What fun you’ll have teachin’ this big-eyed lass to handle hawses, to shoot an’ rope, to run the cowboy ootfits ragged, to be mistress of this great house an’ do honor to yore name! An’ I—wal, I’ll go ahaid with my plans.”

“Plans! What plans, Cappy?” queried the girl. “You began that speech sadly. You grew really eloquent. Then you end with that hawk-eye glinting and with news of plans. If I am to become mistress of Don Carlos’ Rancho, I shall be your boss. Oh, what a dance I’ll lead you! … But come, tell me. Do your plans include a party to celebrate my return?”

“Holly, that shall be my job,” interrupted her father. “I will give such a party as was never seen heah in New Mexico. And every year thereafter, on the anniversary of that date, you must repeat it.”

“Oh, glorious!” she cried, rapturously. “My first party.”

“Britt, bring on your wild outfits!” sang the Colonel, keen and glad-eyed. “Bring on your riders, rangers, cowboys, outlaws, desperadoes, gunmen, and killers! Don Carlos’ Rancho shall flourish many a year!”

“Wild outfits!—Cowboys—desperadoes—killers?” echoed Holly, mystified, her great eyes like dark, glowing stars.

“Holly, it is Britt’s plan to surround you with the wildest and most dangerous outfit of men ever gathered on a western ranch,” announced the Colonel.

“Oh-h!—But why?”

“Wal, lass, the idee is to save you an’ yore cattle when the times grow bad,” interposed Britt.

“How perfectly wonderful! … Don Carlos’ Rancho! Holly Ripple’s outfit! … Dad, I shall fall in love with every single one of them. That is the penalty you must suffer for penning me up with books. Nine long years! And I was born on the range! … Cappy Britt, henceforth Old Hawk-eye, you will need your keen sight. Bring on your wild cowboys!”

Britt paced his slow, clinking way down the flowered path toward the bunk-house. Hard upon his excitation followed a pensive sadness. Only he realized what lay in store for Holly Ripple. Let her enjoy the girlish freedom she had been denied. Let her ride and laugh while her father was with her and the days burned with all the glamour of a New Mexican summer. For the shadow on the horizon would soon loom into dark groups of horsemen, strange, silent, formidable; and the languorous serenity of Don Carlos’ Rancho would be gone.

Chapter Two

Two eventful and fast-flying years later, almost to the day, Cap Britt sat his horse on the high slope above the mouth of Paso del Muerte, and with grim, bitter revolt in his heart, forced himself to admit that the evil times of his prophecy had come.

“They been comin’ ever since the Kurnel died,” he muttered darkly. “Slow but shore! … Wal, by Gawd, I didn’t get my hard ootfit none too soon.”

Britt gazed down across the eight miles of rolling gray rangeland, and on up the long slope to Don Carlos’ Rancho, standing like a picturesque fort, red and green on the high divide between the two great valleys. Holly Ripple was there on the porch, no doubt at this very moment with glass levelled upon him. It was that powerful glass which had brought about the present critical situation. He had a string of several hundred horses ranging up Paso del Muerte, among which were a number of the fine blooded Ripple stock. And the day before Britt had sent three of his riders over there to report on this drove of horses. They had not returned. For riders to lie out a night or several nights was nothing for the foreman to concern himself about. But early that morning Britt had taken a sweep of the range with the glass. And he had picked out one of those dark compact bunches of horsemen that were no longer rare on the range. They had disappeared up the pass. If they were not rustlers they were horse-thieves, a distinction with a difference.