The owner of the Circle J P spoke to Black. “Saddle old Baldy for me. I’ll ride down to Wild Horse with you. Reckon I’ll have to go on yore bond. No use us gettin’ annoyed. Election ain’t so fur away now. Frank has got to make a showing. We hadn’t ought to grudge him some grandstandin’.” Daniels smiled. “That’s the way to look at it, Jake.” CHAPTER XIX CAPTAIN THURSTON K. HOLLISTER Ruth squealed with delight and clapped her hands when Betty told her of the approaching drive to Elk Creek. “Oh, goody, goody! An’ we’ll take Prince ’n’ Baby Fifi ’n’ Rover. They’ll enjoy the ride too.” With a smile that took the sting out of her refusal, Betty vetoed this wholesale transportation of puppies. “There isn’t room, dear.” The child’s face registered disappointment. “I could take ’em on my lap,” she proposed. Betty reflected a moment, then decided briskly. “We’ll take one to-day, and the others next time.” “Umpha!” Ruth nodded approbation vigorously, all animation again. “I’ll ’splain it to ’em so’s they won’t have their feelin’s hurted.” The blue eyes of the little girl inspected judicially the small creatures whose tilted heads and wagging tails appealed to her. To decide which one to take was a matter of grave consideration. Their mistress wanted to do exact justice. She changed her mind several times, but voted at last for Baby Fifi. “She’s the teentiest, ’n’ o’ course the baby must go,” she told the other two. They accepted without protest the verdict of the super-goddess who was mistress of their destinies. Apparently they took the occasion as seriously as she did. “’N’ the delicatest,” she went on. “But if you’re good, ’n’ bee-have, ’n’ everyfing, Mamma’ll bring you somefing awful nice. So you be the goodest children.” Thus it chanced that Baby Fifi, a clean blue ribbon tied round her neck in honor of the event, looked out from the tonneau of the car upon a panorama of blue sky and bluer mountain and sunbathed foothill moving past in a glory of splendor satisfying to both eye and soul. They drove to the lower mouth of the cañon. A man with pick and shovel was clearing rocks and débris away from what was evidently to be the line of the ditch. Reed guessed that he was really posted at this point as a sentinel to guard against another possible attack. The boss of the gang, the man said, was doing some surveying from the top of the wall above the rim of the gorge. A steep and rough road led to the upper mesa. “Don’t know as you can make it with your car,” the man with the pick added. “It’s a mighty stiff grade when you get past the dugway, ’most all a team can do to get up.” “We’ll go far as we can,” Reed answered. He had to go into low long before they reached the dugway. Just beyond it was a stretch of road so precipitous that the car balked. The cowman became convinced that the machine could go no farther. “Have to walk the rest of the way,” he said.