He leaned forward and laid his hand on Rob's knee. "Ye don't want to let thim think ye're beaten. That Joyce has half a dozen homesteads a'ready that he's paid his herders to file on, for sure! But kape yer eyes open, and might be you'd find a way to come up with him yet."
"I'm afraid a tenderfoot like me hasn't much of a show against an old-timer like him."
"Niver say it. There niver was a rashcal yit that didn't lave wan footprint at least in the mud, smart as he'd be, and it's mebbe you that's the lad wit' the eyes to see it. Watch him, Rob, watch him."
Rob shook his head, yet nevertheless he felt a glow of hope in his heart.
That evening, just before bedtime, Jones returned to the ranch, spread his quilt on the dry grass under a tree and became one of the family. He was good company, and Harry would have been glad to have him about, except that he took so much of Rob's attention. Every morning at sunrise the two began to work with the colts, breaking them one by one to bit and bridle, and then to harness and wagon.
As soon as the forenoon grew warm, they shut the colts in the meadow at the head of the draw. This was a natural pasture lot, watered by a spring that flowed from the rocks under the next lift in the foothills and sheltered on all sides by trees. Here the horses were safe and the boys paid no more attention to them throughout the day. Jones always rode away through the valley while Rob plowed, went on with his task of fencing, or did some work in the garden. After supper the boys resumed their business of breaking the colts.
Twice Jones had ridden away in the evening taking one or more of the harness-broken horses with him and had returned some days later without them. Harry supposed that he had sold them. Neither Rob nor Jones ever talked about the horses in her presence and she had soon understood that she was not expected to ask questions about them.
One morning Rob asked his sister to put up some lunch for Jones and himself because they were going down the valley on business.
Harry put up the lunch and stood watching while they mounted and rode off. Among the string of horses which Jones had brought in were two well broken to saddle, a black and a sorrel, and to-day the boys each rode one of them. These two horses had run loose for so long a time that they were as frisky and spirited as the colts. As the little party swept away across the wild prairie the girl longed ardently to be with them. She liked to ride—Rob had been teaching her—and it did seem hard that she should not be allowed to go along on such trips as these, simply because she was not considered a proper person to share a secret.
Hurt pride mingled with resentment struggled together in her breast. It was hard to think that she was still outside Rob's deeper interests. Her life had, for the moment, lost its zest. She finished tidying up the tent, then went down to the garden determined to be interested in her own tasks, for the planting and weeding of the vegetables that Rob, overwhelmed in the press of work, had been forced to leave to her.