Smith grew peevish. "Gol darn it, I tell you I ain't!" And he gave his chair a rapid twirl. "Boo!" came from Lucia softly. She laughed, and ran up the tiny stone stairs that led to her room. "Boo, yourself!" called out Uncle Henry, determined to have the last word, as Lucia disappeared. Then he turned querulously on his nephew, as soon as he was certain she was out of hearing. "Why did you ever invite 'em to stay here in the first place?" he wanted to know. The sound of "Red's" harmonica was heard outside. "Because there was no decent hotel anywhere near. I couldn't do less than offer them what little hospitality I had, could I, when Sturgis suggested it?" But his uncle didn't agree with him at all. "You could have done a whole lot less," he decided. "You could have invited 'em to keep on going. Comin' here at a time like this, and not only eatin' us out of house and home, but drinkin' up the last bottle of liquor in the world!" This seemed to him the culminating tragedy. When his nephew said nothing at all, he asked, petulantly, "Well, what are you going to do? That's what I want to know." "What can I do?" "Do you mean to say you're going to set here and get throwed out into the street and not even try to do something?" Gilbert merely shrugged his shoulders. "Well, of all the--" his Uncle Henry went on. "It's a darn good thing for you that I'm an invalid! That's all I got to say!" He wheeled about, and aimed at the door that led to the open air. At that instant "Red" Giddings, the husky young foreman, appeared directly in his path, his shock of fiery hair like an aureole about his head. "Git out o' my way!" Uncle Henry yelled. "Gol darn the gol darn luck, anyhow!" And through years of practice he shot into the yard as straight as an arrow. CHAPTER IV WHEREIN "RED" REVEALS HIS HEART, AND MRS. QUINN GIVES HIM GOOD COFFEE AND GOOD ADVICE "Red" Giddings had been on the ranch with Gilbert since the very beginning. He came from the North with the young man, willing to stake all on this one venture. Like young Jones, he was not afraid. He was an efficient, well-set-up young fellow, with three consuming passions: Arizona, his harmonica, and Angela Hardy. The first saw a lot of "Red"; the second touched his lips frequently; but as for Angela--well, perhaps the poor boy kissed his harmonica so often in order to forget her lips. But if his own music charmed "Red," it failed to have that effect upon others--particularly Uncle Henry, who went into a rage whenever he heard the detested instrument. "Red's" music had no charms to soothe the savage breast of Henry Smith.