border with Apaches ain’t nothin’ to what Nels has seen an’ lived through.  He’s just come to be part of the desert; you might say he’s stone an’ fire an’ silence an’ cactus an’ force.  He’s a man, Miss Majesty, a wonderful man.  Rough he’ll seem to you.  Wal, I’ll show you pieces of quartz from the mountains back of my ranch an’ they’re thet rough they’d cut your hands.  But there’s pure gold in them.  An’ so it is with Nels an’ many of these cowboys.

“An’ there’s Price—­Monty Price.  Monty stands fer Montana, where he hails from.  Take a good look at him, Miss Majesty.  He’s been hurt, I reckon.  Thet accounts fer him bein’ without hoss or rope; an’ thet limp.  Wal, he’s been ripped a little.  It’s sure rare an seldom thet a cowboy gets foul of one of them thousands of sharp horns; but it does happen.”

Madeline saw a very short, wizened little man, ludicrously bow-legged, with a face the color and hardness of a burned-out cinder.  He was hobbling by toward the wagon, and one of his short, crooked legs dragged.

“Not much to look at, is he?” went on Stillwell.  “Wal; I know it’s natural thet we’re all best pleased by good looks in any one, even a man.  It hedn’t ought to be thet way.  Monty Price looks like hell.  But appearances are sure deceivin’.  Monty saw years of ridin’ along the Missouri bottoms, the big prairies, where there’s high grass an’ sometimes fires.  In Montana they have blizzards that freeze cattle standin’ in their tracks.  An’ hosses freeze to death.  They tell me thet a drivin’ sleet in the face with the mercury forty below is somethin’ to ride against.  You can’t get Monty to say much about cold.  All you hev to do is to watch him, how he hunts the sun.  It never gets too hot fer Monty.  Wal, I reckon he was a little more prepossessin’ once.  The story thet come to us about Monty is this:  He got caught out in a prairie fire an’ could hev saved himself easy, but there was a lone ranch right in the line of fire, an’ Monty knowed the rancher was away, an’ his wife an’ baby was home.  He knowed, too, the way the wind was, thet the ranch-house would burn.  It was a long chance he was takin’.  But he went over, put the woman up behind him, wrapped the baby an’ his hoss’s haid in a wet blanket, an’ rode away.  Thet was sure some ride, I’ve heerd.  But the fire ketched Monty at the last.  The woman fell an’ was lost, an’ then his hoss.  An’ Monty ran an’ walked an’ crawled through the fire with thet baby, an’ he saved it.  Monty was never much good as a cowboy after thet.  He couldn’t hold no jobs.  Wal, he’ll have one with me as long as I have a steer left.”

VI A Gift and A Purchase

For a week the scene of the round-up lay within riding-distance of the ranch-house, and Madeline passed most of this time in the saddle, watching the strenuous labors of the vaqueros and cowboys.  She overestimated her strength, and more than once had to be lifted from her horse.  Stillwell’s pleasure in her attendance gave place to concern.  He tried to persuade her to stay away from the round-up, and Florence grew even more solicitous.