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that she has a great future before her, and that we shall all be so proud of her—that sometimes I am convinced myself.”

The girl rose.

“Come on!” she said. “Let’s have a look at the pools—it isn’t a perfect day unless I’ve seen fish in every pool. Do you remember how we used to watch and watch and watch for the fish in the lower pools, and run as fast as we could to be the first up to the house to tell if we saw them, and how many?”

They walked on in silence along the winding pathways among the flower-bordered pools, to stop at last beside the lower one. This had originally been a shallow wading pool for the children when they were small, but it was now given over to water hyacinth and brilliant fantails.

“There!” said the girl, presently. “I have seen fish in each pool.”

“And you can go to bed with a clear conscience tonight,” he laughed.

To the west of the lower pool there were no trees to obstruct their view of the hills that rolled down from the mountains to form the western wall of the canyon in which the ranch buildings and cultivated fields lay. As the two stood there, hand in hand, the boy’s eyes wandered lovingly over the soft, undulating lines of these lower hills, with their parklike beauty of greensward dotted with wild walnut trees. As he looked he saw, for a brief moment, the figure of a man on horseback passing over the hollow of a saddle before disappearing upon the southern side.

Small though the distant figure was, and visible but for a moment, the boy recognized the military carriage of the rider. He glanced quickly at the girl to note if she had seen, but it was evident that she had not.

“Well, Ev,” he said, “l guess I’ll be toddling.”

“So early?” she demanded.

“You see I’ve got to get busy, if I’m going to get the price of that teeny, weeny bungalow,” he explained.

A moment later he swung into the saddle, and with a wave of his hand cantered off up the canyon.

“Now what,” said the girl to herself, “is he going up there for? He can’t make any money back there in the hills. He ought to be headed straight for home and his typewriter!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

ACROSS the rustic bridge, and once behind the sycamores at the lower end of the cow pasture, Guy Evans let his horse out into a rapid gallop. A few minutes later he overtook a horseman who was moving at a slow walk farther up the canyon. At the sound of the pounding hoofbeats behind him, the latter turned in his saddle, reined about and stopped. The boy rode up and drew in his blowing mount beside the other.

“Hello, Allen!” he said.

The man nodded.

“What’s eatin’ you?” he inquired.

“I’ve been thinking over that proposition of yours,” explained Evans.

“Yes?”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking maybe I might swing it; but are you sure it’s safe. How do I know you won’t double-cross me?”

“You don’t know,” replied the other. “All you know is that I got enough on you to send you to San Quentin. You wouldn’t get nothin’ worse if you handled the rest of it, an’ you stand to clean up between twelve and fifteen thousand bucks on the deal. You needn’t worry about me double-crossin’ you. What good would it do me? I ain’t got nothin’ against you, kid. If you don’t double-cross me I won’t double-cross you; but look out for that cracker-fed dude your sister’s goin’ to hitch to. If he ever butts in on this I’ll croak him an’ send you to San Quentin, if I swing for it. Do you get me?”

Evans nodded.

“I’ll go in on it,” he said, “because I need the money; but don’t you bother Custer Pennington—get that straight. I’d go to San Quentin and I’d swing myself before I’d stand for that. Another thing, and then we’ll drop that line of chatter—you couldn’t send me to San Quentin or anywhere else. I bought a few bottles of hootch from you, and there isn’t any judge or jury going to send me to San Quentin for that.”

“You don’t know what you done,” said Allen, with a grin. “There’s a thousand cases of bonded whisky hid back there in the hills, an’ you engineered the whole deal at this end. Maybe you didn’t have nothin’ to do with stealin’ it from a government bonded warehouse in New York; but you must a’ knowed all about it, an’ it was you that hired me and the other three to smuggle it off the ship and into the hills.”

Evans was staring at the man in wide-eyed incredulity.

“How do you get that way?” he asked derisively.

“They’s four of us to swear to it,” said Allen; “an’ how many you got to swear you didn’t do it?”

“Why, it’s a rotten frame-up!” exclaimed Evans.

“Sure it’s a frame-up,” agreed Allen; “but we won’t use it if you behave yourself properly.”

Evans looked at the man for a long minute—dislike and contempt unconcealed upon his face.

“I guess,” he said presently, “that I don’t need any twelve thousand dollars that bad, Allen. We’ll call this thing off, as far as I am concerned. I’m through, right now. Goodbye!”

He wheeled his horse to ride away.

“Hold on there, young feller!” said Allen. “Not so quick! You may think you’re through, but you’re not. We need you, and, anyway, you know too damned much for your health. You’re goin’ through with this. We got some other junk up there that there’s more profit in than what there is in booze, and it’s easier to handle. We know where to get rid of it; but the booze we can’t handle as easy as you can, and so you’re goin’ to handle it.”

“Who says I am?”

“I do,” returned Allen, with an ugly snarl. “You’ll handle it, or I’ll do just what I said I’d do, and I’ll do it pronto. How’d you like your mother and that Pennington girl to hear all I’d have to say?”

The boy sat with scowling, thoughtful brows for a long minute. From beneath a live oak, on the summit of a low bluff, a man discovered them. He had been sitting there talking with a girl. Suddenly he looked up.

“Why, there’s Guy,” he said. “Who’s that with—why, it’s that fellow Allen! What’s he doing up here?” He rose to his feet. “You stay here a minute, Grace, I’m going down to see what that fellow wants. I can’t understand Guy.”

He untied the Apache and mounted, while below, just beyond the pasture fence, the boy turned sullenly toward Allen.

“I’ll go through with it this once,” he said. “You’ll bring it down on burros at night?”

The other nodded affirmatively.

“Where do you want it?” he asked.

“Bring it to the west side of the old hay barn—the one that stands on our west line. When will you come?”

“To-day’s Tuesday. We’ll bring the first lot Friday night, about twelve o’clock; and after that every Friday the same time. You be ready to settle every Friday for what you’ve sold during the week—sabe?”

“Yes,” replied Evans. “That’s all, then”; and he turned and rode back toward the rancho.

Allen was continuing on his way toward the hills when his attention was again attracted by the sound of hoofbeats. Looking to his left, he saw a horseman approaching from inside the pasture. He recognized both horse and rider at once, but kept sullenly on his way.

Pennington rode up to the opposite side of the fence along which ran the trail that Allen followed.

“What are you doing here, Allen?” he asked in a not unkindly tone.

“Mindin’ my own business, like you better,” retorted the ex-stableman.

“You have no business back here on Ganado,” said Pennington. “You’ll have to get off the property.”

“The hell I will!” exclaimed Allen.

At the same time he made a quick movement with his right hand but Pennington made a quicker.

“That kind of stuff don’t go here, Allen,” said the younger man, covering the other with a forty-five. “Now turn around and get off the place, and don’t come on it again. I don’t want any trouble with you.”

Without a word, Allen reined his horse about and rode down the canyon; but there was murder in his heart. Pennington watched him until he was out of revolver range, and then turned and rode back to Grace Evans.

CHAPTER EIGHT

BENEATH the cool shadows of the north porch the master of Ganado, booted and spurred, rested after a long ride in the hot sun, sipping a long, cool glass of peach brandy and orange juice, and talking to his wife.

She knew the dream that her husband had built, and that with it he had purposely blinded his eyes and dulled his ears to the truth which the mother heart would have been glad to deny, but could not. Some day one of the children would go away, and then the other. It was only right and just that it should be so, for as they two had built their own home and their own lives and their little family circle, so their children must do even as they.

It was going to be hard on them both, much harder on the father, because of that dream that had become an obsession. Mrs. Pennington feared that it might break his spirit, for it would leave him nothing to plan for and hope for as he had planned and hoped for during the twenty-two years that they had spent upon Ganado.

Now that Grace was going to the city, how could they hope to keep their boy content upon the ranch? She knew he loved the old place, but he was entitled to see the world and to make his own place in it—not merely to slide spinelessly into the niche that another had prepared for him.

“I am worried about the boy,” she said presently.

“How? In what way?” he asked.

“He will be very blue and lonely after Grace goes,” she said.

“Damned foolishness, that’s what it is!” he blustered. “An actress! What does she know about acting?”

“Have you ever thought that some day our own children may want to go?” she asked.

“I won’t think about it!” he exploded.

“I hope you won’t have to,” she said; “but it’s going to be pretty hard on the boy after Grace goes.”

“Do you think he’ll want to go?” the colonel asked. His voice sounded suddenly strange and pleading, and there was a suggestion of pain and fear in his eyes that she had never seen there before in all the years that she had known him. “Do you think he’ll want to go?” he repeated in a voice that no longer sounded like his own.

“Stranger things have happened,” she replied, forcing a smile, “than a young man wanting to go out into the world and win his spurs!”

“Let’s not talk about it, Julia,” the colonel said presently. “You are right, but I don’t want to think about it. When it comes will be time enough to meet it. If my boy wants to go, he shall go—and he shall never know how deeply his father is hurt!”

“There they are now,” said Mrs. Pennington. “I hear them in the patio. Children!” she called. “Here we are on the north porch!”

They came through the house together, brother and sister, their arms about each other.

“Cus says I am too young to get married,” exclaimed the girl.

“Married!” ejaculated the colonel. “You and Guy talking of getting married? What are you going to live on, child?”

“On the hill

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