“Your cows?” Jim asked curiously, as his horse moved along beside the sedate mare.
Molly’s gaze searched the distance through the tree-trunks as they loped over the rotting underlay of the woods.
“Yes. I’m out after ‘strays,’” she said, in explanation. “They got away two days back. The fool dears didn’t know better than to quit our corral for the open and the timber wolves. It makes you reckon they got no sort of sense,” she laughed. “Here we’re doing the best we know for them; we’re handing them feed, and shelter, and water. Then—do you reckon they’re thankful an’ pleased? No. It’s sure like us human folk, isn’t it? We just must do the things we want, an’ not what’s good for us. Lightning guesses they’ve been stole by rustlers. But——”
Jim listened to the girl’s explanation in wonder, and broke in as she hesitated.
“Do you live hereabouts?” he asked quickly. “You got a farm? I hadn’t a notion there was a soul around this valley but Dan Quinlan, away back there where I’ve just come from.”
Molly turned, soberly speculative as she studied the face beside her.
“Then you surely must be quite a stranger,” she said. “Marton’s farm has stood right down at the mouth of this valley twenty years. I was born on it, and I’m twenty,” she concluded in her precise fashion.
Jim soothed the impatient Beelzebub with a restraining hand. As the beast modified its gait he looked round.
“Marton’s farm?” he inquired, with an effort to conceal the excitement he was labouring under.
Molly nodded.