“Ina, I don’t—understand you,” faltered Hettie.

“We’ve got to save Ben before it’s too late,” declared Ina, and the strange sweet warmth that seemed liberated by her conscious words brought the hot blood to her cheeks.

“We’ve got to! You and I?” asked Hettie, in low, wondering voice.

“Yes. You’re his sister and I’m—his old playmate. Probably his only friends, except the cowboy from Nevada…. Hettie, I’m forming impressions of that cowboy Setter claimed was a horse thief. I believe he’s some one who’s standing by Ben. He has found Ben alone, forsaken, an outcast. Perhaps he too loves wild horses. Hettie, we’ve got to see these boys, especially Ben, if we have to ride out to Forlorn River.”

“I’ll go, though father will half kill me when he finds out,” declared Hettie, in awe.

“As a last resort, we’ll do it,” returned Ina. “But let us wait. Something may happen. We might get word to Ben. He might hear of my return and want to see me.”

“He’d want to, Ina, but he’d never come, even if you sent him word,” said Hettie, sadly.

“Poor Ben! What a pass he must have come to! … Well, here’s the end of your lane and I think that’s Marvie coming way down the road. I’ll see you soon again, Hettie. Meanwhile remember we are archplotters.”

“Oh, Ina Blaine, I could hug you!” cried Hettie, in passionate gratefulness.

“Well, do it!”

But Hettie turned and fled down the lane.

* * * * *

Saturday came and passed. Ina spent it with Marvie out in the open—a long beautiful spring day, full of laughter and excitement, yet with moments for appreciation of the soft gray sage slopes above the brook where Marvie loved to fish, and lonely intervals when she dreamed.

Through some machination of Kate’s, that almost roused Ina’s temper, Dall was not permitted to accompany them. So Ina, not to disappoint Marvie, had gone alone with him.

It was dark when they drove into the lane of Tule Lake Ranch. Ina, as she shuffled wet and disheveled into the bright kitchen, did not need sister Kate’s wry look to appreciate her appearance. She did not care. She was tired, and strangely happy. Her father’s displeasure with Marvie, her mother’s divided state of mind, Kate’s manifest disapproval, had not the least effect upon her. What a day to bring back the past! She hardly remembered even the thrilling incidents, let alone the multitudinous commonplace ones.

Marvie had proved to be such a brother as any sister must love. He made Ina a chum. How little did her dignity and schooling impress him! Ina had shared everything. She had driven, walked, climbed, and waded; she had fallen off a slippery bank into the rushes; she had rowed a boat while Marvie had fished with intense hopefulness; she had helped him fight a fish that got away.

Ina, spurred despite herself by Kate’s peremptory call from below, made haste with her bath and change of clothes. Then she hurried down to have late supper alone with Marvie. Some one evidently had crushed the boy’s exuberant reminiscences of the day. Ina felt that nothing could crush her remembrance of it nor take from her the nameless joy. She was cheerfully oblivious of Kate, and soon won her mother to keen interest in the adventures of the day.