It was after the midday dinner which David Slosson had shared with them.

When her father and Gordon arrived, and before objection could be offered by anybody, Hazel asked her uninvited guest to stay to dinner.

David Slosson, without the least hesitation, accepted the invitation.

In this manner all opposition from her father was discounted, all display of either man's displeasure avoided. She contrived, with subtle feminine wit, to twist the situation to the ends she had in view. She disliked the visitor intensely. The part she had decided to play troubled her, but she meant to carry it through whatever it cost her, and she felt that an opportunity like the present was not to be missed.

Her father accepted the cue he was offered, but Gordon was obsessed with murderous thoughts which certainly Hazel read, even in the smile with which he greeted the man he had decided was to be his enemy.

To Gordon, David Slosson was even more detestable socially than in business. Here his obvious vulgarity and commonness had no opportunity of disguise. He displayed it in the very explanation of his visit.

"Say," he cried, "Snake's Fall is just the bummest location this side of the Sahara on a Sunday. I was lyin' around the hotel with a grouch on I couldn't have scotched with a dozen highballs. I was hatin'

myself that bad I got right up an' hired a team and drove along out here on the off-chance of hitting up against some one interestin'."

Then he added, with a glance at Hazel, which Gordon would willingly have slain him for: "Guess I hit."

This was on the veranda. But later, throughout the meal, his offenses, in Gordon's eyes, mounted up and up, till the tally nearly reached the breaking strain.

The man put himself at his ease to his own satisfaction from the start.

He addressed all his talk either to Hazel or to her father, and, by ignoring Gordon almost entirely, displayed the fact that antagonism was mutual.

He criticised everything he saw about him, from the simple furnishing of the room in which they were dining, and the food they were partaking of, and its cooking, even to the riding-costume Hazel was wearing. He lost no opportunity of comparing unfavorably the life on the ranch, the life, as he put it, to which her father condemned Hazel, with the life of the cities he knew and had lived in. He passed from one rudeness to another under the firm conviction that he was making an impression upon this flower of the plains. The men mattered nothing to him. As far as Mallinsbee was concerned, he felt he held him in the palm of his hand.

Never in his life had Gordon undergone such an ordeal as that meal, which he had so looked forward to, in the pleasant company of father and daughter. Never had he known before the real meaning of self-restraint. More than all it was made harder by the fact that he felt Hazel was aware of something of his feelings. And the certainty that her father understood was made plain by the amused twinkle of his eyes when they were turned in his direction.

Then came the _denouement_. It was at the finish of the meal that Hazel launched her bombshell. Slosson, in a long, coarse disquisition upon ranching, had been displaying his most perfect ignorance and conceit. He finished up with the definite statement that ranching was done, "busted." He knew. He had seen. There was nothing in it. Only in grain or mixed farming. He had had wide experience on the prairie, and you couldn't teach him a thing.

"You must let me show you how fallible is your opinion," said Hazel, with more politeness of language than intent. There was a subtle sparkle in her eyes which Gordon was rejoiced to detect. "Let me see,"

she went on, "it's light till nearly nine o'clock. You see, I mustn't keep you driving on the prairie after dark for fear of losing yourself." She laughed. "Now, I'll lend you a saddle horse--if you can ride," she went on demurely, "and we'll ride round the range till supper. That'll leave you ample time to get back to Snake's Fall without losing yourself in the dark."

Gordon wanted to laugh, but forced himself to refrain. Mallinsbee audibly chuckled. David Slosson looked sharply at Hazel with his narrow black eyes, and his face went scarlet. Then he forced a boisterous laugh.

"Say, that's a bet, Miss Hazel," he cried familiarly. "If you can lose me out on the prairie you're welcome, and when it comes to the saddle, why, I guess I can ride anything with hair on."

"Better let him have my plug, Sunset," suggested Mallinsbee gutturally.

But Hazel's eyes opened wide. She shook her head.

"I wouldn't insult a man of Mr. Slosson's experience by offering him a cushy old thing like Sunset," she expostulated. Then she turned to Slosson. "Sunset's a rocking-horse," she explained. "Now, there's a dandy three-year-old I've just finished breaking in the barn. He's a lifey boy. Wouldn't you rather have him?" she inquired wickedly.

Slosson's inclination was obvious. He would have preferred Sunset.

But he couldn't take a bluff from a prairie girl, he told himself.

Forthwith he promptly demanded the three-year-old, and his demand elicited the first genuine smile Gordon had been able to muster since he had become aware of Slosson's presence on the ranch.

Within half an hour one of the ranch hands brought the two horses to the veranda. Hazel's mare, keen-eyed, alert and full of life, was a picture for the eye of a horseman. The other horse, shy and wild-eyed, was a picture also, but a picture of quite a different type.

Hazel glanced keenly round the saddle of the youngster. Then she approached Slosson, who was stroking his black mustache pensively on the veranda, and looked up at him with her sweetest smile.

"Shall I get on him first?" she inquired. "Maybe he'll cat jump some.

He's pretty lifey. I'd hate him to pitch you."

But to his credit it must be said that Slosson possessed the courage of his bluff. With a half-angry gesture he left the veranda and took the horse from the grinning, bechapped ranchman. He knew now that he was being "jollied."

"Guess you can't scare me that way, Miss Hazel," he cried, but there was no mirth in the harsh laugh that accompanied his words.

He was in the saddle in a trice, and, almost as quickly, he was very nearly out of it. That cat jump had come on the instant.

"Stick to him," Hazel cried.

And David Slosson did his best. He caught hold of the horn of the saddle, his heels went into the horse's sides, and, in two seconds, his attitude was much that of a shipwrecked mariner trying to balance on a barrel in a stormy sea. But he stuck to the saddle, although so nearly wrecked, and though the terrified horse gave a pretty display of bucking, it could not shed its unwelcome burden. So, in a few moments, it abandoned its attempt.

Then David Slosson sat up in triumph, and his vanity shone forth upon his pale face in a beaming smile.

"He's some horseman," rumbled Mallinsbee, loud enough for Slosson to hear as the horses went off.

"Quite," returned Gordon, in a still louder voice. "If there's one thing I like to see it's a fine exhibition of horsemanship."

Then as the horses started at a headlong gallop down towards the valley, the two men left behind turned to each other with a laugh.

"He called Hazel's bluff," said the girl's father, with a wry thrust of his chin beard.

"Which makes it all the more pleasant to think of the time when my turn comes," said Gordon sharply.

David Slosson was more than pleased with himself. He was so delighted that, by a miraculous effort, he had stuck to his horse, that his vanity completely ran away with him. He would show this girl and her mossback father. They wanted to "jolly" him. Well, let them keep trying.

Once the horses had started he gave his its head, and set it at a hard gallop. He turned in the saddle with a challenge to his companion.

"Let's have a run for it," he cried.

The girl laughed back at him.

"Where you go I'll follow," she cried.

Her words were well calculated. The light of vainglory was in the man's eyes, and he hammered his heels into his horse's flanks till it was racing headlong. But Hazel's mare was at his shoulder, striding along with perfect confidence and controlled under hands equally perfect.

"We'll go along this valley and I'll show you our next year's crop of beeves," cried Hazel, later. "They're away yonder, beyond that southern hill, guess we'll find half of them around there. You said ranching was played out, I think."

"Right ho," cried the man, with a sneering laugh. "Guess you'll need to convince me. Say, this is some hoss."

"Useful," admitted Hazel, watching with distressed eyes the man's lumbering seat in the saddle.

They rode on for some moments in silence. Then Hazel eased her hand upon the Lady Jane, and drew up on the youngster like a shot from a gun.

"We'll have to get across this stream," she declared, indicating the six-foot stream along which they were riding. "There's a cattle bridge lower down which you'd better take. There it is, away on. Guess you can see it from here."

"What are you goin' to do?" asked the man sharply. He was expecting another bluff, and was in the right mood to call it, since his success with the first.

But Hazel had calculated things to a nicety. She owed this man a good deal already for herself. She owed him more for his impertinent ignoring of Gordon, and also for his disparagement of the ranch life she loved.

Without a word she swung her mare sharply to the left. A dozen strides, a gazelle-like lifting of the round, brown body, and the Lady Jane was on the opposite bank of the stream.