Finally the woman gave a faint sigh,
"How many times we have taken this selfsame journey to the old place, Jim! Now once again I come back home, after a fashion a new person and to a new life. First, the headstrong, self-willed Jacqueline Ralston whose childhood and girlhood were spent here! After my marriage to Frank Kent, a bride returning to visit her former home! Then my widowhood with my small son, Jimmie, at the Rainbow Lodge. Now, the crowning honor of my varied career, I return as Mrs. James Colter!"
Jack, who never would be known by any other name to her family and intimate friends, laughed in the half teasing, half serious fashion with which her companion was familiar.
Characteristically she put up her hand to her head to remove her small traveling hat, hanging it on the pommel of her saddle.
"This is much more comfortable and I feel more like myself! Surely we shall see no one to-night except the four new Ranch Girls! I wonder how much they are going to dislike me, Jim, in my new character? I don't fancy I shall be a great success."
In the moonlight the woman who was speaking looked far younger than the middle-aged man who was her husband.
As a matter of fact, Jim Colter had been a grown man when Jacqueline Ralston was a young girl.
In those early days when out of nowhere he appeared to assist her father in the management of the Rainbow Ranch, nothing could have been farther from his imagination, or from her own, than a marriage between them.
Jack's golden-brown hair held the same lovely shades and was arranged in a close coil about her small head. Her skin was more tanned than usual from the six weeks in the mountains, following endless trails by day and sleeping at night under the stars.
Her figure was as slim as ever and she sat her horse with her accustomed ease and grace.