“Yes, I can’t pay the mortgage; Menocal would foreclose at once if I tried to stay.  Last time I was in town he asked me about paying it off and when I told him I shouldn’t be able to do that, he said he’d have me deed it back to him to save foreclosure proceedings.  And he was smiling, too.  He knew all the time that he’d get the ranch back; and when he does, he’ll sell it to some other sucker.”

“Both of us have wished a hundred times that we’d never sold our Illinois farm to come here,” Mrs. Stevenson said, plaintively.  “I don’t know what we’ll do when we go back, for that matter.  Just rent a place, I guess.  Land is so high-priced there that we’ll never be able to buy a farm again.”

“Renting there is better than starving here,” her husband declared.  “We’ll have a better home, too.  When we first came to this place, we planned on building a fine house, but I never had the money loose, and we’ve just kept on from year to year living in this ’dobe hole.  Good thing I didn’t have the money, however, for we’d lose the house along with the ranch if we had built.  Well, we’re going back East, anyhow, as soon as I sell the sheep.  Graham, who has the big ranch on Diamond Creek, south of where those girls are homesteading, is coming up in a day or two to look at them, maybe buy them.  You can see Graham’s big white house from the Kennard trail.”

Bryant nodded.  “I know the place, saw it when passing,” said he.  Then he went on, “When I was at the ford watering my horse before coming here, an auto crossed the creek.  In the rear seat were a fat Mexican, whom I took to be Menocal, and a white man with a pointed beard.  The latter perhaps was Graham?”

“Yes, that must have been him.  Which way were they driving?”

“South.”

“Going to the Graham ranch, I s’pose.”

“There was a slim young fellow driving the car—­some Mexican blood in him,” Lee stated.

“Menocal’s son, Charlie, a half-breed snippet who puts on airs because his father’s rich,” Stevenson said, in a disgusted tone.  “A white woman married Menocal, you know.”

“In the front seat with the young fellow was a girl, rather pretty,” Bryant appended.

“That’s Louise, I imagine,” Mrs. Stevenson said, reflectively.  “Yes, it must have been her.  She’s Mr. Graham’s daughter.  A nice girl, too.  That Menocal boy is crazy to marry her, the talk is.”

“And is she crazy to marry him?” Lee inquired, amused by this gossip.

“Well, not exactly crazy, I’d say; I don’t see how she could be.  But he’ll be worth a lot of money some day, and she may overlook considerable on that account.  Menocal’s boy has been to college; besides, the family goes everywhere with white folks.  I guess a Mexican is supposed to be really white, isn’t he?”

“Those having pure Spanish blood,” the engineer explained.  “Nearly all the ones around here that I’ve seen have more Indian in them than anything else, however, with a dash of other races perhaps.  From the glimpse I had of Menocal, I’ll venture to say he has Red men among his ancestors.”