of that amiable intention, stopped the car outside of town and had rolled and smoked three cigarettes. And the train had been late, too, after all!
When at last he got into the driving seat he found the girl beside him. He was not even faintly interested. He had had his own plans for that evening, plans which had involved a girl also; he had packed salt that day up into the mountains for the cattle there, and he had been in the saddle since five that morning. He had a night off coming to him. It was in infuriated silence that he had received his orders to meet the party, and in silence, rather less infuriated, that he drove it out to the L. D.
Only once did Kay speak during that long entranced ride.
"Do you live at the ranch?"
"Well, I kinda hit it and bounce off," he told her.
"And do you work with the cattle?"
"I play around with them some. Tame 'em, you know. They're easier to handle when they're tame."
"Really!" she said, and then caught a glimpse of his face and knew he was laughing at her.
But the enchantment continued, although she made no further effort to talk. There was a faint spicy odor in the air that she thought might be the sage, and a young moon hung in a cleft in the mountains. Above the purring of the engine an owl was calling, and a jack-rabbit ran for some time ahead of the car, long ears erect. He went incredibly fast, but the car kept up with him, and after a while her father spoke irritably from the back seat.
"What's the hurry?" he demanded. "We've been four days getting here; I don't want my neck broken now."
She thought, without looking, that McNair smiled again.
Then, after twenty odd miles, she saw lights again and knew they had reached the ranch. Just so must her grandfather have come back year after year, after he had gone East. First on horseback, then by coach and later on by car, he had turned the bend in the road and seen these lights and knew he was at home again. Very much the same too must have been the bustle of arrival; Mallory, the foreman, shaking hands, his wife in the background, men coming and
