Helen Rayner dropped her knitting into her lap and sat pensively gazing out of the window over the bare yellow ranges of her uncle's ranch.
The winter day was bright, but steely, and the wind that whipped down from the white-capped mountains had a keen, frosty edge. A scant snow lay in protected places; cattle stood bunched in the lee of ridges; low sheets of dust scurried across the flats.
The big living-room of the ranch-house was warm and comfortable with its red adobe walls, its huge stone fireplace where cedar logs blazed, and its many-colored blankets. Bo Rayner sat before the fire, curled up in an armchair, absorbed in a book. On the floor lay the hound Pedro, his racy, fine head stretched toward the warmth.
"Did uncle call?" asked Helen, with a start out of her reverie.
"I didn't hear him," replied Bo.
Helen rose to tiptoe across the floor, and, softly parting some curtains, she looked into the room where her uncle lay. He was asleep. Sometimes he called out in his slumbers. For weeks now he had been confined to his bed, slowly growing weaker. With a sigh Helen returned to her window-seat and took up her work.
"Bo, the sun is bright," she said. "The days are growing longer. I'm so glad."
"Nell, you're always wishing time away. For me it passes quickly enough," replied the sister.
"But I love spring and summer and fall--and I guess I hate winter," returned Helen, thoughtfully.
The yellow ranges rolled away up to the black ridges and they in turn swept up to the cold, white mountains. Helen's gaze seemed to go beyond that snowy barrier. And Bo's keen eyes studied her sister's earnest, sad face.
"Nell, do you ever think of Dale?" she queried, suddenly.
The question startled Helen. A slow blush suffused neck and cheek.
"Of course," she replied, as if surprised that Bo should ask such a thing.
"I--I shouldn't have asked that," said Bo, softly, and then bent again over her book.
Helen gazed tenderly at that bright, bowed head. In this swift-flying, eventful, busy winter, during which the management of the ranch had devolved wholly upon Helen, the little sister had grown away from her. Bo had insisted upon her own free will and she had followed it, to the amusement of her uncle, to the concern of Helen, to the dismay and bewilderment of the faithful Mexican housekeeper, and to the undoing of all the young men on the ranch.
Helen had always been hoping and waiting for a favorable hour in which she might find this wilful sister once more susceptible to wise and loving influence. But while she hesitated to speak, slow footsteps and a jingle of spurs sounded without, and then came a timid knock. Bo looked up brightly and ran to open the door.