“I’m sorry. I had to hitch one end of it up above and let myself down by it.”
“Well, it might have come in handy to lash you on the pony. I don’t mind about the rope otherwise. One of the boys will bring it in for me to-morrow. Now, let’s see what we can do towards hoisting you into your saddle.”
CHAPTER III
THE MISTRESS OF SUNSET RANCH
Dudley Stone had begun to peer wonderingly at this strange girl. When he had first sighted her riding her strawberry roan across the plateau he supposed her to be a little girl—and really, physically, she did not seem much different from what he had first supposed.
But she handled this situation with all the calmness and good sense of a much older person. She spoke like the men and women he had met during his sojourn in the West, too.
Yet, when he was close to her, he saw that she was simply a young girl with good health, good muscles, and a rather pretty face and figure. He called her “Miss” because it seemed to flatter her; but Dud Stone felt himself infinitely older than this girl of Sunset Ranch.
It was she who went about getting him aboard the pony, however; he never could have done it by himself. Nor was it so easily done as said.