“You wouldn’t be able to get further than ‘five times’ before we reach the turn. There’ll be a glorious breeze then. There always is.”

9“What do you mean by ‘five times’?”

9

“Why, just the multiplication table. I always say it when I’ve something I want to get over quick. You begin at one-times-one, and see if it isn’t so.”

“What shall we find at the top; your home?”

“Oh, no, indeed. That is quite the other way. Down in the valley. Sobrante ranch. That’s ours. Were you going there?”

“I was going–anywhere. I had lost my way. ‘Missed the trail,’ as you say in this country.”

“I thought, maybe, you were just a ‘tourist.’”

Mr. Hale laughed, and the laugh helped him to forget his present discomfort.

“Perhaps I am, even if you do speak so disdainfully. Are all ‘tourists’ objectionable?”

Jessica’s brown cheek flushed. She felt she had said something rude–she, whose ambition it was to be always and everywhere “Our Lady Jess,” that the dear “boys” called her. But she remembered how annoyed her mother was by the visits of strangers who seemed to regard Sobrante and its belongings as a “show” arranged for their special benefit.

“We–we are generally glad when the rains come,” she answered, evasively.

“To keep them away? Yet if, as I suspect, you have an ostrich farm, I can’t blame their curiosity. I’m hoping to visit one, myself.”

“Ours is not a real ‘farm.’ It is just one of the many things our ranch is good for. But I know my mother would make you very welcome. You–but there! Look down, please. Yonder it is, Sobrante. That means ‘richness,’ you know. And now up. The next turn will land us on the mesa, and I hope, I hope, I have come in time!”

10The road had now broadened, and with a little chirrup to King Zulu, she passed and forged ahead so rapidly that she was soon out of sight. The great bird upon whose back she was perched was not, apparently, at all wearied, but poor Prince was utterly winded, while a curious feeling of loneliness stole upon his rider.

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