“Heah’s a box I fixed for a washstand,” offered the other cowboy. “It ain’t very good, but I couldn’t find no better. An’ I spotted a big new water pail down by the chuck wagon. I’ll fetch it up full of water, if I don’t happen to run into your dad.”

“Why, what difference would that make?” laughed Ina, looking up.

The cowboy, a fine–faced, square–jawed young fellow, stood bareheaded and respectful, but he was all eyes.

“Wal, he says go slow on the water we fetched from Tule, an’ if we have to wash, to use the lake water heah.”

“But, my gracious! we have to wash—and that muddy water is impossible!” protested Ina.

“Shore. We told him so. But you know your dad. He didn’t say just us cowboys, so he might have meant everybody.”

Ina knew full well that her father was quite capable of including his women folk in an order forbidding the use of water.

“Why in the world did dad buy this place?” she queried, blankly.

“He got it for nothin’, Miss Ina. An’ he has his eye on Forlorn River. We shore tried to persuade him not to come heah, this awful dry time, anyhow. There ain’t any water. It’s all dried up. Diggin’ wells won’t do no good. An’ we’d have talked him into waitin’ till the rains come if it hadn’t been for Mr. Setter. He shore was set on comin’.”

“Well … thank you, boys,” replied Ina, thoughtfully. “Fetch a bucket of water, anyway. I’ll take the responsibility.”

Ina almost yielded to the temptation to ask a pertinent question about Mr. Setter. Upon reflection, however, she felt that the frank cowboy’s tone had intimated a dislike for her father’s partner. At former times she had received impressions as to the regard in which some of the cowboys held Less Setter. The sum of these impressions added weight to her own, and she had an inkling that the next few weeks would be prolific of most interesting developments.

The day passed so quickly that Ina could not realize what had become of the hours. There had been no noon meal to mark the flight of time. Her father had placed the summer camp under the same rule that prevailed among his cowboys’ outfits when on the open range—two meals a day.

Ina’s appetite this evening was not a thing to be denied, and she had the pleasure of helping her mother in the little cook tent of their own. Supper time brought Marvie, muddy and disheveled, wearing a long weary face.

“Aw, there ain’t any fish,” he burst out in reply to Ina’s solicitude. “I rode an’ walked about nine hundred miles. Nothin’ but mud. Nothin’ but tadpoles in that darned lake.”