“Well, you ought to have heard of it!” rejoined his employer with a woman’s logic. “Why, man, that’s what all Texas has been starving for for years! Didn’t I tell you? Haven’t I been telling you? Haven’t I been begging you to make a herd and drive north, somewhere, and trust to God to find buyers there, since there’s no hope here, south or east? Haven’t I told you, Jim?” “I reckon you did, ma’am,” admitted her aid. “Same time, you didn’t know a damned thing about it.” “Oh, you!” Taisie turned to him. “Do you expect to have people show you what’s in their hands before you draw cards? Can’t you take a chance?” “For my own self, yes, Miss Taisie. For you—we all was scared. Especial we was scared when you said you was going along.” “But I am going along! And I am going to put up a herd!” “Now, Miss Lockhart,” ventured Dan McMasters, “you couldn’t do that. Your men can put up a herd and drive north for you, but no woman ever has gone north of the Red, or ever ought to try it. There’s no real trail—it’s all wild north of here for fifteen hundred miles or more. There’s not a bridge—I’ve swum ten rivers and forded a hundred. There are Indians. There are storms—and no shelter for you. Miss Lockhart, there’s not a man in Texas ever would let you go.” “There’s not men enough in all Texas to keep me from going!” Taisie’s grief was entirely forgotten now. “Even your father——” Jim began. “Don’t!” Sudden tears came to the girl’s eyes. “She allus bogs down—about her father,” explained Nabours. “I’ll not bog down! I’ll get over this some day. Why, the reason I want to go north is to find the man that did it! He’s somewhere up there.” McMasters, captain in the Rangers, looked at her with a sudden kindling of his own cool eyes; but he said nothing. The mistress of Del Sol stamped her foot in its cross-banded slipper. “Always you treat me like a girl. I’m not!” “Yes, you are, Miss Taisie,” rejoined Jim Nabours. “You’re a girl, and I’m your mother and your father both, till you get a new segundo.” “Listen at him!” Taisie turned to the young stranger. “The whole state of Texas is dying on its feet, and the men of Texas scared to drive, with maybe five dollars a head waiting for them at the railroad! That’s riches! “How long would it take?” she demanded of her informant. “All season, practically,” replied McMasters. “I rode about forty miles a day, coming south, and I was eleven hundred miles away at one time. Cows could go ten miles a day, maybe, if you could keep the herd going; say two-three hundred miles a month. Say three-four months—that would cover a heap of trail.”