“Well, I expect we got to brush up a bit on our manners if we’re going to have a young lady around, eh, Yellow? Going to be some strain on us both, I’ll say. Funny idea to run off to a place like this just because you’ve quarreled with your young man! Got the temper that goes with red hair, I guess. I remember a red-haired girl I used to know in Detroit——” A grin succeeded the worried look on Scott’s face; evidently the adventure with the red-haired girl had had its humorous side.

“Well, get up, Romeo, we’ve got to reach that girl before Mendoza dumps her in the ditch and gets her mussed up or the boss’ll fire us both.”

Romeo, a good-looking gray, with an excitable nature, 49 snorted as he felt the touch of the whip and dragged his gentler mate into a lively trot. A new moon, clear cut and beautiful, was rising behind them, over the tall mountains, making the valley—so bare by day—lovely and mysterious in its half light.

49

“No kind of a night to be driving around with a dog, Yellow,” remarked the driver, reproachfully. “Men and moonlight are made for better things.”

The horses trotted briskly; they were covering ground rapidly. They ought, Marc figured, to meet the machine this side of Junipero Hill, a steep and cruel grade which he would be glad to spare his horses if he could. If Mendoza was making any sort of speed he ought to have come that far. He began to watch for the lights of the machine. The girl must be plucky, even if she was foolish, to dare a trip like this with a strange Mexican.

Well, he was glad Bob’s sister was nervy; he liked nervy girls and he liked Bob. Usually fellows who came out from college and took positions over other men’s heads made fools of themselves; but Bob was not a fool. He was a decent, likable young chap, who knew he had been luckier than the next fellow and who took no advantage of it.

“Which is more than you can say of most rich men’s sons,” soliloquized Scott. “But then why should you expect sense from a rich man’s son? Where’d they get it? It’s hard knocks gives a man sense—if he’s ever going to get it, which most of them ain’t!”

There was loneliness in the air. Scott, who was 50 temperamental, as out-of-doors men often are, felt it keenly. It brought before him more clearly the loneliness of his own life, a life spent in out-of-the-way places, largely among men; a life with no roots, he sometimes felt. Yet he would not have traded his freedom, he would 

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