LITMIR.BIZ

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the call of the meadow lark. It sounded like a fairy bugle call across the morning, and the roan was halted quickly at the forks of the road.

      “Howdy, señorita?” he called softly. “I can’t see you, but your song beats the birds. Got a flag of truce? Willing to parley with the enemy?”

      Then she emerged, eyeing him sulkily.

      “You were going without seeing me!” she stated with directness, and without notice of the quizzical smile of comradeship.

      “Certainly was,” he agreed. “When I got through the scrap with your disciple of kultur, my mug didn’t strike me as the right decoration for a maiden’s bower. I rode out of the scrap with my scratches, taking joy and comfort in the fact that he had to be carried.”

      “There was no reason for your being so –– so brutal!” she decided austerely.

      “Lord love you, child, I didn’t need a reason –– I only wanted an excuse. Give me credit! I got away for fear I’d go loco and smash Singleton for interfering.”

      “Papa Phil only did his duty, standing for peace.”

      “Huh, let the Neutral League do it! The trouble with Singleton is he hasn’t brains enough to lubricate a balance wheel, –– he can’t savvy a situation unless he has it printed in a large-type tract. Conrad was scared for fear I’d stumbled on a crooked trail of his and would tell the boss, so he beat me to it with the lurid report that I made an assault on him! This looks like it –– not!” and he showed the slashes in his sombrero to make room for the blue banda around his head. “Suppose you tell that Hun of yours to carry a gun like a real hombre instead of the tools of a second-story man. The neighbors could hear a gun, and run to my rescue.”

      The girl regarded his flippancy with disapproval.

      “He isn’t my Hun,” she retorted. “I could worry along without him on our map, –– but after all, I don’t know a single definite thing against him. Anyway, it’s decided I’ve got to go away somewhere to school and be out of the ranch squabbles. Papa Phil thinks I get in bad company out here.”

      “Meaning me?”

      “Well, he said Captain Pike was demoralizing to the youthful mind. He didn’t mention you. And Cap certainly did go the limit yesterday!”

      “How so?”

      “Well, he went to the Junction for his outfit stuff –– –”

      “Yes, and never showed up at the adobe until the morning star was in the sky!”

      “I know,” she confessed. “I went with him. We stayed to see a Hart picture at the theater, and had the time of our young lives. At supper I announced that I was going to adopt Cap as a grandfather, –– and then of course he had to go and queer me by filling up on some rank whiskey he had smuggled in with the other food! My stars! –– he was put to bed singing that he’d ‘Hang his harp on a willow tree, and be off to the wars again’ –– You needn’t laugh!”

      But he did laugh, his blue eyes twinkling at her recital.

      “You poor kid! You have a hard time with the disreputables you pick up. Sure they didn’t warn you against speaking to this reprobate?”

      “Sure nothing!” was the boyish reply. “I was to be docked a month’s spending money if I dared go near Pedro Vijil’s adobe again while you were there, which was very foolish of Papa Phil!” she added judicially. “I reckon he forgot they tried that before.”

      “And what happened?”

      “I went down and borrowed double the amount from old Estevan, the trader at the Junction, and gave him an order against the ranch. Then Cap and I sneaked out a couple of three-year-olds and raced them down in the cottonwood flats against some colts brought down by an old Sierra Blanca Apache. We backed our nags with every peso, and that old brown murderer won! But Cap and I had a wonderful day while our coin lasted, and –– and you were going away without saying good-bye!”

      Kit Rhodes, who had blankly stated that he owned his horse and saddle and little beyond, looked at the spoiled plucky heiress of Granados ranches, and the laughter went out of his eyes.

      She was beyond reason loveable even in her boyish disdain of restriction, and some day she would come back from the schools a very finished product, and thank the powers that be for having sent her out of knowledge of happy-go-lucky chums of the ranges.

      Granados ranches had been originally an old Spanish grant reaching from a branch of the intermittent Rio Altar north into what is now Arizona, and originally was about double the size of Rhode Island. It was roughly divided into the home or hacienda ranch in Arizona, and La Partida, the cattle range portion, reaching far south into Sonora. Even the remnant of the grant, if intelligently managed, would earn an income satisfactory for a most extravagant princess royal such as its present chatelaine seemed to Rhodes.

      But he had noted dubiously that the management was neither intelligent nor, he feared, square. The little rancherias scattered over it in the fertile valleys, were worked on the scratch gravel, ineffective Mexic method by the Juans and Pedros whose family could always count on mesquite beans, and camotes if the fields failed. There was seed to buy each year instead of raising it. There was money invested in farming machinery, and a bolt taken at will from a thresher to mend a plow or a buggy as temporarily required. The flocks of sheep on the Arizona hills were low grade. The cattle and horse outfits were south in La Partida, and the leakage was beyond reason, even in a danger zone of the border land.

      All this Kit had milled around and around many times in the brief while he had ranged La Partida. A new deal was needed and needed badly, else Wilfreda Bernard would have debts instead of revenue if Singleton let things drift much longer. Her impish jest that she was a damsel in distress in need of a valiant knight was nearer to truth than she suspected. He had an idiotic hungry desire to be that knight, but his equipment of one horse, one saddle, and one sore head appeared inadequate for the office.

      Thus Kit Rhodes sat his horse and looked at her, and saw things other than the red lips of the girl, and the chiding gray eyes, and the frank regret at his going.

      It was more profitable not to see that regret, or let it thrill a man in that sweet warm way, especially not if the man chanced to be a drifting ranger. She was only a gallant little girl with a genius for friendships, and her loyalty to Pike extended to Pike’s chum –– that was what Rhodes told himself!

      “Yes,” he agreed, “I was going without any tooting of horns. No use in Cap Pike and me hanging around, and getting you in bad with your outfit.”

      “As if I care!” she retorted.

      “You might some day,” he said quietly. “School may make a lot of difference; that, and changed surroundings for a year or two. But some day you will be your own manager, and if I’m still on the footstool and can be of service –– just whistle, señorita.”

      “Sure!” she agreed cheerfully. “I’ll whistle the lark call, and you’ll know I need you, so that’s settled, and we’ll always be –– be friends, Trail-hunter.”

      “We’ll always be friends, Lark-child.”

      “I wanted Cap Pike to let me in on this prospecting trip, wanted to put in money,” she said rather hesitant, “and he turned me down cold, except for a measly ten dollars, ‘smoke money’ he called it. I reckon he only took that to get rid of me, which I don’t call friendly, do you? And if things should go crooked with him, and he –– well –– sort of needs help to get out, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

      “Yes, if it seems best,” he agreed, “but you won’t be here; you’ll be shipped to a school, pronto!”

      “I won’t be so far off the map that a letter can’t reach me. Cap Pike won’t ever write, but I thought maybe you –– –”

      “Sure,” agreed Rhodes easily. “We’ll send out

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