“I did a very mean, crooked thing. I knew Lois was in the West with her father. She left school when I did. But I didn’t tell you because I guess I didn’t want you to go to see her. She didn’t care for me at school, and we were not roommates after all. “I certainly didn’t love her, and that’s the truth. But I should have told you and then you could have looked them up while you were at Fort Bliss. I heard from Anne Marvin that no one knows where they are just now. But I suppose you’ll see them on their way back, and maybe you’ve heard from them yourself by now. “Well, I suppose you will be awfully disappointed in me, Jimmy. I guess I’m mean and vindictive--no good.--As ever, “Raquel Daniels. “P. S. She’s prettier than ever.” CHAPTER X THAT DANIELS GAL “Tomorrow’s the great day, Mother Daniels. We begin roundin’ up. Four weeks isn’t too much time.” February found the winds still sharp, as they blew down from frozen drifts on high slopes and in the shade of deep canyons. But the sun of midday was warm and the ground was as dry as if it had not been covered with snow two weeks before. Three weeks of exhausting riding made the roundup nearly complete. It had meant hard work for the six cowhands, bringing the cattle together by ones, twos, sixes, out of canyons, off the open range, up on the slopes, and driving them down steadily toward the big fenced corral that lay ten miles from the house. Ole Hossfoot had come down to help, and chose to ride night herd with Russ. Esquibal worked so faithfully and efficiently that Raquel’s suspicions were allayed, and she was ready to forgive him almost anything when he cut out fifty head of steers from a big bunch of yearlings and cows that were to calve that spring, and did it all in the space of a day’s marvelous riding. The cattle were in surprisingly good shape, clean, rangy, well grown. “It’s a beautiful breed, that whiteface,” said Raquel to Ole Hossfoot. “Mm--mm,” he assented, “that red color’s nice. But to tell the truth I can’t see nothin’ beautiful in a cow. Can’t seem to get enthusiastic over ’em none. Take a hoss now--,” and he was off, expatiating on the beauties of the wild horses that had been breeding over north, come down from Colorado, Montana, Nebraska. “Soon’s this roundup’s over that’s where I’m going to get a new horse,” Raquel decided, fired by his descriptions. During the first week of the roundup, Raquel returned to the ranch house to sleep. But as the outfit worked farther away from home at the beginning of the second week, she rode up with a pack on her pony to the door of the Raquelita, the roundup ranchito twenty miles from the house, where the boys were now bunking. From the dust that followed her emerged the Ford, driven by Jami, with Mrs. Peevey and Lena in the back seat.