“What about sheep?” the old man asked bluntly.

Buck’s stony gaze met his steadily.  “I’m going to leave those sheep on your conscience, Mr. Sanderson.  You’ll have to settle that matter for yourself.”

“You mean you’ll not stand in the way, if I want to keep them?”

“That’s what I mean.  It’s up to you.”

Phil, who was sitting on the porch sewing on a pair of leather chaps, indulged in a grin.  “I see this is where we go out of the sheep business,” he said.

“The market’s good.  I don’t know but what it would be the right thing to sell,” his father agreed.  “I want to meet you halfway in settling this trouble, Mr. Weaver.”

The matter was discussed further at some length, after which the cattleman shook hands all round and departed.  Out of the tail of his eye he saw Keller saddling a horse at the stables.

“Think I’ll beat you out of that ride with the schoolmarm to-day, my friend.  A steady diet of rides like that is liable to intoxicate a man,” he told himself, with his grim smile.  In plain sight of all, he turned the head of his horse toward the road that led to the schoolhouse.

Presently he met pupils galloping home, calling to each other joyously as they rode.  Others followed more sedately in buggies.  Nearer the schoolhouse he came on one walking.

After Phyllis had looked over some papers, made up her weekly report, and outlined on the board work for next day, she saddled her pony and set out homeward.  Not in ten years had the country been so green and lovely as it was now.  There had been many winter snows and spring rains, so that the alfilaria covered the hills with a carpet of grass.  Muddy little rivulets, pouring down arroyos on their way from the mountains, showed that there had been recent rains.  These all ran into the Del Oro, a creek which was dry in summer but was now full to its banks.

She followed the river into the canon of the same name, a narrow gulch with sheer precipitous walls.  So much water was in the river that the trail along the bank scarce gave the pony footing.  Half a mile from the point where she had entered the Del Oro the trail crept up the wall and escaped to the mesa above.  Phyllis was nearing the ascent when a sound startled her.  She swung round in her saddle, to see a wall of water roaring down the lane with the leap of some terrible wild beast.  Somewhere in the hills there had been a waterspout.

She called upon her pony with spur and voice, racing desperately for the place where the trail rose.  Of that wild dash for life she remembered nothing afterward save the overmastering sense of peril.  She knew that the roan was pounding forward with the best speed in him, and presently she knew too that no speed could save her.  The roar of the advancing water grew louder as it swept upon her.  With a cry of terror she dragged the pony to its haunches, slipped from the saddle, and attempted to climb the rock face.