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JOHN HANNON'S FIRMAMENT 7

The boss had swing stiffly from him that spring twilight and laid upon his neck a hand that was eloquent of pride.

"Give him th' best th' ranch's got," he said to Briston the foreman, "now an' always."

"Where on earth d'you get him?" asked the other wonderingly, but the rancher turned wearily away toward the comfort of his house.

"So fur from here that you wouldn't know, Tom," he said, "and," he added as an afterthought, "his price has left me nearly busted."

So Redstar came to Paradise, and it was Paradise to him in all truth, for he had the run of all the fresh green fields, the open stretches where the bunch grass grew when the riders were about, a private paddock all his own, and none but the master ever backed him, until—until Val Hannon grew up sufficiently to look her daddy in the eye with her two velvet orbs and demand the king to ride.

And Val Hannon ranked above the horses if such a thing were possible—perhaps because her mother loved her with an idolatry that lit up her darkness. If Belle Hannon had loved an Apache Indian he would have been precious to her husband for that reason.

But there was reason in plenty for the boss to rank his daughter first, all the reason a man might heed wrapped in the slim young form of her, for if the Red Brood strained comparison, Val Hannon beggared it.

When she came in from the open levels and tossed