The Treasure Trail. Marah Ellis Ryan

to our Mexican cousins.”

      “They can have my share,” decided the girl. “I could worry along without him quite awhile. He manages to get rid of all the likeable range men muy pronto.”

      Rhodes laughed until she stared at him frowningly, and then the delicious color swept over her face.

      “Oh, you!” she said, and Rhodes thought of sweet peas, and pink roses in old southern gardens as her lips strove to be straight, yet curved deliciously. No one had mentioned to him how pretty she was; he had thought of her as a browned tom-boy, but instead she was a shell-pink bud on a slender stem, and wonder of wonders –– she rode a side-saddle in Arizona!

      She noticed him looking at it.

      “Are you going to laugh at that, too?” she demanded.

      “Why no, it hadn’t occurred to me. It sort of looks like home to me –– our southern girls use them.”

      She turned to him with a quick birdlike movement, her gray eyes softened and trusting.

      “It was my mother’s saddle, a wedding present from the vaqueros of our ranches when she married my father. I am only beginning to use it, and not so sure of myself as with the one I learned on.”

      “Oh, I don’t know,” he observed. “You certainly looked sure when you jumped that fence at Herrara’s.”

      She glanced at him quickly, curious, and then smiling.

      “And it was you, not the meadow lark! You are too clever!”

      “And you didn’t answer, just turned your back on the lonely ranger,” he stated dolefully, but she laughed.

      “This doesn’t look it, waiting to go home with you,” she retorted. “Cap Pike has been telling me about you until I feel as if I had known you forever. He says you are his family now, so of course that makes Granados different for you.”

      “Why, yes. I’ve been in sight of Granados as much as twice since I struck this neck of the woods. Your manager seems to think my valuable services are indispensable at the southern side of this little world.”

      “So that’s the reason? I didn’t know,” she said slowly. “One would have to be a seventh son of a seventh son to understand his queer ways. But you are going along home today, for I am a damsel in distress and need to be escorted.”

      “You don’t look distressed, and I’ve an idea you could run away from your escort if you took a notion,” he returned. “But it is my lucky day that I had a hunch for this cañon trail and the Green Springs, and I am happy to tag along.”

      They had reached Herrara’s corral and Rhodes glanced up the little gulch to the well. The flat rock there was stripped of the odd collection, and Narcisco stood at the corner of the adobe watching them somberly.

      “Buenos tardes!” called the girl. “Take care of the niño as the very treasure of your heart!”

      “Sure!” agreed the lad, “Adios, señorita.”

      “Why the special guard over the treasure?” asked Rhodes as their horses fell into the long easy lope side by side. “The house seems full and running over, and niñitas to spare.”

      “There are never any to spare,” she reminded him, “and this one is doubly precious for it is named for me –– together its saint and its two grandmothers! Benicia promised me long ago that whether it was a boy or a girl it would be Billie Bernard Herrara. I was just taking the extra clothes I had Tia Luz make for him –– and he is a little black-eyed darling! Soon as he is weaned I’m going to adopt him; I always did want a piccaninny for my own.”

      Rhodes guided his horse carefully around a barranca edge, honeycombed by gophers, and then let his eyes rest again on the lustrous confiding eyes, and the rose-leaf lips.

      Afterward he told himself that was the moment he began to be bewitched by Billie Bernard.

      But what he really said was –– “Shoo, child, you’re only a piccaninny yourself!” and they both laughed.

      It was quite wonderful how old Captain Pike had managed to serve as a family foundation for their knowledge of each other. There was not a doubt or a barrier between them, they were “home folks” riding from different ways and meeting in the desert, and silently claiming kindred.

      The shadows grew long and long under the sun of the old Mexic land, and the high heavens blazed above in yellows and pinks fading into veiled blues and far misty lavenders in the hollows of the hills.

      The girl drew a great breath of sheer delight as she waved her hands towards the fire flame in the west where the desert was a trail of golden glory.

      “Oh, I am glad –– glad I got away!” she said in a hushed half-awed voice. “It never –– never could be like this twice and we are seeing it! Look at the moon!”

      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