"Oh, but it's all so real! There's no sham about anything. They take you for just what you are worth out here, and not a cent more. There's no sham!" "No, that's true. But everything seems so--so different." "I know--there isn't romance enough for you. You'd like a horseman to wear a suit of armor, or come prancing up in a top hat and shiny boots. But these men, in their rough clothes and on their scraggy-looking ponies, can _ride_. I saw some of them just before supper. They can ride like the wind and pull up so short that it's a wonder they don't turn somersaults. I'm going to learn to ride that way." "Alice, you're not!" "Well, maybe not so well, of course," the younger girl admitted, as she finished braiding her hair for the night. "But I'm going to learn. I'll have to, anyhow, as I'm cast for a riding part in several scenes, and so are you." "Well, then, I suppose I'll have to. But I hope I will get a gentle horse." "Oh, Pete will see to that." "Pete? Do you call him by his first name so soon?" asked Ruth rather shocked, as she shook out her robe, and ran a ribbon through the neck. "Everyone calls him Pete; why shouldn't I?" laughed Alice. "He's awfully nice--and he's been married three times!" "Did you ask him that?" "No, he told me. He asked me if I'd ever been 'hooked up,' as he called it." "Alice DeVere!" "Well, I couldn't help it. He meant all right. He's old enough to be our father. Do you think daddy is quite well?" she asked, perhaps to change the subject. "Yes, I think the pure air out here is doing him good. His throat seems much improved. Are those my slippers?" she asked, quickly, as Alice thrust her pink feet into a pair of worsted "tootsies." "Indeed they are not. I just took these out of my trunk. There are yours under your bed." "Oh, excuse me. I don't believe I shall need anyone to sing me to sleep to-night," and she yawned comfortably. There were to be busy times at Rocky Ranch next day, for some cattle were to be branded, or marked with the hot iron to establish their ownership, and Mr. Pertell had decided to have some scenes of this, with his own players worked in as part of the action. This had already been planned, and after breakfast there was a short rehearsal of the players, while the cowboys were getting ready for the branding. "Now we're ready for you," announced Pete Batso, who was in charge of the cowboys. "Get your players in position. They're going to rope the first critter now." The proper action for the scene was gone through by Ruth, Alice, Paul and Mr. Sneed, and then one of the cowboys "cut out," or separated from the rest, a young steer that had not yet been branded. "Whoop-ee!" yelled the cow puncher as he hurled his lariat and pulled the animal to the ground. Other cowboys quickly threw their ropes around the fore and hind legs of the steer and then, with another rope around the head, the creature was stretched out helpless, ready for the application of the iron. CHAPTER XIV