She noticed him looking at it.
“Are you going to laugh at that, too?” she demanded.
“Why no, it hadn’t occurred to me. It sort of looks like home to me––our southern girls use them.”
She turned to him with a quick birdlike movement, her gray eyes softened and trusting.
“It was my mother’s saddle, a wedding present from the vaqueros of our ranches when she married my father. I am only beginning to use it, and not so sure of myself as with the one I learned on.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he observed. “You certainly looked sure when you jumped that fence at Herrara’s.”
She glanced at him quickly, curious, and then smiling.
“And it was you, not the meadow lark! You are too clever!”
“And you didn’t answer, just turned your back on the lonely ranger,” he stated dolefully, but she laughed.
“This doesn’t look it, waiting to go home with you,” she retorted. “Cap Pike has been telling me about you until I feel as if I had known you forever. He says you are his family now, so of course that makes Granados different for you.”