"You're not going to let us really rough-it!" complained Mrs. Blake, as her husband swung her to the ground. "Were it not for Thomas Herbert--"

"--We'd go to Africa again and eat lions," Blake completed the sentence. "Wait, though--we may have a chance at mountain lions."

The porter had gone to help a manservant fetch the trunk from the other end of the car. Isobel untied the saddle horses from the rear of the buckboard. The trunk was lifted in, and Blake lashed it on, together with his level rod and tripod, using Ashton's lariat.

"Level is in the trunk," he explained, in response to Ashton's look of inquiry. "I suppose we ride."

"I think it will be better if Lafe drives," objected Isobel. "I am so reckless, and you don't know the road, as he does. The only thing is Rocket--Lafe has about trained him out of his tricks. But I should warn you that the hawss has been rather vicious."

"Tom will ride him," confidently stated Mrs. Blake.

Her husband took the bridle reins of the big horse and mounted him with the agility of a cowboy. For a moment Rocket stood motionless.

Then, whether because of Blake's weight or the fact that he was a stranger, all the beast's newly acquired docility vanished. He began to plunge and buck even more violently than when first mounted by Ashton.

Half a hundred Stockchuteites--all the residents of the town and several floaters--had come down to inspect the palatial private car and its pa.s.sengers. At Rocket's first leap these highly interested spectators broke into a murmur of joyful antic.i.p.ation. They were about to see the millionaire tenderfoot pull leather.

Yet somehow the event failed to transpire. Blake sat the flat saddle as if glued fast to it. His knees and legs were crushing against the sides of the leaping, whirling beast with the firmness of an iron vise. He held both hands upraised, away from the "leather."

Presently Rocket's efforts began to flag. Instead of seeking to quiet the frantic beast, Blake began to whoop and to strike him with his hat. Thus taunted, Rocket resorted to his second trick. He took the bit in his teeth and started to bolt. The crowd scattered before the rush of the runaway. But they need not have moved. Blake reached down on each side of the beast's outstretched neck and pulled. Tough-mouthed as he was, Rocket could not resist that powerful grip. His head was drawn down and backwards until his trumpet nostrils blew against his deep chest. After half a dozen wild plunges, he was forced to a stand, snorting but subdued.

"That's some riding, Miss Chuckie!" called the burly sheriff of the county. "Your guest forks a hawss like a buster."

The girl rode forward beside Blake, her face radiant. She paid him the highest of compliments by taking his riding as a matter of course; but in her eyes was a look strangely like that of his wife's fond gaze,--a look of pride at his achievement, rather than admiration.

"We'll ride ahead of the team to keep clear of the dust," she remarked.

He twisted about and saw that Ashton was starting to drive after them.

His wife's elderly maid was waving her handkerchief from one of the car windows. The porter and the manservant stood at attention. He exchanged a nod and smile with his wife, patted Rocket's arched neck and clicked to him to start.

"This is great, Miss Knowles!" he said. "I did not look for such fun, first crack out of the box. And--if you don't mind my saying it--it's such a jolly surprise your being what you are."

The girl blushed with pleasure. "I--we have been so eager to meet you," she murmured. She added hurriedly, "On account of your wonderful work as an engineer, you know."

"I wouldn't have suspected Ashton of bragging for me," he replied.

"Oh, he--he says you have a remarkable knack of hitting on the solution of problems. But it's in the engineering journals and reports that we've read about your work. Perhaps that is why you thought we had met before. After reading about you so much, I felt that I already knew you, and so my manner, you know--"

He shook his head at this seemingly ingenuous explanation. "No, there is something about your voice and face--" His eyes clouded with the grief of a painful memory; his head sank forward until his square chin touched his broad chest. He muttered brokenly: "But that's impossible.... Anyway--better for them they died--better than to live after...."

Behind her veil the girl's face became deathly white. He raised his head and looked at her with a wistful gleam of hope. She had averted her face from him and was gazing off at the hills with dim unseeing eyes.

"Pardon me, Miss Knowles," he said, "but do you mind if I ask what is your first name?"

She hesitated almost imperceptibly before replying: "I am called Chuckie--Chuckie Knowles. Doesn't that sound cowgirlish? We always have a chuck-wagon on the round-ups, you know. But it's a name that used to be quite common in the West."

"Yes, it comes from the Spanish Chiquita," he said. He repeated the word with the soft caressing Spanish accent, "_Che-kee-tah!_"

A flood of scarlet swept up into the girl's pallid face, and slowly subsided to her normal rich coloring. After a short silence she asked in a conventional tone: "I suppose you are glad to get away from Chicago. The last papers we received say that the East is sweltering in one of those smothery heat waves."

"It's the humidity and close air that kills," said Blake. "I ought to know. I lived for years in the slums."

"Oh, you--you really speak of it--openly!" the girl exclaimed.

"What of it?" he asked, astonished in turn at her lack of tact.

"Nothing--nothing," she hastened to disclaim. "Only I know--have read about the dreadful conditions in the Chicago slums. It is--it must be so painful to recall them--That was so rude of me to--"

"Not at all," he interrupted. To cover her evident confusion he held up his white hand in the scorching sunrays and commented jovially: "Talk about Eastern heat--this is a hundred and five Fahrenheit at the very least! A-a-ah!" He drew in a deep breath of the dry pure air.

"This is something like! When you get your land under ditch, you'll have a paradise."

"Oh, but you do not understand," she replied. "We want you to find out and tell us that Dry Mesa _cannot_ be watered. Irrigation would break up Daddy's range and put him out of business. It is just what we do not want."

"I see," said Blake, with instant comprehension of the situation.

"I know it cannot be done. But there are so many reclamation projects, and Daddy has read and read about them until he almost has a bee in his bonnet."

"Yet you sent for me--an engineer."

"Because I knew that when _you_ told him our mesa couldn't be watered, he would stop worrying. You know, you are quite a hero with us. We have read all about your wonderful work."

Blake's pale eyes twinkled. "So I'm a hero. Will you dynamite my pedestal if I figure out a way to water your range?"

She flashed him a troubled glance, but rallied for a quick rejoinder: "Even you can't pump the water out of Deep Canon, and Plum Creek is only a trickle most of the year."

"I see you want me to make my report as dry as I can write it," he bantered.

"No," she replied, suddenly serious. "We wish the exact truth, though we hope you'll find it dry."

"Then you are to blame if the matter does not figure out your way," he warned her. "You've given me a problem. If there is any possible way for me to irrigate your mesa, I am bound to try my best to work it out. Hadn't you better head me off before I start in? At present I haven't the remotest desire to do this except to comply with your wishes."

"It's as I told Daddy," she said. "If there really is a way, the sooner we know it the better. It is the uncertainty that is bothering Daddy. If your report is for us, all well and good; if against us, he will stand up and fight and forget about worrying."

"Fight?" asked Blake.

"Fight the project, fight against the formation of any irrigation district. He owns five sections. The reservoir might have to be on his patented land. He'd fight fair and square and hard--to the last ditch!"

"Isn't that a Dutchman's saying?" asked Blake humorously.

The girl's tense face relaxed, and she burst out in a ringing laugh.

She shifted the conversation to less serious subjects, and they cantered along together, laughing and chatting like old friends.

By this time Ashton and Mrs. Blake had gradually come to the same stage of pleasant comradeship. Ashton had started the drive in a sullen mood, his manner half resentful and wholly embarra.s.sed. Of this the lady was tactfully oblivious. Avoiding all allusion to the catastrophe that had befallen him, she told him the latest news of the mutual friends and acquaintances in whom ordinarily he would have been expected to be interested.

She even spoke casually of his father. His face contracted with pain, but he showed no bitterness against the parent who had disowned him.

After that her graciousness towards him redoubled. With Isobel for excuse, she gradually shifted the conversation to ranch life and his employment as cowboy. In many subtle ways she conveyed to him her admiration of the manner in which he had turned over a new leaf and was making a clean fresh start in life.

After delicately intimating her feelings, she at once turned to less personal topics. The last traces of his embarra.s.sment and moodiness left him, and he began to talk quite at his ease, though with a certain reserve that she attributed to the vast change in his fortunes. In return for her kindness, he repaid her by showing a real interest in Thomas Herbert Vincent Leslie Blake.