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Gaining the lee of a madroño tree, Lance opened his blanketed arms, enfolded the girl, and felt her for one brief moment tremble and nestle in his bosom like some frightened animal. "Well," he said, gayly, "what next?" Flip recovered herself. "You're safe now anywhere outside the house. But did you expect them to-night?" Lance shrugged his shoulders. "Why not?"
A gradual and gentle ascent at the end of two hours brought the cavalcade to a halt upon a rugged upland with semi-tropical shrubbery, and here and there larger trees from the tierra templada in the evergreens or madrono. A few low huts and corrals, and a rambling hacienda, were scattered along the crest, and in the midst arose a little votive chapel, flanked by pear-trees.
He now found himself in a nook of several acres, where the oak and manzanita and madrono gave way to clusters of stately redwoods. Against the foot of a steep-sloped knoll he came upon a magnificent group of redwoods that seemed to have gathered about a tiny gurgling spring. He halted his horse, for beside the spring uprose a wild California lily.
Paul ably handled the house, there was one thing Saxon insisted on doing namely, washing her own pretty flimsies. "When I 'm no longer able to do that," she told Billy, "you can take a spade to that clump of redwoods beside Wild Water and dig a hole. It will be time to bury me." It was early in the days of Madrono Ranch, at the time of Mrs.
On either side of the glade was a fence, of the old stake-and-rider type, though little of it was to be seen, so thickly was it overgrown by wild blackberry bushes, scrubby oaks and young madrono trees.
The hidden woods of the canada, cleared and strengthened in their solitude, dripped along the trails and hollows that were now transformed into running streams. The distinguishing madrono near the entrance to the rancho had changed its crimson summer suit and masqueraded in buff and green.
She said no more, but with a laugh, half broken by a sigh, the little woman walked briskly under the olives and down over the brow of the hill. The grass and trees were all wet, the great laurels by the path shown as if varnished, the huge madroño leaves each held a jewel on its tip; all evidences of a heavy rain were about me, yet I had not been aware of it falling.
Dearly as she loved them, she shuddered to think what some of those Carmelites would be like when they were as old as he especially the dramatic critic and the Iron Man. "Here are the dear children, Edmund," Mrs. Hale said. "What do you think! They want to buy the Madrono Ranch. They've been three years searching for it I forgot to tell them we had searched ten years for Trillium Covert.
At Trillium Covert they were galloping. "You'll have to stop for dinner first," Saxon said, as they neared the gate of Madrono Ranch. "You stop," he answered. "I don't want no dinner." "But I want to go with you," she pleaded. "What is it?" "I don't dast tell you. You go on in an' get your dinner." "Not after that," she said. "Nothing can keep me from coming along now."
Farther up the canyon were superb bay-trees, with their glossy leaves and aromatic odour, and the madrono, which, with its blood-red skin, is one of the most beautiful of California trees, having an open growth, like a maple, bright green lustrous leaves, and a brilliant red bark, which peels off at regular seasons, giving place to a new one of delicate pea-green.
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