That young man spent his time chuckling and crowing and kicking, until overcome with sleep. Two hours out from Stockchute he awoke and vociferously demanded nourishment. Promptly the party was brought to a halt. They were among the pinons on one of the hillsides. While the baby took his dinner, Isobel laid out the lunch and the men burned incense in the guise of a pair of Havana cigars produced by Blake.

The lunch might have been put up in the kitchen of a first-cla.s.s metropolitan hotel. The fruit was the most luscious that money could buy; the sandwiches and cake would have tempted a sated epicure; the mineral water had come out of an ice chest so nearly frozen that it was still refreshingly cool. But--what was rather odd for a lunch packed in a private car--it included no wine or whiskey or liqueur.

Blake caught Ashton's glance, and smiled.

"You see I'm still on the waterwagon," he remarked. "I've got a permanent seat. There have been times when it looked as if I might be jolted off, but--"

"But there's never been the slightest chance of that!" put in his wife. She looked at Isobel, her soft eyes shining with love and pride.

"Once he gets a grip on anything, he never lets go."

"Oh, I can believe that!" exclaimed the girl with an enthusiasm that brought a shadow into the mobile face of Ashton.

"A man can't help holding on when he has something to hold on for,"

said Blake, gazing at his wife and baby.

"That's true!" agreed Ashton, his eyes on the dimpled face of Isobel.

Refreshed by the delicious meal, the party prepared to start on. But they did not travel as before. While Ashton was considerately washing out the dusty nostrils of the horses with water from his canteen, Isobel decided to drive with Mrs. Blake. Declaring that it would be like old times to sit a cowboy saddle, the big engineer lengthened the girl's stirrup leathers and swung on to the pony. This left Rocket to his owner.

At first Ashton seemed inclined to be stiff with his new road-mate.

But as they jogged along, side by side, over the hills and across the sagebrush flats, Blake restricted his talk to impersonal topics and spared his companion from any allusion to their past difficulties.

Throughout the ride, however, the two men maintained a certain reserve towards each other, and at no time approached the cordial intimacy that developed between the girl and Mrs. Blake before the end of their first mile together.

After telling merrily about her dual life as summer cowgirl and winter society maiden, Isobel drifted around, by seemingly casual a.s.sociation of ideas, to the troublesome question of irrigation on Dry Mesa, and from that to Blake and his work as an engineer.

"I do so hope Mr. Blake finds that there is no project practicable,"

she went on. "He has warned me that if there seems to be any chance to work out an irrigation scheme on our mesa he is bound to try to do it."

"And he would do it," added Mrs. Blake with quiet confidence.

"Then I hope and pray he will find there is no chance, because Daddy would have to oppose him. That would be such a pity! He and I have read so much about Mr. Blake's work that we have come to regard him as our--as one of our heroes."

Mrs. Blake smiled. It was very apparent, despite the quietness and repression of her high-bred manner, that she was very much in love with her husband.

The girl continued in a meekly deferential tone: "So you will not mind my worshiping him. He is a hero, a real hero! Isn't he?"

The words were spoken with an earnestness and sincerity that won Mrs.

Blake to a like candor. "You are quite right," she said. "Lafayette may have told you how Mr. Blake and I were wrecked on the most savage coast of Africa. He saved me from wild beasts and tropical storms, from fever and snakes,--from death in a dozen horrible forms. Then, when he had saved me--and won me, he gave me up until he could prove to himself that he was worthy of me."

"He did?" cried the girl. "But of course!--of course!"

"Yet that was nothing to the next proof of his strength and manhood,"

went on the proud wife. "He destroyed a monster more frightful than any lion or tropical snake--he overcame the curse of drink that had come down to him from--one of his parents."

"From--from his--" whispered the girl, her averted face white and drawn with pain.

Mrs. Blake had bent over to kiss the forehead of her sleeping baby and did not see. "If only all parents knew what terrible misfortunes, what tortures, their transgressions are apt to bring upon their innocent children!" she murmured.

"He told me that he won his way up out of the--the slums," said Isobel. "It must be some men fail to do that because they have relatives to drag them down--their families."

"It seems hard to say it, yet I do not know but that you are right, my dear," agreed Mrs. Blake. "Strong men, if unhampered, have a chance to fight their way up out of the social pit. But women and girls, even when they escape the--the worst down there, can hardly hope ever to attain--And of course those that fall!--Our dual code of morality is hideously unjust to our s.e.x, yet it still is the code under which we live."

The girl drew in a deep, sighing breath. Her eyes were dark with anguish. Yet she forced a gay little laugh. "Aren't we solemn sociologists! All we are concerned with is that _he_ has won his way up, and there's no one ever to drag him down or disgrace him; and--and you won't be jealous if I set him up on a pedestal and bring incense to him on my bended knees."

"Only you must give Thomas Herbert his share at the same time,"

stipulated the mother.

The girl burst into prolonged and rather shrill laughter that pa.s.sed the bounds of good breeding. Her emotion was so unrestrained that when she looked about at her surprised companion her face was flushed and her eyes were swimming with tears.

"Please, oh, do please forgive me!" she begged with a humility as immoderate as had been her laughter. "I--I can't tell you why, but--"

"Say no more, my dear," soothed Mrs. Blake. "You are merely a bit hysterical. Perhaps the excitement of our coming, after your months of lonely ranch life--"

"You're so good!" sighed the girl. "Yes, it was due to--your coming.

But now the worst is over. I'll not shock you again with any more such outbursts."

She smiled, and began to talk of other things, with somewhat unsteady but persistent gayety.

CHAPTER XIV

A DESCENT

When the party arrived at the ranch, the girl hostess took Mrs. Blake to rest in the clean, simply furnished room provided for the visitors.

Blake, after carrying in their trunk single-handed, went to look around at the ranch buildings in company with Ashton.

On returning to the house, the two found Knowles and Gowan in the parlor with the ladies. Isobel had already introduced them to Mrs.

Blake and also to her son. That young man was sprawled, face up, in the cowman's big hands, crowing and valiantly clutching at his bristly mustache.

Gowan sat across from him, perfectly at ease in the presence of the city lady. But, with his characteristic lack of humor, he was unmoved by the laughable spectacle presented by his employer and the baby, and his manner was both reserved and watchful.

At sight of Blake, Isobel called to her father in feigned alarm: "Look out, Daddy! Better stop hazing that yearling. Here comes his sire."

Knowles gave the baby back to its half-fearful mother, and rose to greet his guest with hospitable warmth: "Howdy, Mr. Blake! I'm downright glad to meet you. Hope you've found things comfortable and homelike."

"Too much so," a.s.serted Blake, his eyes twinkling. "We came out expecting to rough-it."

"Well, your lady won't know the difference," remarked Knowles.

"You're quite mistaken, Daddy, really," interposed his daughter. "She and Mr. Blake were wrecked in Africa and lived on roast leopards.

We'll have to feed them on mountain lions and bobcats."

"If you mean that, Miss Chuckie," put in Gowan, "I can get a bobcat in time for dinner tomorrow."

The girl led the general outburst of laughter over this serious proposal. "Oh! oh! Kid! You'll be the death of me!--Yet I sent you a joke-book last Christmas!"

"Couldn't see anything funny in it," replied the puncher. "I haven't lost it, though. It came from you."