"Hey! What's doin' here?"
Over the ridge came a "cow puncher" riding at a lope. "Ain't you herdin' them critters the wrong way, ma'am?" he inquired, with a queer smile.
"Wrong for them, maybe, not for us," Harry answered briefly. To herself she added, "Who are you, anyhow?"
He certainly was the oddest-looking vaquero she had met on the range. He was plump and short, tow-haired and with no visible eyebrows; his skin was burned rose pink, and his pale-blue eyes were scorched by the desert sunlight. He looked like an overgrown fat baby; but a second glance showed her that his scowling eyes and smiling lips were only caused by the "sheepherder's grin" carved on his face by years of riding in blinding sunshine.
"I don't know whose cows you think you're rounding up," the "cow puncher" went on, "but the real owner wouldn't now—want 'em druv off. What I chiefly mean is, not right now."
"I'm sorry to disoblige the real owner," Harry said, with a laugh, "but if you're a friend of his you can tell him that the 'real owner' of a bunch of cattle on the ranch below here claims the grazing on these hills, and that if he—that is to say, Mr. Ludlum—doesn't want his scrubs dogged, he can send a rider up here to keep them where they belong."
As always with Harry, when her temper was up, she smiled, held her nose in the air and eyed her opponent with fine disdain.
The vaquero did not wither perceptibly. His grin merely became sarcastic. "You personally acquainted—that is, you know Ludlum?" he inquired.
"I've made a beginning that way," Harry said.