It will be wonderful. Holly looks Spanish, but she is American. She has her mother’s beauty. But my brains. I have no fear for her, Britt…. If she only chooses to stay! … With you to train Holly, teach her to run the ranch, watch over her—she would not be alone. I’m not afraid to risk it.”

“But I am, boss,” declared Britt, tragically. “I almost wish you hadn’t fetched her home.”

“Nonsense, old timer. My girl has loved you all her life. It was you who nick-named her Holly. You danced her on your knee and helped teach her to walk. You can’t go back on her now. You must take my place as her Dad.”

“Kurnel, I’ll do my damndest…. But lookin’ ahaid, in the light of this lovely lass growin’ up heah into a woman, I don’t like the times.”

Colonel Ripple made a slight, violent gesture, as if a motive prompted by passion had been quenched by will.

“Nor do I. That is somethin’ I have put off, and like this other must now be talked over. Yet the reason is simple…. Look there to the south, old timer. That is the grandest outlook in the West, if not in the whole world. Kit Carson sat right there and said so. Lucien Maxwell did the same, and you know his pride in his old Spanish grant and the beauty of his sixty square miles of ranch. St. Vrain tried to buy this ranch from Don Carlos. Chisum, Murphy, the Exersall Company, and that English outfit who bought the Three X’s—not one of these cattle kings has the West under his eyes as I have. Not one of them has the protected grazing-lands…. Look down over the Old Trail and the Cimarron. Peaceful, lonely, eh? The Kiowas and Comanches are my friends. Look at the buffalo. All those black patches down there are buffalo…. And now look around to the west, Britt. No range like that in all this broad New Mexico.