that debonnaire cheerfulness which usually characterized it.  A shadow seemed to be hanging over her—­a shadow, which, although it marred in no way her fresh young beauty, added a deepened pensiveness to her great somber eyes, and seemed to broaden the fringing black ring round the gray pupils.  This year the girl had more to grapple with than the mere management of the ranch.