The smoke was drifting from the chimney when, late in the afternoon, he rode past the door and saw Lucy Ware inside, struggling with an iron kettle before the fireplace. Poor Lucy, she had undertaken a hard problem, for there is as much difference between camp cooking and home cooking as there is between a Dutch oven and a steel range, and a cooking-school graduate has to forget a whole lot before she can catch the knack of the open fire. For the second time that day Rufus Hardy's conscience, so lately exercised over his neglect of the sheep, rose up and rebuked him. Throwing Chapuli into the corral he kicked off his spurs and shaps and gave Lucy her first lesson in frontier cookery; taught her by the force of his example how to waste her wood and save her back; and at the end of the short demonstration he sat down without ceremony, and fell to eating. "Excuse me," he said, "if I seem to be greedy, but I had my breakfast before sun-up. Where's your father, and Kitty?" "Oh, they had the Mexican boy catch their horses for them and have ridden up the valley to watch for the cattle. I stayed behind to make my first water color, and then--I thought you would be coming back soon, so I tried to cook supper instead. I'm a pretty good housekeeper--at home," she said apologetically. Hardy watched her as she experimented painstakingly with the fire, scooping out shovelfuls of coal from beneath the glowing logs and planting her pots and kettles upon them with a hooked stick, according to instructions. "You look like a picture of one of our sainted Puritan ancestors," he observed, at last, "and that's just exactly the way they cooked, too--over an open fire. How does it feel to be Priscilla?" "Well, if Priscilla's hands looked like mine," exclaimed Lucy despairingly, "John Alden must have been madly in love with her. How _do_ you keep yours clean?" "That's a secret," replied Hardy, "but I'll tell you. I never touch the outside of a pot--and I scour them with sandsoap. But I wish you'd stop cooking, Lucy; it makes me feel conscience-stricken. You are my guests, remember, even if I do go off and neglect you for a whole day; and when you go back to Berkeley I want you to have something more interesting than housekeeping to talk about. Didn't I see two ladies' saddles out in the wagon?" Miss Lucy's eyes lighted up with pleasure as, anticipating his drift, she nodded her head. "Well then," said Hardy, with finality, "if you'll get up early in the morning, I'll catch you a little pony that I gentled myself, and we can ride up the river together. How does that strike you?" "Fine!" exclaimed Lucy, with sudden enthusiasm. "Oh, Rufus," she cried impulsively, "if you only knew how weak and helpless a thing it is to be a woman--and how glad we are to be noticed! Why, I was just thinking before you came in that about the only really helpful thing a woman could do in this world was just to stay around home and cook the meals."