"Yer mare is winnin'," yelled a granger.

"You bet she is," retorted Mr. Roberts. "See her! Ain't she takin' the kinks out of her speed? Ain't that a clip? Sit still, ye fool," he cried l.u.s.tily, apostrophising the boy who was riding; "if ye git a move on ye I'll kill ye. Oh, my lord! if she ain't a-goin' to distance them! Yes, sir, she's a shuttin' 'em out. d.a.m.n it--I ain't a swearin', Mis' Root--d.a.m.n it, I say, _she's a shuttin' 'em out!_ She's done it!! The race is won!!!"

He jumped from the wagon and plunged into the crowd, which respectfully made way for him.

"I've somethin' to tell ye, Mandy," said Mr. Roberts, some ten months later. I feel kind o' mean, too. But I done it for you; for love o'

you, Mandy."

"Yes, Nal; what is it?"

They had been married a fortnight.

"Ye remember when the old man had the fit in the timer's box? Well, that knocked me galley-west. I felt a reg'ler murderer. But when he'd braced up, an began makin' himself hateful over our weddin', I felt glad that I'd done what I done."

"And what had you done, Nal, dear?"

"Hold on, Mandy, I'm tellin' this. Ye see, he promised to sell ye to me for two thousand dollars cash. But when I tendered him the coin, he went back on me. He was the meanest, the ornariest----"

"Hush, Nal, he's dead now."

"You bet he is, or we wouldn't be sittin' here."

They were comfortably installed upon the porch of the old adobe. A smell of paint tainted the air, and some shavings and odds and ends of lumber betrayed a recent visit from the carpenter. The house, in short, had been placed in thorough repair. A young woman with fifty thousand dollars in her own right can afford to spend a little money upon her home.

"He wouldn't take the coin," continued Nal, "he said I'd robbed him of it, an' so I had."

"Oh, Nal!"

"It was this way, Mandy. Ye remember the trial, an' how you give the snap away. Well I studied over it, an' finally I concluded to jest dig up the half-mile post, an' put it one hundred feet nearer home. I took considerable chances but not a soul suspicioned the change. The next night I put it back again. The old man timed the colt an' so did I.

_Fifty-one seconds!_ I knew my filly could do the whole half-mile in that. Comet's second dam was a bronco, an' that will tell! But I wanted to make your grandfather bet his wad. He never could resist a sure-shot bet, never. That's all."

Amanda looked deep into his laughing eyes.

"He was willing to sell me, his own flesh and blood," she murmured dreamily. "I think, Nal, you served him just about right, but I wish, don't get mad, Nal, I wish that--er--someone else had pulled up the post!"

XVII

MINTIE

Mintie stood upon the porch of the old adobe, shading her brown eyes from the sun, now declining out of stainless skies into the brush- hills to the west of the ranch. The hand shading the eyes trembled; the red lips were pressed together; faint lines upon the brow and about the mouth indicated anxiety, and possibly fear. A trapper would have recognised in the expression of the face a watchful intensity or apprehension common to all animals who have reason to know themselves to be the prey of others.

Suddenly a shot rang out, repeating itself in echoes from the canon behind the house. Mintie turned pale, and then laughed derisively.

"Gee!" she exclaimed. "How easy scairt I am!"

She sank, gaspingly, upon a chair, and began to fan herself with the skirt of her gown. Then, as if angry on account of a weakness, physical rather than mental, she stood up and smiled defiantly, showing her small white teeth. She was still trembling; and remarking this, she stamped upon the floor of the porch, and became rigid. Her face charmed because of its irregularity. Her skin was a clear brown, matching the eyes and hair. She had the grace and vigour of an unbroken filly at large upon the range. And, indeed, she had been born in the wilderness, and left it but seldom. Her father's ranch lay forty miles from San Lorenzo, high up in the foothills--a sterile tract of scrub--oak and cedar, of manzanita and chaparral, with here and there good grazing ground, and lower down, where the creek ran, a hundred acres of arable land. Behind the house bubbled a big spring which irrigated the orchard and garden.

Teamsters, hauling grain from the Carisa Plains to the San Lorenzo landing, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, would beguile themselves thinking of the apples which old man Ransom would be sure to offer, and the first big drink from the cold spring.

Mintie was about to enter the house, when she saw down the road a tiny reek of white dust. "Gee!" she exclaimed for the second time.

"Who's this?"

Being summer, the hauling had not yet begun. Mintie, who had the vision of a turkey-buzzard, stared at the reek of dust.

"Smoky Jack, I reckon," she said disdainfully. Nevertheless, she went into the house, and when she reappeared a minute later her hair displayed a slightly more ordered disorder, and she had donned a clean ap.r.o.n.

She expressed surprise rather than pleasure when a young man rode up, shifted in his saddle, and said:--

"How air you folks makin' it?"

"Pretty fair. Goin' to town?"

"I thought, mebbe, of goin' to town nex' week. I come over jest to pa.s.s the time o' day with the old man."

"Rode ten miles to pa.s.s the time o' day with--Pap?"

"Yas."

"Curiously fond men air of each other!"

"That's so," said Smoky admiringly. "An' livin' alone puts notions o'

love and tenderness into my head that never comed thar when Maw was alive an' kickin'. I tell yer, its awful lonesome on my place."

He sat up in his saddle, a handsome young fellow, the vaquero rather than the cowboy, a distinction well understood in California. John Short had been nicknamed Smoky Jack because of his indefatigable efforts to clear his own brush-hills by fire. Across his saddle was a long-barrelled, old-fashioned rifle. Mintie glanced at it.

"Was that you who fired jest now?"

"Nit," said Smoky. "I heard a shot," he added. "'Twas the old man. I'd know the crack of his Sharp anywheres. 'Tis the dead spit o' mine.

There'll be buck's liver for supper sure."

"Why are you carryin' a gun?"

"I thought I might run acrost a deer."

"No other reason?"

Beneath her steady glance his blue eyes fell. He replied with restraint--

"I wouldn't trust some o' these squatters any further than I could sling a bull by the tail. Your Pap had any more trouble with 'em?"

Mintie answered savagely:--