“That settles it,” growled Ned, appearing to be much offended. “I’ll not sing, no matter how much I am urged. I positively refuse.”
“I can go on with my supper, then,” said Tavia, calmly, “and with a mind relieved of anxiety.”
“And while you are finishing,” laughed Dorothy, “I’ll go hunt up Flores, and see if there is music to be had to soothe the savage breasts of these amateur cowpunchers.”
She ran down to the shack where the foreman and his wife lived. The twilight was falling, and Dorothy thought the country beautiful. Bare as the ranges were, the vari-colored sky arching the rolling plain lent a softness to the earth’s outline that pleased the eye.
By broad day she could see the boulders cropping out of the hillsides, and the scars of ancient land-slips upon the faces of the higher mountains, but now purple and saffron shadows mantled all these rude outlines of the landscape, while the little valleys were pits of gray mist and shadow.
Dorothy came, cheerfully singing, to the door of the foreman’s house. “Where is Flores?” she asked Mrs. Ledger, who had hurried down from the big house as soon as supper there was served to get the evening meal for her husband and the hands.
“Drat the gal!” replied Mrs. Ledger, with some exasperation. “I wish I knew. I left her here to get things started, and she’s run off.”
“Run away?” cried the startled Dorothy.
“Not fur, I reckon. She’s always buzzing some of the men. ’Druther play than work, any time, that gal had.”
“I’ll find her,” promised the girl from the East, and went on toward the horse sheds.