LITMIR.BIZ

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man turned and spurred back. The girl looked up from her saddle, making a wry face.

      “No damage?” he asked, an expression of concern upon his face.

      “No damage,” the girl replied. “Senator is clumsy enough at jumping, but no matter what happens, he always lights on his feet.”

      “Ride down a bit,” said the man. “There’s an easy way out just below.”

      She moved off in the direction he indicated, her horse picking his way among the loose boulders in the wash bottom.

      “Mother says he’s part cat,” she remarked. “I wish he could jump like the Apache!”

      The man stroked the glossy neck of his own mount.

      “He never will,” he said. “He’s afraid. The Apache is absolutely fearless; he’d go anywhere I’d ride him. He’s been mired with me twice, but he never refuses a wet spot; and that’s a test, I say, of a horse’s courage.”

      They had reached a place where the bank was broken down, and the girl’s horse scrambled from the wash.

      “Maybe he’s like his rider,” suggested the girl, looking at the Apache; “brave, but reckless.”

      “It was worse than reckless,” said the man. “It was asinine. I shouldn’t have led you over the jump when I know how badly Senator jumps.”

      “And you wouldn’t have, Custer” — she hesitated — “if —”

      “If I hadn’t been drinking,” he finished for her. “I know what you were going to say, Grace; but I think you’re wrong. I never drink enough to show it. No one ever saw me that way — not so that it was noticeable.”

      “It is always noticeable to me and to your mother,” she corrected him gently. “We always know it, Custer. It shows in little things like what you did just now. Oh, it isn’t anything, I know, dear; but we who love you wish you didn’t do it quite so often.”

      “It’s funny,” he said, “but I never cared for it until it became a risky thing to get it. Oh, well, what’s the use? I’ll quit it if you say so. It hasn’t any hold on me.”

      Involuntarily, he squared his shoulders — an unconscious tribute to the strength of his weakness.

      Together, their stirrups touching, they rode slowly down the cañon trail toward the ranch. Often, they rode thus, in the restful silence that is a birthright of comradeship. Neither spoke until after they reined in their sweating horses beneath the cool shade of the spreading sycamore that guards the junction of El Camino Largo and the main trail that winds up Sycamore Cañon.

      It was the first day of early spring. The rains were over. The California hills were green and purple and gold. The new leaves lay softly fresh on the gaunt boughs of yesterday. A blue jay scolded from a clump of sumac across the trail.

      The girl pointed up into the cloudless sky where several great birds circled majestically, rising and falling upon motionless wings.

      “The vultures are back,” she said. “I am always glad to see them come again.”

      “Yes,” said the man. “They are bully scavengers, and we don’t have to pay ‘em wages.”

      The girl smiled up at him.

      “I’m afraid my thoughts were more poetic than practical,” she said. “I was only thinking that the sky looked less lonely now that they have come. Why suggest their diet?”

      “I know what you mean,” he said. “I like them, too. Maligned as they are, they are really wonderful birds and sort of mysterious. Did you ever stop to think that you never see a very young one or a dead one? Where do they die? Where do they grow to maturity? I wonder what they’ve found up there! Let’s ride up. Martin said he saw a new calf up beyond Jackknife Cañon yesterday. That would be just about under where they’re circling now.”

      They guided their horses around a large, flat slab of rock that some camper had contrived into a table beneath the sycamore and started across the trail toward the opposite side of the cañon. They were in the middle of the trail when the man drew in and listened.

      “Someone is coming,” he said. “Let’s wait and see who it is. I haven’t sent any one back into the hills today.”

      “I have an idea,” remarked the girl, “that there is more going on up there”— she nodded toward the mountains stretching to the south of them — “than you know about.”

      “How is that?” he asked.

      “So often, recently, we have heard horsemen passing the ranch late at night. If they weren’t going to stop at your place, those who rode up the trail must have been headed into the high hills; but I’m sure that those whom we heard coming down weren’t coming from the Rancho del Ganado.”

      “No,” he said, “not late at night — or not often, at any rate.”

      The footsteps of a cantering horse drew rapidly closer, and, presently, the animal and its rider came into view around a turn in the trail.

      “It’s only Allen,” said the girl.

      The newcomer reined in at sight of the man and the girl. He was evidently surprised, and the girl thought that he seemed ill at ease.

      “Just givin’ Baldy a workout,” he explained. “He ain’t been out for three or four days, an’ you told me to work ‘em out if I had time.”

      Custer Pennington nodded.

      “See any stock back there?”

      “No. How’s the Apache today — forgin’ as bad as usual?”

      Pennington shook his head negatively.

      “That fellow shod him yesterday just the way I want him shod. I wish you’d take a good look at his shoes, Slick, so you can see that he’s always shod this same way.”

      His eyes had been traveling over Slick’s mount whose heaving sides were covered with lather. “Baldy’s pretty soft, Slick; I wouldn’t work him too hard all at once. Get him up to it gradually.”

      He turned and rode off with the girl at his side. Slick Allen looked after them for a moment and then moved his horse off at a slow walk toward the ranch. He was a lean, sinewy man of medium height. He might have been a cavalryman once. He sat his horse, even at a walk, like one who has sweated and bled under a drill sergeant in the days of his youth.

      “How do you like him?” the girl asked of Pennington.

      “He’s a good horseman, and good horsemen are getting rare these days,” replied Pennington; “but I don’t know that I’d choose him for a playmate. Don’t you like him?”

      “I’m afraid I don’t. His eyes give me the creeps — they’re like a fish’s.”

      “To tell the truth, Grace, I don’t like him,” said Custer. “He’s one of those rare birds — a good horseman who doesn’t love horses. I imagine he won’t last long on the Rancho del Ganado; but we’ve got to give him a fair shake — he’s only been with us a few weeks.”

      They were picking their way toward the summit of a steep hogback. The man, who led, was seeking carefully for the safest footing, shamed out of his recent recklessness by the thought of how close the girl had come to a serious accident through his thoughtlessness. They rode along the hogback until they could look down into a tiny basin where a small bunch of cattle was grazing, and then, turning and dipping over the edge, they dropped slowly toward the animals.

      Near the bottom of the slope, they came upon a white-faced bull standing beneath the spreading shade of a live oak. He turned his woolly face toward them, his red-rimmed eyes observing them dispassionately for a moment. Then, he turned away again and resumed his cud, disdaining further notice of them.

      “That’s the

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