"Them cattle 're gettin' pretty well located," replied McCullen. "Don't need much herdin'. No, I seen him there at Harris' as I come along. He said he was goin' to take you an' that little flaxen-haired girl out ridin', but concluded, as long as you was busy at the school-house, that he'd just take the little one--providin' she'd go. He was arguin' the question with her when I rode by, an' I reckon he's there talkin' to her yet, er else givin' her a ridin' lesson. He'll make a good horsewoman out o' her yet, if her heart ain't buried too deep up there under the rocks." "Oh, Jim!" rebuked the girl. "It's _dreadful_ to talk like that, and her poor heart is just _crushed_! It's pitiful!" "I reckon that's just what Sydney thinks about it," replied Jim, his eyes twinkling. "You ain't goin' to blame him for bein' sympathetic, be you, Hopie?" She laughed, but nervously. "Louisa's the sweetest thing I ever saw, Jim! She's promised to stay and go back to the ranch with me in the fall when school is over. Isn't it nice to have a sister like that? But goodness, she wouldn't look at Syd--not in ten years!" She was so positive in this assertion that it left Jim without an argument. She slowed down her horse to a walk, and he watched her take O'Hara's letter from her belt and read the lengthy epistle from beginning to end. Not a change of expression crossed the usual calm of her face. But for a strange force of beauty and power, by which she impressed all with whom she came in contact, her lack of expression would have been a defect. This peculiar characteristic was an added charm to her strange personality. She was rarely understood by her best friends, who generally occupied themselves by wondering what she was going to do next. It may be that old Jim McCullen, calmly contemplating her from his side of the narrow trail, wondered too, but he had the advantage of most people, for he knew that whatever she did do would be the nearest thing to her hand. There was nothing variable or fitful about Hope. She folded her letter and tucked it back in her belt, her only comment being, as she spurred her horse into a faster gait: "Larry says he is coming over here one of these days." They rode past the camp and on to the flat beyond, where grazed Sydney's two hundred head of steers. These they rode around, while Jim reviewed the news of the ranch and round-up, in which the girl found some interest, asking numerous questions about the recent shipment of cattle, the tone of the market, the prospect for hay, the number of cattle turned on the range, and many things pertaining to the work of the ranch, but never a question concerning the idle New Yorkers who made up her mother's annual house-party. In them she took, as usual, no interest.