daughter.

"They couldn't teach me any more, Mother," she said. "They admitted it.
So here I am."

Y.D. was plainly perplexed. "It's about time you was halter-broke," he
commented, "but who's goin' to do it?"

"If a girl has learned to read and think, what more can the schools do
for her?" she demanded.

And Y.D., never having been to school, could not answer.

The sun was capping the Rockies with molten gold when the rancher and
his daughter swung down the foothill slopes to the camp on the South
Y.D. Strings of men and horses returning from the upland meadows could
be seen from the hillside as they descended.

Y.D.'s sharp eyes measured the scale of operations.

"They're hittin' the high spots," he said, approvingly. "That boy
Transley is a hum-dinger."

Zen made no reply.

"I say he's a hum-dinger," her father repeated.

The girl looked up with a quick flush of surprise. Y.D. was no puzzle to
her, and if he went out of his way to commend Transley he had a purpose.