About four that afternoon the horses pricked their ears and quickened their pace.  Filaree and Joshua especially seemed interested in getting along the silent trail; and presently the trail merged with another trail, more defined.  A few hundred yards down this trail, and Bartley saw a big log cabin; to the left and beyond it a corral, empty, and with the bars down.  Bartley had never seen the place before, and did not realize where he was, yet he had noticed that the horses seemed to know the place.

“We won’t stop by,” said Cheyenne.

“Any one live there?”

“Sneed used to,” stated Cheyenne.

Then Bartley knew that they were not far from the San Andreas Valley and—­well, the Lawrence ranch.

They dropped down a long trail into another canon which finally spread to a green valley dotted with ranches.  The horses stepped briskly.  Presently, rounding a bend, they saw a ranch-house, far below, and sharply defined squares of alfalfa.

“That house with the red roof—­” said Bartley.

“That’s her,” asserted Cheyenne, a trifle ambiguously.

“Then we’ve swung round in a circle.”

“We done crossed the res’avation, pardner.  And we didn’t see a dog-gone Injun.”

Little Jim was the first to catch sight of them as they jogged down the last stretch of trail leaving the foothills.  He recognized the horses long before their riders were near enough to be identified as his father and Bartley.

Little Jim did not rush to Aunt Jane and tell her excitedly that they were coming.  Instead, he quietly saddled up his pony and rode out to meet them.  Part-way up the slope he waited.

His greeting was not effusive.  “I just thought I’d ride up and tell you folks that—­’that I seen you comin’.”

“How goes the hunting?” queried Bartley.

“Fine!  I got six rabbits yesterday.  Dorry is gittin’ so she can shoot pretty good, too.  How you makin’ it, dad?”

Cheyenne pushed back his hat and gazed at his young son.  “Pretty fair, for an old man,” said Cheyenne presently.  “You been behavin’ yourself?”

“Sure.”

“How would you like to ride a real hoss, once?”

“You mean your hoss?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ll trade you, even.”

“No, you won’t, son.  But you can ride him down to the ranch, if you like.”

Little Jim almost tumbled from his pony in his eagerness to ride Joshua, his father’s horse, with the big saddle and rope and the carbine under the stirrup leather.

“You musta made a long ride,” declared Jimmy, as he scrambled up on Joshua.  “Josh’s shoes is worn thin.  He’ll be throwin’ one, next.”

Jimmy called attention to the horse’s shoes, that his father and Bartley might not see how really pleased he was to ride a “real horse.”

“Yes, a long ride.  How is Aunt Jane and Dorry?”

“Oh, they’re all right.  Uncle Frank he cut twenty-two tons of alfalfa off the lower field last week.”