“Seems kind of funny, doesn’t it, Uncle Hank,” she said, “to think of Marchbanks cattle on our pastures? Do you remember Fayte Marchbanks telling me when we first came here, and I didn’t know anything about such things, that this was his ranch?”
The old man nodded, smiling a little, and turned to the letter he was writing, to arrange terms. The herd was brought over by Marchbanks’ range boss in October and left at the Sorrows, to remain six months.
They arrived, gaunt and sorry-looking from the long trail and the months of poor grass that had gone before. But to at least one person on the ranch they possessed a secret interest and charm. They had come all the way from Encinal County, in which lies the J I C ranch, where Pearse Masters lived. Why, any one of those sad-faced brindle cows might have seen Pearse himself—in the flesh! In some indefinite way, Pearse seemed nearer to her while the Marchbanks cattle were on the ranch.
Late in the following March, Hank announced, one evening at the supper table, that all hands would be needed next day for rounding up the Flying M’s.
Hilda’s head was lifted; her glance fixed eagerly on the old man’s face.
“Who’s coming for them, Uncle Hank?” Burch asked, and saved her the necessity of doing so.
“The Colonel himself, this time,” rejoined Hank, taking a letter from his pocket and running over its lines. “He’s liable to be here to-morrow or next day; going to camp at Tres Piños the last night and get in here fresh to help us work the cattle and road-brand.” Hilda had come and leaned over his shoulder to look at the letter. “Even so,” he told her, as she rubbed her cheek against the grizzled curls, “it’s going to take every hand we’ve got. You children can both help.” He glanced across to where Burch, close under the lamp, had gone back to his figuring and diagrams. “Son, I’ll need even you.”
The men were out by daybreak. Hilda was not much behind them. As she hurried down to the corral, after a snatched breakfast, to get her horse, she was trying to picture Colonel Marchbanks to herself; she was carrying on some light, easy conversation with him, in which there always came up a careless question, variously phrased, as to whether or not he knew a young man employed on the J I C ranch by the name of Masters. Buster, the last man out, checked his pony to point to the mail bag, hanging on the corral wall, and shout:
“I brought it in so late last night that I hated to wake you all. Take it up to the house, won’t you, Hilda?”
She saddled up swiftly, curbed an impulse to leave the bag till she got back, reached it from its nail, when she was in the saddle, and rode around toward the back to throw it in on the sacred precincts of Sam Kee’s porch. Nobody but Hilda dared to do a thing like that.