She hoped that Ludlum would come before the effect of Garnett's advice had worn off, and, as the days passed, she grew uneasy. It was a relief from the constant suspense when one morning Rob asked her to help him round up his cows. Half a dozen starved-looking steers had come down the draw during the night, and when he dogged them off his own herd had followed them.
Harry needed no urging. With Rob and Garnett to teach her she had learned to ride well, and could even, with the help of 'Thello, round up their own cattle very creditably. There was nothing that she enjoyed more than to be out on a June morning, with a lively horse beneath her, the sage-scented breeze sweeping past, the meadow larks calling across the sky, the miles of blue swale and the cloud shadows racing ahead of her. At such moments the horizon was hers; hers, too, the splendor and greatness of life.
To-day the work was all play. They had only to follow the fresh traces of the herd going south across the hills, and half an hour of sharp riding brought them up with the bunch. It took another half hour to cut out their animals and turn them toward home, but that was what Harry enjoyed. To wheel to and fro, spur after a creature that was dodging to one side, dash ahead and turn the leaders, and finally send the whole string galloping away with the thunder of hoofs and the chorus of bellowings—that was the best sport yet.
As Harry and Rob rode slowly home they discussed the coming of strange cattle into their hills, and wondered whether they could be some of those that Garnett had spoken of.
"If they are," Rob said, "the riders will be along in a few days to drive them back."
When they were halfway down the draw 'Thello growled warningly, and they saw a saddle horse standing at the corral gate.
"Ludlum!" flashed into Harry's mind, and she was silent when Rob said he would ride ahead and see who their visitor was.
"I'll leave them alone for a while," she said to herself, "and give Ludlum a chance to talk."
She drove the cows inside the pasture, then rode slowly to the corral and, putting up her pony, came to the house. Ludlum was talking in a tone of calm assurance, of conviction won by thorough knowledge of the subject. Rob, sitting on the porch step, smoothed the back of his head and listened in silence. Harry wondered whether that silence meant that he was yielding or merely resisting.
Stocky, big-muscled, tanned to a smooth, healthy brown, Robert Holliday was at first glance merely one of the many young fellows who have gone out to the Far West to have a try at fortune. But three years of hard wrestling with a sagebrush ranch had cleared and solidified his boyish visions and made them a working force. Harry knew that Rob's opinions carried weight in the community.