Her glossy hair, circling in a loose knot low on her neck, and held in place by a huge jewelled comb, appeared almost too heavy for her small head. She had been wise in choosing the Spanish gown of shimmering sequins and ebony lace, if she were bent on conquest as well as to do grace to her ancestors.

  When it lacked but a few minutes to the hour for her to appear in the living-room to meet her cowboys, Britt again knocked at the door.

  “Holly, how air you comin’?” he asked, anxiously. “The boys air quiverin’ like a bunch of race hawses.”

  “All ready, Cappy. Come in,” replied Holly, gayly, motioning to Roseta to open the door. Britt appeared, spic and span in a new dark suit. “How do you like me, old friend?”

  Britt’s eyes popped. They expanded to help in a smile that satisfied even Holly’s insatiate vanity. His first effort to speak was a failure. Then he exploded: “My Gawd! … My lass, not only do you make me young again, but you break my pore old heart.”

  “Ah! Cappy! Why break?”

  “Wal, I reckon with love an’ joy…. You’re changed, Holly. No little girl no more!”

  “Thank you. If I please you I shall please them…. Are they all there? I’m intensely curious—and I—I don’t know what else.”

  “Holly, you won’t know thet ootfit. They been trained to the minnit.”

  “Trained?” asked Holly, eagerly.

  “Shore. By Frayne, with me helpin’. But I forgot. I wasn’t to give thet away…. If I don’t miss my guess you’ll think thet ootfit has been used to dressin’ up slick an’ dinin’ off silver all their lives.”

  “Darlings!” cried Holly. It would be just like that inimitable Brazos to inspire his comrades to a cool easy nonchalance which no person or no event could disrupt. “Go back now, Cappy. I want to make an effective entrance…. Oh, I feel like a school-girl.”

  “Wal, you look like an empress,” replied Britt, and went out.

  The door let in the commingled sounds of footsteps, gay laughs and voices. Holly heard the twang of a fiddle, the mellow chord of a guitar. Supper for the multitude was to be served simultaneously with that given her cowboys, the former in the dining-room and patio, the latter in the living-room.

  “What-have-I-forgotten?” gasped Holly. “Oh, my notes! … Pray for me, girls.”

  When Holly entered the brightly-lighted, brilliantly-colored living-room to see that group of keen-faced standing men, she received from them, or from some inexplicable source, a welling trenchant emotion that completely vanquished her nervous qualms. Advancing to the head of the table she stood a moment behind her chair, smiling down the lines of intent faces. Frayne stood at her right while Brazos was on her left. Britt’s place was at the foot of the table. Nineteen in all! Holly counted them with eyes that did not see clearly.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” she said. “If my father were only here this would be the happiest hour of my life. Nevertheless, I am very happy….”

  Frayne stepped to draw back her chair, and as she took her seat he bent over gallantly: “Miss Ripple, may I say no fairer lady in King Arthur’s day ever sat to do honor to her Knights.”

  “Frayne!” Holly’s amaze and delight inhibited the confusion which threatened her poise. Though she blushed she did not otherwise betray herself. “English Knights! Why not the gay Spanish Caballeros?”

  Brazos had heard Frayne and was not to be outdone. “Holly, you shore look grand. You make me want to die ’cause I cain’t have you an’ stay on livin’ jest to see you.”

  “Flatterers! I’d know you were cowboys if you were strangers and I was blind,” replied Holly, stirred to laughter. And she looked down the lines of shining faces. They were all there, somehow inexplicably dear to her, the sombre Cherokee, the black rolling-eyed Jackson, the vaquero Santone, and the half-breed Southards, her knights as well as the cowboys of her own color. Holly felt a nameless strength steal over her. The last of the Ripples had no family. These were all she had—her range riders, wild characters from all the wild ranges, and in that hour she loved them.

  The long table with its white linen and silver, its burden of fruit and food satisfied Holly’s critical eye. When her guests were seated it was the signal for the Mexican maidens, garbed in their colorful gowns, to enter with steaming dishes. Holly had hoped for comfort and happiness for her cowboys, so used to hard fare in all kinds of weather. She was to have her wish. There was an utter lack of embarrassment, and the cool, devil-may-care audacity of cowboys who had been made to feel at home, to be glad, to be themselves in the presence of their mistress. Their garb differed with an infinite variety, yet all was new. Frayne, like Britt, wore a dark suit with white shirt and collar that emphasized the eastern manner that sat becomingly upon him. Holly had not yet looked directly at his face. Brazos, always strikingly handsome, surpassed himself this evening in a new blue blouse with wide collar, around which he had gracefully knotted a red scarf. He was the only one minus a coat, in lieu of which he wore a new beaded and fringed buckskin vest. It was open, and the left side bulged noticeably. Holly had an instant suspicion.

  “Brazos, what have you in your pocket?” she asked.

  “Aw Lady!” Then he looked across the table at Frayne. “What’d I tell yu galoots? It jest cain’t be done.”

  “What can’t?” asked Holly.

  “Foolin’ you.”

  “Brazos. Have you a—a bottle or a gun inside your vest?”

  “Wal, what do yu think, Holly Ripple?” he queried, fastening those eyes of blue fire upon her.

  “I hope it’s a gun,” Holly made haste to reply.

  “Don’t you know it is?”

  “Yes … but I forbade that, too.”

  “Wal, I’m not the only one.”

  His gaze directed Holly’s to Frayne, who drew back both lapels of his coat, to disclose the shining black butts of guns, one on each side. “Britt’s order, Miss Ripple.”

  “Oh!—You are all armed?”

  “Yes.”

  Brazos interposed, leaning to speak low. “Holly, we gotta sleep in our hardware from now on. An’ it’s a grand idee.”

  “Whose?”

  “Wal, Frayne’s fust; ’cause he always plumb refused to be without his guns, an’ if he hadn’t packed them today you’d be conductin’ a funeral ’stead of a grand party.”

  “Brazos!”

  But as the cowboy only smiled in his cool exasperating way Holly appealed to Frayne.

  “Child, it’s nothing for you to bother about,” he replied with a smile.

  “You call me child?” asked Holly, firing. “This is my twentieth birthday. I am your employer.”

  “Granted. But, nevertheless,” he rejoined, with a baffling halt and an inflection which might have meant that his retort proved her to be a child, or that he considered her an adorable one. The latter interpretation made Holly’s face burn and routed her anger. These cowboys were hopeless. Holly beckoned imperiously for Britt. He came swiftly around the table to bend over her.

  “Cappy, the two gentlemen nearest me call me a child,” she told him.

  “Wal! You don’t say?” Britt returned, not feeling sure whether to laugh or be concerned. “In some ways I’ll back them up. You air a child. But not tonight. This evenin’ you shore air the distractionest woman in the whole wide world.”

  “Thank you…. Britt, I discovered Brazos had a gun inside his vest. Then Frayne showed me the butts of two guns inside his coat. Are all the cowboys armed thus?”

  “Indeed they air, Holly.”

  “But that is expressly against my orders.”

  “I know, lass. An’ I’m sorry.”

  “Why have you disregarded them?”

  Britt stiffened slightly under her unusual severity.

  “Won’t you trust me to know what’s best, an’ let me explain some other time?”

  “Tell me now.”

  “This mawnin’ somethin’ come off thet showed how even an old cowman an’ ranger like me can be too soft,” replied Britt, swiftly. “It was Frayne’s idee, this mawnin’ to—wal, to sober up some of the boys thet needed it. The idee was to haul them down to the creek an’ duck them. All of us left our guns behind ’cept Frayne. We had a heap of fun duckin’ these sleepy cow-hands. Did they wake up pronto? Wish you had been there, Holly…. Wal, one of these red-head boys took it plumb serious. Mad at fust an’ then devilish. While we was fetchin’ Blue—aw! there I go, givin’ him away—this cowboy an’ his pard jumped in the wagon an’ drove off lickety-cut. An’ ——”

  “That was Brazos Keene and his shadow, Laigs Mason,” observed Holly. She had read Brazos’ serene countenance.

  “I didn’t say so…. Anyway, they fetched back young Taylor an’ Lascelles, both the wuss fer liquor. Brazos throwed— Oh, Lord, there I go again!— Wal, Brazos throwed Taylor in. But Lascelles turned oot ugly. He wasn’t drunk. I reckon thet gambler doesn’t go so far. He shore resented the ootrage, an’ he made Brazos sore. He made me sore, too, blurtin’ oot thet crazy claim of his on you. Wal, to make it short Brazos soaked him an’ piled him into the water. Lascelles came oot, his face like ice, an’ with his hand inside his coat, where he had a gun. He had seen thet Brazos and Laigs was without guns. We split to get to either side, all except Laigs, who stood his ground by Brazos…. Miss Holly, if it was plain to all of us thet Lascelles meant to kill Brazos, how do you suppose Brazos felt?—But Frayne stopped Lascelles’ draw.”

  Britt, evidently having warmed somewhat to this recital, paused a moment, during which Holly turned to Frayne. She might have spoken then but for a slightly weary or bored expression on the outlaw’s face. Britt had to humor his child employer! He had to tell what men did not tell outside of their circle.

  “Jest then down on us rode Russ Slaughter with his Chisum ootfit of hard-nuts. Aboot fourteen strong. He was plumb curious an’ if that was friendly, I’m oot on my figgerin’. But Frayne shut him up pronto, an’ then proceeded to tell Lascelles he was through at Don Carlos’ Rancho. Jackson an’ Skylark testified thet Lascelles was a card-sharp, who’d stoop to cheat a drink-befuddled cowboy…. Frayne told Lascelles to get oot…. Wal, then Slaughter took a hand at questionin’ Lascelles. I didn’t like this atall, because I could read Slaughter’s dirty mind. We all seen what he was drivin’ at. Lascelles, the skunk, brought up yore name an’ thet flirtin’ he put sich store on. An’ shore he’d have insinuated somethin’ wuss if Frayne hadn’t sworn to shoot oot his teeth, if he opened his trap again…. Wal, thet bluffed Slaughter. He offered Lascelles a chance to throw in with them an’ Lascelles jumped at it. Thet’s all, Holly. I meant to tell you in the mawnin’.”

  “Never wait to spare my feelings, at any time,” returned Holly, composedly, though she had passed from hot to cold during this narrative. “Thank you, Cappy. Go back to your seat.”

  Holly sat there inwardly shaking. Except for Brazos, and perhaps Laigs Mason beside him, and Frayne, none of the cowboys had apparently paid any attention to this colloquy. They were intent on the most gorgeous repast of their lives. Holly watched them a moment while she fought her emotions.

  “Lady, please don’t let thet spoil yore party,” appealed Brazos, earnestly. “It wasn’t nothin’. Course it might have been plumb bad—fer me, if Frayne hadn’t been there. But he was there.”

  Brazos’ emphasis of finality seemed to intimate something inevitable about Frayne. Holly’s intuition was swift to catch in Brazos’ look and voice the absence of former hostility toward the outlaw. That warmed away the cold terror and sick confusion within her. Impulsively she laid her hand upon Frayne’s as it rested momentarily on the table.

  “Again—Frayne?” she said, without betraying agitation. “You increase my debt.”

  “Miss Holly, don’t overrate these things,” he replied, kindly, and he gave her hand a strong pressure, while his hard face softened. “It is a tough job for an orphan girl who had to spend half her life in school. You are game Holly Ripple. Let this twentieth birthday see your eyed open wide to the violence of this range! Listen to Britt. Let him give us leeway.”

  Holly was so strangely affected by the clasp of their hands that she scarcely made coherence of his words. She nodded her thanks. Then she addressed herself to the sumptuous meal, and by forcing her thoughts upon her speech, she gradually drew away from the confounding fact that the mere touch of Renn Frayne’s hand could make her weak.

  Evidently the cowboys had been fasting for this supper, or if not they had prodigious appetites. Holly could not deny the evidence of her eyes. Laigs Mason was a little fellow, but he stowed away so much food that Holly feared he would do himself harm.

  “Heah pard, you’ll founder,” whispered Brazos.

  “Say, you ain’t passed up some second an’ third helpin’s,” rejoined Laigs, in fierce remonstrance. “I ain’t had nuthin’ yet.”

  But there appeared to be remarkably little conversation. Cowboys were not much given to talking even in the bunk-house during the meal hour. At last, however, even Laigs brought his gormandizing to an end. The wine was poured and all the lean faces and keen eyes turned toward Holly.

  Holly rose, sure of herself at last and revelling in this crucial hour. The room grew silent. But from the outside came a ceaseless hum of voices and music, of constant tread on the porch and in the patio. A coarse laugh from some rowdy jarred into a Spanish love-song. Holly took time to allow her sweeping glance to rest upon every face at her table. And when she looked up from Frayne’s piercing eyes she seemed shot through with something strong and sweet, a gleam of encouragement to do her best.

  “Gentlemen, Westerners, my cowboys:

  “In any case I would have addressed you tonight, as I have done twice before, and as my father used to do all the years that he employed riders. But my purpose tonight goes far beyond just a repetition of the Ripple hospitality. It is to make an appeal to you. It is to inaugurate a change in policy of the running of Don Carlos’ Rancho. It is to place clearly before you the certain danger of loss, the grave danger of ruin, which Britt has made me see. Particularly it is to emphasize what a splendid part you are unconsciously playing in the opening of the West. And to tell you what a wonderful thing you are doing for the last of the Ripples.

  “Despite what Britt says, I know cowboys. I was born among them. I returned from school with eyes keener to see them, with mind sharper to understand their strange, hard, lonely, violent lives, with heart bigger to forgive, to tolerate, to sympathize. My father called cowboys ‘Rowdies of the Saddle.’ That was a felicitous name. For cowboys are all that the name rowdy implies—wild, rough, bold, often killers, many worthless except to ride and rope and break, yet withal true to that spirit which developed them. The West needed cowboys. The empire of cattle, now in the making, will never be made without you hard-riding, hard-drinking, hard-shooting cowboys. My father did not go quite far enough in his eulogy. That is my happy task tonight.

  “But first let me delve back a little into the past of this glorious West, into the history of the ranges. You cowboys of the ‘lone prairee,’ who have stood endless watches in the dead of night, under the white stars, in sleet and rain and sand, in bitter cold and the hot blast of summer, who have ridden from the Rio Grande to the Black Hills, from the big river to this last and greatest cattle-range, who have slept nine out of every ten nights on the hard ground of plain or desert or upland or mesa, who know the West as none but the Indians know it, perhaps you still do not know the West. You know its romance but do not think of its history; you know its cruelty but you do not consider its destiny. And to have you see this tonight, its past and its future, its greatness and your own greatness, is the main purpose of my address to you.

  “That Old Trail down there crossing my rancho: to you it is a half mile lane of furrows, so poor a trail that you choose to ride your horses aside, so bleak and waterless and ghastly a road that you hate to put a horse to it. Well, my friends, that Old Trail connects three civilizations to this wild and primitive range. It is the main artery of the West. Over it men have toiled in blood for three hundred years.

  “The white man’s love of gold, gain, power, adventure account for the Old Trail. Spaniards were the first to set their mailed feet upon the plains of America—the intrepid conquistadores. Alvar Nuñez de Vaca. You cowboys, if you know your Spanish, should like that name, for Alvar Nuñez means Cow’s Head. I daresay Laigs Mason will call some of you Alvar Nuñez from this day. In 1528 de Vaca started from Florida with many men, but before they went far his party was reduced to three companions. They were lost for eight years before they met men of their own race on the Mexican border. They were the first white men on earth to see what they called ‘the hump-backed cow,’ no other than your old pest, the American bison—the buffalo. Can you imagine these ragged and miserable Spaniards wandering along, suddenly to be confronted by the huge, shaggy, black and tawny buffalo? Gentlemen, surely that was a tremendous moment.

  “The Spaniard Mendoza, a Governor of Mexico, fired by stories of fabulous gold, sent men out to verify de Vaca’s claims. They found some pueblos on the Rio Grande, but they augmented this into the ‘Seven Cities of Cibolo,’ the El Dorado of the Spaniards. Coronado was sent with three hundred Spaniards, all of high degree, and eight hundred Indians. It was a great retinue doomed to failure. They rode and walked, starved and died of thirst, fought the savages, but they never found Cibolo. Coronado was the first to see the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. He left the first horses that ever roamed the Great Plains.

  “Next came the Spanish friars, the wonderful padres who marched not for gold or gain, but to plant their religion in the minds of the savages. In 1591 De Soto got as far north as the Zuni pueblos. In 1598 four hundred Spaniards under Onate left Mexico with many wagons and thousands of cattle. It was through Onate that our Santa Fe was established in 1609. Then began the early days of the Old Trail. The Spaniards wanted to be let alone. But they had to have a market to buy and sell. In 1690 the French-Canadians, the fur hunters, began to edge into New Mexico. With the trappers, marching west with their pack-mules, laden with whiskey, guns, beads, bright goods to trade to the Indians, the Santa Fe Trail became known to the world—our Old Trail down there along the Cimarron and the Cottonwood. The fur trade expanded. The trappers were friendly with the Indians. There was no war. Americans began to mingle with the French. The era of the great fur trade lasted for nearly a hundred years…. My friends, there will be trappers here at my party tonight. Ask one of the white-haired old fellows to tell you what the trade was when he took to it as a boy. That must have been a grand free life. It used to thrill me to sit beside Kit Carson, when I was a child, and listen to his stories. Still Carson only knew of that magnificent early day from the old trappers who had seen some of it. When Carson ran away West as a boy, the plains were black with millions of buffalo and thousands of wild horses.