The girl regarded the colt with increasing rapture. “Isn’t he a perfect dear!” she went on. “Look at him, daddy!” she suddenly urged, delightedly. “He’s dying to know why we stopped!” Which, indeed, the colt looked to be, since he had come to a stop with the mare and now was regarding them curiously. “I’d love to pet him!”
The Judge frowned. “We’re late for luncheon,” he declared, and again gazed to the rear. “We’d better take him along with us out to the ranch. To-morrow I’ll advertise him in the papers.” And he shook up the mare. “We’d better go along, Helen.”
“Just one minute, daddy!” persisted the girl, gathering up her white skirts and, as the Judge pulled down, leaping lightly out of the phaeton. “I’ve simply got to pet him!” She cautiously approached the colt.
He permitted her this approach. Nor did he shy at her outstretched hand. Under her gentle caresses he stood very still, and when she stooped before him, as she did presently, bringing her eyes upon a level with his own, he gazed into them very frankly and earnestly, as if gauging this person, as he had seemed to tabulate all other things, some day to make good use of his knowledge. After a time the girl spoke.
“I wish I could keep you always,” she said, poutingly. “You look so nice and babyish!” But she knew that she could not keep him, and after a time she stood up again and sighed, and fell to stroking him thoughtfully. “I’ll have you to-day, anyway,” she declared, finally, with promise of enjoyment in her voice, as one who meant to make the most of it. Then she got back into the phaeton.
The Judge started up the horse again. They continued through the town, and when on its northwestern outskirts turned to the right along a trail that paralleled the river. The trail ran north and south, and on either side of it, sometimes shielding a secluded ranch, always forming an agreeable oasis in the flat brown of the country, rose an occasional clump of cottonwoods. The ranch-houses were infrequent, however; all of them were plentifully supplied with water by giant windmills which clacked and creaked above the trees in the high-noon breeze. To the left, across the river, back from the long, slow rise of sand from the water’s edge, rose five blunt heights like craters long extinct; while above these, arching across the heavens in spotless sheen, curved the turquoise dome of a southwestern midday sky, flooding the dust and dunes below in throbbing heat-rays. It was God’s own section of earth, and not the least beautiful of its vistas, looming now steadily ahead on their right, was the place belonging to Judge Richards. House and outhouses white, and just now aglint in the white light of the sun, the whole ranch presented the appearance of diamonds nestling in a bed of emerald-green velvet. Turning off at this ranch, the Judge tossed the reins to a waiting Mexican.
Helen was out of the phaeton like a flash. Carefully guiding the colt around the house and across a patio, she turned him loose into a spacious corral. Then she fell to watching him, and she continued to watch him until a voice from the house, that of an aged Mexican woman who presided over the kitchen, warned her that dinner was waiting. Reluctantly hugging the colt–hugging him almost savagely in her sudden affection for him–she then turned to leave, but not without a word of explanation.
“I must leave you now, honey!” she said, much as a child would take leave of her doll. “But I sha’n’t be away from you long, and when I come back I’ll see what I can do about feeding you!”
The colt stood for a time, peering between the corral boards after her. Then he set out upon a round of investigation. He moved slowly along the inside of the fence, seeming to approve its whitewashed cleanliness, until, turning in a corner, he stood before the stable door. Here he paused a moment, gazing into the semi-gloom, then sprang up the one step. Inside, he stood another moment, sweeping eyes down past the stalls, and finally set out and made his way to the far end. In the stall next the last stood a brown saddle-horse, and in the last stall the matronly horse he had followed out from town. But he showed no interest in these, bestowing upon each merely a passing glance. Then, discovering that the flies bothered him here more than in the corral, he walked back to the door and out into the sunlight again. In the corral he took up his motionless stand in the corner nearest the house.
He did not stand thus for long. He soon revealed grave uneasiness. It was due to a familiar gnawing inside. He knew the relief for this, and promptly set out in search of his mother. He hurried back along the fence, gained the door of the stable, and stepped into the stable, this time upon urgent business. He trotted down past the stalls to the family horse, and without hesitation stepped in alongside of her. Directly there was a shrill nicker, a lightning flash of heels, and the colt lay sprawling on the stable floor.