The white circle in the east was showing through a net of softest purple and the beauty of it caused them to halt.
“Oh, it makes me want to sing, or to say my prayers, or–to cry!” she said, and she blinked tears from her eyes and smiled at him. “I reckon the colors would look the same from the veranda, but all this makes it seem different,” and her gesture took in the wide ranges.
“Sure it does,” he agreed. “One wants to yell, ‘Hurrah for God!’ when a combination like this is spread before the poor meek and lowly of the earth. It is a great stage setting, and makes us humans seem rather inadequate. Why, we can’t even find the right words for it.”
“It makes me feel that I just want to ride on and on, and on through it, no matter which way I was headed.”
“Well, take it from me, señorita, you are headed the right way,” he observed. “Going north is safe, but the blue ranges of the south are walls of danger. The old border line is a good landmark to tie to.”
“Um!” she agreed, “but all the fascinating things and the witchy things, and the mysterious things are down there over the border. I never get real joy riding north.”
“Perhaps because it is not forbidden, Miss Eve.”
Then they laughed again and lifted the bridles, and the horses broke into a steady lope, neck and neck, as the afterglow made the earth radiant and the young faces reflected the glory of it.
“What was that you said about getting away?” he queried. “Did you break jail?”
“Just about. Papa Singleton hid my cross-saddle thinking I would not go far on this one. They have put a ban on my riding south, but I just had to see my Billie Bernard Herrara.”
“And you ran away?”
“N-no. We sneaked away mighty slow and still till we got a mile or two out, and then we certainly burned the wind. Didn’t we, Pat?”
“Well, as range boss of this end of the ranch I reckon I have to herd you home, and tell them to put up the fences,” said Rhodes.
“Yes, you will!” she retorted in derision of this highly improbable suggestion.
“Surest thing you know! Singleton has good reasons for restricting your little pleasure rides to Granados. Just suppose El Gavilan, the Hawk, should cross your trail in Sonora, take a fancy to Pat–for Pat is some caballo!–and gather you in as camp cook?”
“Camp cook?”
“Why, yes; you can cook, can’t you? All girls should know how to cook.”
“What if I do? I have cooked on the camp trips with Cap Pike, but that doesn’t say I’ll ever cook for that wild rebel, Ramon Rotil. Are you trying to frighten me off the ranges?”
“No, only stating the case,” replied Rhodes lighting a cigarette and observing her while appearing not to. “Quite a few of the girls in the revolution camps are as young as you, and many of them are not doing camp work by their own choice.”
“But I–” she began indignantly.
“Oh yes, in time you would be ransomed, and for a few minutes you might think it romantic–the ‘Bandit Bride,’ the ‘Rebel Queen,’ the ‘Girl Guerrilla,’ and all that sort of dope,–but believe me, child, by the time the ransom was paid you would be sure that north of the line was the garden spot of the earth and heaven enough for you, if you could only see it again!”
She gave him one sulky resentful look and dug her heel into Pat. He leaped a length ahead of the roan and started running.
“You can pretend you are El Gavilan after a lark, and see how near you will get!” she called derisively and leaned forward urging the black to his best.
“You glorified gray-eyed lark!” he cried. “Gather her in, Pardner!”
But he rode wide to the side instead of at the heels of Pat and thus they rode neck and neck joyously while he laughed at her intent to leave him behind.
The corrals and long hay ricks of Granados were now in sight, backed by the avenue of palms and streaks of green where the irrigation ditches led water to the outlying fields and orchards.
“El Gavilan!” she called laughingly. “Beat him, Pat,–beat him to the home gate!”
Then out of a fork of the road to the left, an automobile swept to them from a little valley, one man was driving like the wind and another waved and shouted. Rhodes’ eyes assured him that the shouting man was Philip Singleton, and he rode closer to the girl, grasped her bridle, and slowed down his own horse as well as hers.
“You’ll hate me some more for this,” he stated as she tried to jerk loose and failed, “but that yelping windmill is your fond guardian, and he probably thinks I am trying to kidnap you.”
She halted at that, laughing and breathless, and waved her hand to the occupants of the car.
“I can be good as an angel now that I have had my day!” she said. “Hello folks! What’s the excitement?”
The slender man whom Rhodes had termed the yelping windmill, removed his goggles, and glared, hopelessly distressed at the flushed, half-laughing girl.
“Billie–Wilfreda!”
“Now, now, Papa Singleton! Don’t swear, and don’t ever get frightened because I am out of sight.” Then she cast one withering glance at Rhodes, adding,–“and if you engage range bosses like this one no one on Granados will ever get out of sight!”
“The entire house force has been searching for you over two hours. Where have you been?”
“Oh, come along home to supper, and don’t fuss,” she suggested. “Just because you hid my other saddle I went on a little pasear of my own, and I met up with this roan on my way home.”
Rhodes grinned at the way she eliminated the rider of the roan horse, but the driver of the machine was not deceived by the apparent slight. He had seen that half defiant smile of comradeship, and his tone was not nice.
“It is not good business to waste time and men in this way,” he stated flatly. “It would be better that word is left with the right ones when you go over the border to amuse yourself in Sonora.”
The smile went out of the eyes of the girl, and she held her head very erect.
“You and Mr. Rhodes appear to agree perfectly, Mr. Conrad,” she remarked. “He was trying to show me how little chance I would stand against El Gavilan or even the Yaqui slave traders if they ranged up towards the border.”
“Slave traders?” repeated Conrad. “You are making your jokes about that, of course, but the camp followers of the revolution is a different thing;–everywhere they are ranging.”
The girl did not answer, and the car sped on to the ranch house while the two horses cantered along after them, but the joyous freedom of the ride had vanished, lost back there on the ranges when the other minds met them in a clash.
“Say,” observed Rhodes, “I said nothing about Yaqui slave traders. Where did you get that?”
“I heard Conrad and his man Brehman talking of the profits,–sixty pesos a head I think it was. I wonder how they knew?”
Singleton was waiting for them at the entrance to the ranch house, great adobe with a patio eighty feet square in the center. In the old old days it had housed all the vaqueros, but now the ranchmen were divided up on different outlying rancherias and the many rooms of Granados were mostly empty. Conrad, his secretary Brehman, and their cook occupied one corner, while Singleton and Billie and Tia Luz with her brood of helpers occupied the other.
Singleton was not equal to the large hospitality of the old days when the owner of a hacienda was a sort of king, dispensing favors and duties to a small army of retainers. A companionable individual he was glad to meet and chat or