The Forbidden Trail

Dick grinned. "Look in any direction! You'll have no trouble locating yourselves. Let's go in to breakfast."

Charley and Felicia were sitting at the breakfast table and the meal was quickly eaten.

"What do you two do first?" asked Charley as Ernest finished his second cup of coffee.

"Locate the camp site and set up housekeeping, so as not to intrude on you any longer," replied Ernest.

"Shucks! You wouldn't talk that way if you'd lived here a few years," exclaimed Dick.

"You're the first human beings," remarked Charley, "except Dick and a few Indians and old Von Minden that I've seen in six months."

"But don't you ever go to town?" asked Roger.

"Not often. It's a hard trip and some one has to stay with the stock."

Dick looked at Charley with quick reproach. "You know it's always something urgent that takes me in, Charley. And you nearly always refuse to go."

"Nearly always, yes, Dick," replied Charley.

Dick shrugged his shoulders and there was a moment's silence which Ernest broke.

"When are you coming to see us, Felicia?"

"Every day, Ernest," replied the child.

"Mr. Ernest," corrected Charley.

"No! No! We're old friends," protested Ernest.

"And Roger's a friend too," added Felicia. "A dearest friend."

Ernest grinned. "Felicia! How can you forsake me so! Here's Roger, a notorious woman-hater, and you wasting your young affections on him, when you might have me with a turn of your finger."

"You shut up, Ernest!" exclaimed Roger. "Don't pay any attention to him, Felicia."

"I won't," replied the child. "But I'll keep right on liking him, next to you."

"I see some work ahead for me!" ejaculated Dick.

Charley refilled Dick's coffee cup and smiled at him.

"I'll bet on you, Dicky," she said. "We'll have supper at six, Roger. I've put up a lunch for you two men."

"By Jove," said Ernest, "we'll have to supply water to this ranch for nothing, Rog."

"Right!" answered Roger, rising. "Come ahead, old man."

It was not yet eight when they drove out of the corral, along the line of fence that edged Dick's prospective alfalfa field. There was a monument, Dick said, at the southwest corner of the field that would start them on their way. Neither man spoke for some time, then Ernest remarked in his gentle voice: "Extraordinarily lovely girl!"

Roger grunted.

Ernest flushed. "Honestly, Roger, you are the limit! She's too fine a woman to be turned off with a grunt."

"Who's turning her off?" demanded Roger. "I don't see why you're always accusing me of hating women. I don't hate 'em. I'm keen about them and you know how I ran after them until I had to cut them out and attend to business. But now, my scheme of life can't include them. You waste enough time and thought every year on petticoats to have made you president of the university. Now, I'm trying to concentrate on one thing, solar heat. It's a full job for any man, that's all. If you want to get up a case on Charlotte Preble, go to it. She's too big for my taste, even if I had time to think about her."