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He came rushing into the ranch-house, and caught her in his arms, laughing and eager, half wild with the joy of seeing his mother and his girl in each other's company, and too radiant to suspect that his mother's happiness was not as great as his own. "You got my letter about our engagement, mater? Of course, and you came right on to meet my girl yourself, didn't you?
He rubbed the back of one hand across his straight eyebrows, and stared across the range toward the distant hills that marked his goal. Which goal was the old C Y ranch-house at Moccasin Spring on Soogan Creek, where lived the Dales and their daughter Molly.
She thought it pathetically likely he might get the wish of his song. To Sheriff Forbes, dropping into the draw a few minutes later with his posse, Collins was a well of misinformation literally true. Yes, he had followed Miss Mackenzie's trail into the hills and found her at a mountain ranch-house.
All along he had taken the presence of the Mannings so entirely for granted that the possibility of their having left the ranch never once occurred to him. But now, in a flash, he realized that by this time, for all he knew, they might be back in Chicago. As Bud said, it certainly seemed odd that neither of them had appeared when the posse rode up to the ranch-house.
"I've kept it all just as it used to be, Evan," the father said gently. "I thought maybe you'd come back some day and be sure-enough disappointed if it were gone." The younger man slipped from his saddle and went to look in at the open door of the old ranch-house.
Then it must be some feller that knows the Big B, and has a particular grudge against it, or why would they have passed the Broken Kettle or the Lone Buffalo on the west? Morris has a whole herd, and his main hoss sheds are in an old creek-bed a mile away from the ranch-house. I tell you it's some feller who knows this country and knows me."
Go to bed, and to-morrow go on with your work as usual. Grannis will be in charge while I'm gone," and without a backward glance the long figure returned to the ranch-house. The weazened foreman and the tall adventurer had been watching him impassively from the doorway. In silence they made room for him to pass. "Grannis," he asked directly, "have those horses been taken care of?" "No, sir."
Now under these circumstances and remembering the absence of several of the best horsemen in the bunch from the ranch-house, many a man would have put his saddle on the thoroughbred that morning.
But the thing that occupied the most of his time and thought was the purchase and refitting of a roomy old ranch-house in a charming location, not more than three miles from Ashland, on the road to the camp. It had been vacant for a couple of years past, the owner having gone abroad permanently and the place having been offered for sale.
That is how it came to pass that Jean, riding out with big Lite Avery the next morning on a little private scouting-trip of their own, to see if that fat moving-picture man was making free with the stock again, met the man unexpectedly half a mile from the Bar Nothing ranch-house.