"How you going to like it out here?" demanded Belle, scrutinizing Kate critically, after she had known her a few months. "I love it," was the prompt answer. Belle seemed dismayed: "How about the alkali?" she asked, as if to convict Kate of deceit. Kate only nodded: "It's all right." "And the sagebrush?" "I like it." "And the greasewood?" "Why not?" Belle had begun to like Kate's laugh: "Not going to get lonesome out in this country?" Belle flung at her, as a gloomy clincher. "Lonesome!" At this idea Kate laughed outright. "Do I look it?" she cried. "Guess you like to horseback pretty well," muttered Belle, casting about for a solution of so surprising an attitude and unable to find any other fault with her protegee. "I'd rather ride than eat," declared Kate, youthfully exuberant. "What about swimming?" inquired Belle, determined to fasten discontent on her. "I hate swimming." "Well," grumbled her companion, defeated at every point, "Barb's got plenty of horses." Kate did not like to hear her father called Barb, but Belle would not call him anything else. Back of the cottage, Doubleday had a small barn, where Henry--an ex-cowboy--looked after Doubleday's driving horses. And the very first pledge from her father that she was to be tolerated in the strange household she had invaded in this far-away country, came to Kate when he sent down for her use two saddle ponies. The fleeting suspicion of loneliness that she would not confess even to herself, all vanished when the ponies came: She could then ride to and from the ranch. And when Henry failed to appear, Kate took care of her pets herself. After her father told her they were really hers, she would hardly let Henry himself lay a hand on them. When the evenings grew tedious she would go down for supper with Belle and sit with her in the small alcove off the office, where the two could see and hear without being seen; and Belle's stories had no end. The only feature of her situation that would not improve was her father's aloofness. He seemed to try at times to thaw out but he persistently congealed again. One evening he got in late from the ranch, cold and wet, complaining of rheumatism. The driver went on with the team to Sleepy Cat and Doubleday told Kate he would stay all night. She had a good fire in the grate and made her father a toddy. He sat with her before the fire late and talked for the first time about his affairs, which seemed mostly money troubles.