"Now, daddy!" complained Rhoda, "what do you want to tell such awful jokes for? Nothing like that ever happened to our pigs."
"Well," said her father, his eyes twinkling, "we never had a real cyclone down here. But tornadoes are bad enough."
It was barely daybreak the next morning when the sleepy peons brought the ponies to the house. Rhoda knew the trail well, and within the precincts of Rose Ranch, at least, her father did not consider it necessary for any guard to ride with her.
"I often ride to Osaka for the mail," explained Rhoda. "What should
I be afraid of?"
"Aren't there any tramps?" murmured Grace.
"Well," laughed Rhoda, "not the kind you mean. Tramps afoot would not get far in this country. And how could a man on foot catch me? Your kind of tramps don't go far from the railroad lines. And if there are any other ne'er-do-wells in the neighborhood, they know daddy too well to molest me. You see, daddy used to be sheriff in the old days. And he has a reputation," laughed Rhoda.
This conversation occurred just after they left the house on this windy morning, with a red sun coming up behind them "as big as a cartwheel," Bess announced. The level rays of the sun shot far, far across the plains and gilded the line of buttes and mesas Rhoda had told them so much about while back at Lakeview Hall.
"Those are not the Blue Buttes this morning, Rhoda," declared Nan.
"They are golden."
Rhoda's eyes swept the frontage of the eminences. She carried a pair of glasses in a case slung from her shoulder. Suddenly she seized these, uncased them, and clapped them to her eyes.
"Hi, cap'n!" cried Bess, "what do you spy?"