but her husband aroused in both Owen and me an instinctive distrust. He was good nature personified, a most companionable person, with his easy, contagious laugh, his amusing stories, quick wit, and breezy air of good fellowship. He could quote Burns, Scott, and other poets by the hour, and fiddle away on his violin, until we were nearly moved to tears. He was almost too good-natured; he didn’t quite ring true. I noticed that while he always referred or spoke to his wife affectionately, as “my old mammy,” her attitude toward him was rather impersonal. She called him “James” with quiet dignity, but seldom talked with him, and appeared to take very little interest.

On the side of a hill, some distance from the house, was an old root cellar, used, according to Bohm, for storing potatoes, turnips, and other vegetables for winter. It was most inconveniently located; there were hillsides much nearer, and considering that the cellar under the house was always used for such purposes, it seemed strange that another should be needed so far away. I was possessed with a desire to explore it. It suggested hidden treasures and Indian relics, which I was collecting. One day I was poised on the top of the cellar step, about to descend into its mysterious depths.

Old Bohm appeared. “Was you lookin’ for something’?” he asked, somewhat out of breath.

“Oh, no,” I replied, going down a few steps. “I was just exploring, and thought I would investigate this old root cellar.”

“I thought that was what you was goin’ to do, and I hurried up to tell you to be awful careful of rattlesnakes; there’s a pile of ’em ’round these here old cellars.” Bohm spoke with apparent solicitude.

“Heavens! I wouldn’t go down there for anything!” I exclaimed,—and I got out of the cellarway as quickly as possible.

Old Bohm looked down the steps at the strong, closed door of heavy boards.

“Oh, maybe it would be all right. You could listen for ’em and jump, if you heard ’em rattle,” he remarked, casually.

I shook my head. “Not much; I don’t want to hear them rattle,” and I started toward the house.

Bohm went up toward the wind-mill. As I turned away I caught a curious expression on his face—a faint gleam of something.

As I came through the meadow gate, Owen was getting into the buggy.

“Hello,” he called, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I have to drive over to Three Bar. Do you want to go?”

I was always ready to go anywhere, so while Owen was driving the horses about, I ran in to get my hat.

Not one of our horses was thoroughly broken, so we always had to follow the same method of procedure before starting anywhere. After the horses were hitched up, Charley, to whom fell odd jobs of every sort, stood at their heads until Owen was fairly seated and had the lines firmly in his hands. Then, after a few ineffectual attempts to kick or run down Charley before he could get out of the way, off dashed the horses around and around the open space between the house and the pond, until a little of the edge had been taken off their spirits. Then Owen stopped them for one moment, I made a quick jump into the buggy, and away we went at top speed toward the gate that Charley had run to open. We usually missed the post by a quarter of an inch, and at that juncture I invariably shut my eyes and held my breath.

The road to Three Bar Ranch led to the North and wound up a very long hill, then across a rolling mesa. The prairie was covered with short grama grass, just turning a faint brown, the yellow sunflowers and great clumps of rattleweed, with its spikes of lovely purple, giving a touch of color to the scene before us. The Spanish bayonet dotted the hillsides, and over all hung the summer sky like burnished copper. The only sound, aside from that of the horses’ hoofs and the crunch of the wheels on the soft prairie road, was the occasional song of the meadow lark, all the joy of the summer day sounding in its