All green and gray, and so big! She could not hate it, somehow. All her life she had known that kind of country. She had played among the ferns and the rock, and in the amber water, and under the brown-barked pines and spruces, where deer and elk and wild turkeys were as common as the cows she drove from pasture in the dusk. She felt that it would take a terrible break to sever her from this home of forest and gorge.

CHAPTER

2

FROM the head of the Cibeque the road wound through undulating forest land, heading the deep draws and glens, and gradually ascending to the zone of cedar and piñon, which marked the edge of the cattle-range.

There had been snow on the ground all winter, which accounted for the abundance of gramma grass, now beginning to bleach in the early summer sun. Cattle dotted all the glades and flats and wide silvery meadows; and toward afternoon, from a ridge top the vast gray-green range spread like a billowy ocean far as eye could see.

Several ranches were passed at any one of which See would have been welcome to spend the night, but he kept going all of daylight, and by night had covered more than half the journey to Flagerstown.

“Wal, wife, we’ve made Keech’s, an’ that’s good, considerin’ our late start,” remarked See, with satisfaction, as he drove into a wide clearing, the hideousness of which attested to the presence of an old sawmill. Rude clapboard cabins and fences, not to note the barking dogs, gave evidence of habitation.

The cabins, however, were more inviting inside, Molly was to learn, and that the widow Keech was a most kindly and loquacious hostess. She had two grown daughters, and a son about fourteen years old, an enormously tall boy who straightway became victim to Molly, a conspicuous fact soon broadly hinted by his elders.

“So this hyar is John Dunn’s girl growed up,” said Mrs. Keech. “I knowed your father well, an’ I seen you when you was a big-eyed kid. Now you’re a woman ridin’ to Flag.”

Molly, however, was not to be led into conversation. This adventure seemed to her too grand to be joked about. She was keen to listen, and during the dinner hour heard much about Flagerstown and the fair to begin there on the morrow, and to end on Saturday with a rodeo. Mrs. See had not imparted all this marvelous news to Molly and she laughed at the girl’s excitement.

“What you know aboot this drift fence?” finally asked See.

“Caleb, it’s a downright fact,” replied the widow, forcefully. “Harry has seen it. Traft’s outfit are camped ten miles north of us. They’ll pass here this summer an’ be down on your Diamond by the time snow flies.”

“Ahuh. So we heerd. But what’s your idee aboot it?”

“Wal, Caleb, all things considered, it’ll be good for the range. For no matter what folks say, cattle-rustlin’ is not a thing of the past. Two-bit stealin’ of calves is what it really is. But rustlin’, for all that. An’ up this way, anyhow, it’ll help.”

“Are you runnin’ any stock?” asked See, thoughtfully.

“Cows, mostly. I send a good deal of butter in to town. Really am gettin’ on better than when we tried to ranch it. I don’t have to hire no-good punchers. People travel the road a lot these days. An’ they all stop hyar. I’ve run up some little cabins.”

“An’ that’s a good idee,” said See.

Molly listened to hear everything, and particularly wanted to learn more about the young Missouri tenderfoot who had come out West to build fences for Traft. He would certainly have a miserable existence.