Well, adios.”

Silas Selby’s nephew very soberly agreed with the red-haired young lady that this Red Rock inheritance matter was not at all funny. The fact that this attractive western girl, who had a temper to match her hair, was a daughter of John Hepford, who for years had managed the Red Rock Ranch for Uncle Silas, stirred Ernest considerably. At first sight of Anne Hepford he had been decidedly attracted; at second sight, it seemed he had been rather badly smitten. Weighing her rather sharp remarks about Silas Selby, he decided he was not smitten after all. But when she sat down in front of him with her companion and he saw the blazing hair, and the nape of her firm, round neck, white where it met the gold tan, he feared that at least he was interested. He recognized the symptoms. They had attacked him occasionally up to the time he was twenty-one, and once or twice during the three years since. But this was something different. After all, when had he seen such a gorgeous creature as Anne Hepford?

“Anne, you didn’t tell me this news aboot the ranch,” the older woman was saying to the girl in an excited voice, as she settled herself in the seat. “Why, everybody round Springer look on it as yours–you bein’ the only child. An’ it’s been your home for so long!”

“Well, it’s not mine or Dad’s either–that’s shore,” rejoined the girl shortly. “When I threw a fit at the news, Dad let me know pronto where we stand. Oh, he was upset!”

They began to whisper then, and though Ernest listened shamelessly he could not catch a word. And when the stage started, the roll of the grating wheels and the clatter of hoofs drowned even ordinary conversation. Presently they left the town limits for the ranch country.

Ernest fell into a reverie which precluded neither his own problem nor strict watch upon the two plotters in the seat behind the driver. Nevertheless he got genuine enjoyment from the scenery. The four horses clicked off the miles at a good pace, and each mile appeared to lead into more fascinating country. The green pastures, the gray fields dotted with cattle, the occasional little ranch house, situated in a valley or on a wooded knoll, the rolling, cedared ridges and the dark patches of timber, all pleased the Iowan, yet scarcely prepared him for the rangeland. He had been used to unrestricted view, but this vast sweep of rolling gray with its lines of white and its outcroppings of red, leading the eye to the wide upheaval of land, belted black to the sky, made him catch his breath. Arizona! Rangeland! Up to now, the name had been a myth. He had no recollection of his Uncle Silas, though at home they told him how once he had danced Ernest on his knee and said he would someday make a Westerner of him. The prediction bade fair to come true. But at the moment Ernest was not wholeheartedly sure that this tremendous stretch of wild, lonely and colorful land would altogether account for it.

The stage rolled on. Evidently the ladies in front had talked themselves out for the time being. Miss Hepford seemed pensive. He was certain that she had not noticed him. He felt curious about the moment when she would actually recognize him; he did not know just why, but he imagined something might hang on that. Chance had thrown together the real owner of Red Rock Ranch and the girl who had dreamed herself into owning it. Here Ernest, proving he was a dreamer himself, indulged in a pretty little boyish fancy of how he went unknown to Red Rock, and as a poor cowboy, saved the red-haired lass from being robbed, and in the end won her hand to present her with the ranch she loved so well as a wedding gift.

That dream lingered with Ernest for many miles, far across the valley which had enchanted him, and up a long slope to a rugged summit. The spectacle that met his eyes from this point dispelled Ernest’s daydreams.