"For a beginning, this is quite remarkable!" Then she laughed sharply, with a hard mirthless quality, and turned about. She was genuinely surprised to confront the men; evidence of this was in her eyes, which were large and remarkably blue. She smiled brightly and said: "Oh, I didn't know I was overlooking any one! I suppose you men belong here, on the ranch, and it's likely you've been waiting for the new owner to come. Well, here I am! I'm Jane Hunter and I want to know who you are. Now what is your name?" Her frankness, that unhesitating, assured manner of a distinct type of city-bred woman, was new but it over-rode somewhat the embarrassment they all felt. "My name is Hepburn, ma'am," Dad said and shook hands heavily. "I hope you like this place." "I know I shall, Mr. Hepburn. And your name?" "That's Jimmy Oliver, Miss Hunter," Hepburn said. Two-Bits had watched this with growing confusion and when she turned on him her searching, straightforward glance his freckles became lost in a pink suffusion. He swayed his body from the hips and looked high over her head as he offered a limp hand. "I'm Mister Beal," he said weakly. "Don't you believe that!" laughed Hepburn. "That's Two-Bits. He ain't entitled to any frills." "Two-Bits it is!" the girl cried, scanning his face in amazement at its color and contour. "I couldn't call you mister, Two-Bits. We're going to be too good friends for that!" "Oh my gosh!" giggled the flustered cowboy and turned away, seeking refuge in the bunkhouse. "You talk about me bein' got up by a feller that draws pictures, Tom," he said to Beck. "Holy Tin Can, you ought to see her! Why, this feller that paints them girls for these here, now, magazines painted her! She looks like she walked right out of a picture, with blue eyes an' yeller hair an' all pink an' white. An' friendly.... Oh my, I'll bet she makes this outfit take notice!" Old Carlotta, the half-breed Mexican woman who had been housekeeper at the HC for years had come from the house to greet her new mistress. The trunks were carried in, the buckboard departed for its twenty-five mile trip back to town and the riders who had been at work further down the creek straggled in to hear the first tales of their new boss. Conjecture was high as to her plan of procedure. "It won't take long for things to happen. You can bank on that," Jimmy Oliver declared. "She ain't our kind of a woman an' the good Lord alone knows what notions she'll have, but she'll get busy! She's that kind." He was not wrong for just as the sun was drawing down into the hills Carlotta appeared at the bunkhouse. "Miss Hunter, she want to spik to Señor Dad an' Beck an' Jimmy an' Curtis," she said. "Right away, quick-_pronto_." "This must be a mass meetin' with th' rest of us left out," Two-Bits said. "I'd give a dollar to look at her again ... clost up. I'll bet I wouldn't be _afraid_ to look next time."