"You bet I did, and as soon as I see her, I knowed it was the same I'd came across on the trail, seven year ago. I'd have knowed it from her daddy, of course, but there wasn't no mistaking HER. Her daddy give it to us plain that if he ever catched one of us inside his cove he'd kill us like so many coyotes, and I reckon he would. Well, he's got as much right to his claim as anybody else--this land don't belong to nobody, and there he's been a-squatting considerable longer than we've laid out this ranch. He was in the right of it, but what I admire was his being able to hold his rights. Lots of folks has rights but they ain't man enough to hold 'em. And if von could have seen that gal, her eyes like two big burning suns, and her mouth closed like a steel-trap, and her hand as steady on that trigger as the mountain rock behind her! Lord, Bill! what a trembly, knock-kneed, meaching sort of a husband she's a-going to fashion to her hand, one of these days! But PRETTY? None more so. And a-going all to waste out here in the desert!" They rode on for some time in silence, save for the intermittent chuckling of the cattleman as visions of his companions' pale faces and scurrying forms rose before his mind. "And now about that child, seven years ago," the young man said, when the last hoarse sound of mirth had died away. "Why, yes, me and the boys was bringing about two thousand head up to Abiline when we come on to this same pardner and another man walking the trail, with a little gal coming behind 'em on her pony. And it was this same gal. I reckon she was seven or eight year old, then. Well, sir, I just thought as I looked at her, that I never seen a prettier sight in this world and I reckon I ain't, for when I looked at the same gal the other day, the gun she was holding up to her eye sort of dazzled me so I couldn't take stock of all her good points. But seeing that little gal out there in the plains it was like hearing an old-fashioned hymn at the country meeting-house and knowing a big basket dinner was to follow. I can't express it more deep than that. We went into camp that evening, and all of us got pretty soft and mellow, what from the unusualness of the meeting, and we asked the old codger if we could all come over to his camp and shake hands with the gal--he'd drawed back from us about a mile, he was that skeered to be sociable. So after considerable haggling and jawing, he said we could, and here we come, just about sundown, all of us looking sheepish enough to be carved for mutton, but everlasting determined to take that gal by the paw." "Well?" said the young man who had often heard this story, but had never been treated to the sequel, "what happened then, Mizzoo? You always stop at the same place. Didn't you shake hands with her?"