‘Dear old pops,’ she said more softly in a moment.  ’I am afraid that his heart-breaking time is coming now—­when he learns that it isn’t so easy to find gold, after all.’

‘No,’ said Howard slowly.  ’No.  It doesn’t break a man’s heart, for he is always sure that it is coming the next day and the next and the next.  I’ve known them to go on that way until they died, and then know in their hearts that they’d make a strike the next day—­if only the Lord would spare them twenty-four hours more.’

‘I wanted father to bank our money,’ went on Helen, her eyes darkening.  ’I wanted to go to work, to earn something.  I can teach.  But he wouldn’t hear of it.  He said—­he said that if the time had come when he couldn’t support his own daughter it was high time he was dead.’

Howard nodded his understanding.  ‘He’s a good sport, I tell you,’ he maintained warmly.  ’And I like him.  Who knows but that he may make his ten-strike here after all?  Or,’ as he marked the droop of the girl’s mouth and understood how she must be thinking of how little was left of their pittance, he added briskly, ’this is a better place than the East any day; there are more chances.  If a man is the right sort there is always a chance for him.  If you want to teach——­ Well, we’ve got schools out here, haven’t we?’

Helen’s eyes rounded at him.  ‘Have you?  Where?’

‘And bully good schools,’ he insisted.  ’There’s the Big Springs school not over ten miles off, over that way.  You could have a job there to-morrow, if you said the word.’

Her eyes brightened.  ‘There is a vacancy, then?’

‘Well,’ he admitted, ’I’m not so sure about that.  There’s a teacher there, I believe.  But,’ and now it was his eyes that brightened, ’it could be fixed somehow.  Just leave it to John and me.’

She laughed at him and all her gaiety came surging back.

‘Here I’ve been drawing a face a mile long,’ she cried lightly, ’when everything’s all right as far as I can see in all directions.  I am going down to see what father is up to; he and Mr. Barbee look to me like a couple of youngsters plotting trouble.’

A look of understanding flashed between Yellow Barbee and Professor Longstreet as the two came down from the ranch-house.  Thereafter Longstreet beamed upon his daughter while Yellow Barbee, his hat far back upon the blonde cluster of curls, turned his insolent eyes upon her.  Helen, deeming him overbold, sought to ‘squelch’ him with a look.  Instead she saw both mirth and admiration shining in the baby-blue eyes.  She turned her back upon El Joven, who retaliated by turning his back upon her and swaggering away into the stable, whistling through his teeth as he went.  Howard went with him for his horse.

‘Papa,’ said Helen after the stern fashion which in time comes natural to the girl with a wayward father, ‘what are you two up to?’

‘My darling,’ said Longstreet hurriedly, ‘what do you mean?’