“Well, have you got the nerve, in case the man is loose over that way?”
Ashton’s eyes flashed. “I’ll go! Perhaps I’ll get another crack at the scoundrel.”
“Keep cool. It’s ninety-nine chances in the hundred he’s on the run and’ll keep going all week.”
“Shall I start now? As we came by a very roundabout way––We went first in the opposite direction, 76 and then skirted High Mesa down from the mountains. So, you see, I may have a little difficulty––”
“No you won’t. There’s our wagon trail. Even if you got off that, all you’d have to do would be to keep headed for Split Peak. That’s right in line with Stockchute. But you’ll not start till morning. I haven’t got all my letters written. That’ll give you all day to go and come. It’s only twenty-five miles over there. Chuckie, you show this new puncher of ours over the place, while I write those letters.”
“I’ll start teaching him how to throw a rope,” volunteered the girl.
She led the way out through a daintily furnished front room, in which Ashton observed an upright piano and other articles of culture that he would never have expected to come upon in this remote section. In passing, the girl picked up a wide-brimmed lacy hat.
Once outside, she first took Ashton for a walk up Plum Creek to where half a dozen men were at work with a mowing machine and horse rakes making hay of the rich bunch-grass.
“Daddy feeds all he can in winter,” she explained. “The spring when I first came back from Denver I cried so over the starving cattle that he promised to always afterwards cut and stack all the hay he could. And he has found it pays to feed well. We would put a lot of land into oats, but, as you see, there’s not enough water in the creek.” 77
“That’s where an irrigation system would come in,” remarked Ashton.