'. . . One should be loyal to one's friends.' He held to that stoutly, insistent and stubborn to play his part. Something had come over him and Carr, or between them; but none the less he obstinately sought to refuse to harbour thoughts which came again and again and which always angered him with himself. There was the suspicion: 'Carr was unfair in seeking to take Helen and her father away with him to the East.' He told himself that that was Carr's right if Carr held it so. There came the accusation: 'Carr had been hard on him last night.' He told himself that it was easily granted that they had misunderstood each other when, long ago, they had arranged for the payments; further, that no doubt Carr, too, was hard up for cash. The thought suggested itself: 'Carr had no right to berate him for allowing Sanchia to ride to the Longstreet cabin.' Carr had spoken quickly, unthinkingly, and they all were under stress. He would play fair and give a man his due—and his thoughts switched to Helen and Carr was forgotten and, with a half-smile on his lips, he rode on through the brightening morning, dreaming of the ranch that should be when Helen came with him to ride and their hands found each other and she whispered: 'I love it and—it is ours!'

John Engle, the banker of San Juan, was something more than a banker. Not only was he a fine, upstanding, broad-minded man; he was a man, no longer in the first flush of youth, who had made himself what he was and who from forty-five vividly recalled twenty-five. He had learned caution, but he had known what it was to plunge head-first into deep waters. That now, a man established, he no longer had to take long chances, was due largely to the successes met in long chances taken when all of life lay before him, inviting. When now Alan Howard came to him in his office at the bank and put his case before him straightforwardly and without evasion or reservation, he came to the one man in the world who because of his position and his character could best help him.

'Take it slow, Alan,' said Engle quietly. 'I can give you the whole day, if necessary. I've got to know just where you stand and just which way you are headed before I can get anywhere.'

He drew out his pad and very methodically began to set down figures as the cattleman talked. Finally:

'It's the bank's money, not my own, that I'll be advancing you, you know. I am pretty well sewed up personally as usual. Consequently, while I can see you over a few of the immediate bumps in your trail, I can't give you all that you'll want. But I fancy you can get across with it.' His keen eyes took fresh stock of the cattleman, marking the assertive strength, the clean build, the erect carriage, the hard hands, the lean jaw and finally the steady eyes which always met his own. The personal equation always counts, perhaps with the banker more than most men imagine, and John Engle found no sign of any deterioration in the security offered by Alan Howard's personality. 'It's a good thing, anyway,' he went on, with the first hint of a twinkle in his regard, 'for a youngster like you to have to scrap things out after the old fashion. Not married yet, are you?'

'No,' said Alan.

Engle laughed.

'But hoping to be? Well, it's time. That's a good ballast for a man. Now, I've got this pretty straight, let's have your plans. You hope to swing the ranch all right, or you wouldn't be calling on me. You're in deep already and, of course, if it's a human possibility you've got to swing it. What do you figure to do?'

Howard during his long ride had considered his problem from all angles, and now, leaning forward eagerly, told in detail what he had decided. Engle, a rancher himself with broad experience, nodded now and then, asked his few pertinent questions, made an occasional suggestion. Then he rose to his feet and put out his hand.

'Drop in and see us when you're in town and have the time,' he said cordially. 'Mrs. Engle was speaking of you only the other day. You'll want to be on your way now. I'll let you have five thousand on your equity and let the other fifteen hundred ride with it, making one note for sixty-five hundred. I think that if you work things right and hold down expenses and make the sales and purchases and other sales you have in mind, you'll get away with your deal. Just the same, my boy,' and for an instant there came into his eyes the fighting look which had been there frequently in the day when he fought out his own battles, 'you've got a man's-sized job on your hands.'

'I know it,' said Alan. And when, the proper papers signed, he said good-bye, his eyes brightened and he said directly: 'It's a great thing, John Engle, to have a man's-sized man to talk things over with.'

From his window Engle musingly watched the tall form go out to the horse at the hitching-post and swing up into the saddle.

'Now what's happened between him and John Carr?' he asked himself. And without hesitation he answered his own question: 'A girl, I suppose. Well, she ought to be a real girl to do that.'

Howard, riding joyously back toward Desert Valley, thought first of Helen. But not even Helen could hold all of his thoughts when at length his horse's hoofs fell again upon the rim of Desert Valley Land. Upon the bordering hills of the southern edge of the valley he drew rein and sat, lost in thought. He saw herds feeding, and they were his herds and he himself did not know their exact number. He must know; the game was swiftly becoming one where pawns count. He saw a man riding; it was his man, whom he must direct and pay. He saw water running in one of his larger creeks, and thought how it too must be made to work for him. Yonder were colts running wild; there were more than he required at present. They must be broken; they could be sold. He looked across empty acres, rich pasture lands void of grazing stock. A slow, thoughtful frown gathered in his eyes; he must somehow put stock into them, stock to be bought skilfully and sold skilfully. All of this glorious sweep of country stretching to the four corners of the compass was his, his very own, if he were man enough to go on with the work to which he had somewhat lightly set his hand. He had loved it always, since first he had come here as John Carr's guest. He loved it now with a mounting passion. It flashed over him that when, at some far-distant time, he should die, this was the one spot upon God's great earth where he should want his ashes scattered on the little wind which came down from the hills. It was a part of him and he a part of it. And as he loved it and yearned for it utterly, so did Helen love it.

'It is going to be mine and yours, my dear.' He spoke aloud, his voice stern with his determination. 'For us to have and to hold.'

And because of the thought and the knowledge of what lay ahead of him, he knew that for the present he must forego that to which he had looked forward all day. He must for a little postpone a ride to see Helen. For already he foresaw the calls upon his time; short-handed, it was to be work for him from long before day until long after dark. As he started down the hill into the valley he saw a herd of cattle coming from the north. He had a round-up on his hands to begin with, and it was already beginning.



Chapter XXI

Almost

Long hours and hard work in the cattle country mean that a man slips from his saddle into his bunk and to sleep, and from his bunk into his saddle again, with only time to bolt his food and hot coffee infrequently and at irregular intervals. Chuck Evans had obeyed orders; the ranch was short-handed and the 'old-timers' remaining cursed a little, to be sure, at the new order of things, but understood and went to work. Howard, when he met them all at supper long after dark, noted how their sunburned eyes turned upon him speculatively. And he knew that in their own parlance every mother's son of them was ready to go the limit if the old man set the pace. That night, when the others trooped off to bed, he detained Chuck Evans and Plug Oliver and Dave Terril for a brief conference. To them he gave in what detail he could his latest plans. Also, since they were friends as well as hired hands, he told them frankly of his difficulties and of his success with Engle. When the men left him they had accepted his fight as their own.

The first man in the saddle the next day was Howard. He ordered the tally taken of every head of stock on his ranch. This alone, since his acres were broad and since his stock grazed free over thousands of acres lying adjacent to Desert Valley on three sides, was a big task. Already, during his absence, a number of the best of the beef cattle had been moved to the meadowlands. He set a man to close-herd there; he sent other men to bring in still other straying stock; he himself judged every single head, cutting out those he deemed unfit; finally he saw the growing herd driven down into the choicest of his meadow grazing land to fatten.

All of this required days. Between breakfast and supper every man with the outfit changed his horse several times; Howard, the hardest rider of them all, changed horses five times the first day. He and his men showed signs of the strain they put upon their bodies; they were a gaunt, lean-jawed, wild-eyed lot. There was little frolic left in them when night came; they were short-spoken, prone to grow fierce over trifles. But there was not a sullen or discontented man among them. They took what came; they had known times of stress before; they could look forward to a day to come of boisterous relaxation and money to be spent in town. Though the subject had never been mentioned, they fully understood that there would be a bonus coming and a glorious holiday. They would see the old man through now: later he would square the account.

Eat, sleep and work; there was nothing else in their schedule. The times when Howard had a few moments over a cigarette to think quietly of Helen were times when he could not go to her: in the dimness of the coming day when he was going out to saddle and she would still be asleep; in the dark of the day ended when she would be going to bed. But he held grimly to his task here, saying to himself that in a few days he would ride to her and with something to say; wondering how she would listen; sometimes aglow with his hope, sometimes fearing. And, as he thought of her, so did he think often of John Carr. He did not know if Carr had gone East or if still he were a daily guest at the Longstreet home. Not a man of his riders had been beyond the confines of the grazing lands; no one had come in from the outside. There was no news.

So a full week sped by. Then for the first time came both opportunity and excuse for Howard to leave the ranch. Chuck Evans had ridden into San Ramon to see if there were a market for a string of mules; he brought back word that a teamster named Roberts in the new mining-camp had been making inquiries. It seemed that he wanted high-grade stock and had the money to pay for it. Everything was running smoothly on the ranch, and Howard rode this time on his own errand. But, before starting for Sanchia's Town, he slipped into the ranchhouse and shaved and changed to a new shirt and chaps and recently blackened boots. Thereafter he brushed his best black hat. Then from a bottom drawer of his old bureau, where it was hidden under a pile of clothing, he brought out a parcel which had come with him from a store in San Juan.

As good a way as any to see Roberts in Sanchia's Town led by way of the Longstreet camp on Last Ridge. Howard took the winding trail up which his horse could climb to the plateau, and once on the level land came swooping down on the well-remembered spot joyously. The spot itself was hidden from him by the grove of stunted pines until he came within a couple of hundred yards of it. Then he jerked his horse down to a standstill and sat staring before him incredulously. The cabin was gone quite as though there had never been a cabin there in all time.

At first he wouldn't believe his eyes. Then swiftly his wonderment altered to consternation. They had gone! Helen and her father had gone. Carr had prevailed upon them; Howard had not come to see; by now they were flying eastward upon the speeding overland train, or perhaps were already in New York.

The splendour of the day died; the joyousness went out of his heart; he sat staring at the emptiness before him, then at the parcel in brown paper clutched so foolishly in his hand. He looked all about him; through the trees as though he expected to see Helen's laughing face watching him; across the broken ridges beyond the flat; down into his own valley. Down there, too, the glory had passed. When he had stood here with Helen and they two had looked across the valley lands together, it had been to him like the promised land. Now it was so much dirt and rock and grass with cows and horses browsing stupidly across all of it.

For a long time he sat very still. Then his face hardened.

'If she has gone, then I am going, too,' he told himself. 'And I am going to bring her back.'

He turned his horse and rode swiftly to Sanchia's Town. They would have gone that way, on to Big Run, San Ramon and down to the railroad. In such a case he would have word of them in the mining-camp. In his present mood he required only a few minutes to come to the new settlement. Had he been less absorbed in his own thoughts he must have been amazed at what he saw about him. He had known men before now to make towns upon dry bare ground and in a mere handful of days; not even he, with his first-hand knowledge of such venturings, had ever seen the like of Sanchia's Town. The spirit which had initiated it into the world was still its driving spirit. It sprawled, it overflowed its boundaries incessantly, it hooted and yelled and sang. It grew like a formless mass lumped about fermenting yeast. Already there were shacks and tents up and down both sides of Dry Gulch and strung along in the gravelly bed. There were gambling-houses, monstrosities which named themselves hotels and rooming-houses, stores, lunch counters. The streets were crooked alleys; everywhere dust puffed up and thickened and never settled; teams and jolting wagons and pack burros disputed the congested way; there were seasoned miners, old-time prospectors, going their quiet ways; there were tenderfeet of all descriptions. Not less than five thousand human souls had already found their way to Sanchia's Town and more were coming.

In all of this to-day, Howard took scant interest. His major emotion was one of annoyance. Among such a seething crowd where should he ask of the Longstreets? He sat his horse in a narrow space between a lunch counter and a canvas bar-room and stared about him. Then he saw that the solitary figure perched upon a box before the lunch counter was Yellow Barbee. He called to him quickly.

Barbee's young eyes, which he turned promptly, were still eloquent of an amorous joyousness within Barbee's young soul. He bestowed his glance only fleetingly upon Howard, said a brief 'Hello, Al,' and turned immediately to the cause of the obvious flutter in Barbee's bosom. Howard expected to see Sanchia Murray behind the counter. Instead he saw a young girl of a little less than Barbee's age, roguish-eyed, black-haired, red-mouthed, plump and saucy. Her sleeves were up; her arms were brown and round; there was flour on them.

'Where are the Longstreets, Barbee?' asked Howard.

'Gone,' announced Barbee cheerfully. And as though that closed the matter to his entire satisfaction, he demanded: 'Come on, Pet; be a good kid. Going with me, ain't you?'

Pet laughed and thereafter turned up her pretty nose with obviously mock disdain.

'Dancing old square dances and polkas, I'd bet a stack of wheats,' she scoffed. 'Why, there ain't any more real jazz in your crowd of cow-hands than there is in an old man's home. What do you take me for, anyway?'

'Aw, come on,' grinned Barbee. 'You're joshing. If it's jazz you want——'

'Look here,' said Howard impatiently. 'I'm just asking a question, and I'll get out of your way. Where did they go?'

'Who?' asked Barbee.

'The Longstreets.'

'Dunno,' Barbee shrugged. Then, as an afterthought, 'Sanchia Murray could tell you; she's been sticking tight to them. She's got a tent up yonder, back of the Courtot House on the edge of town.'

Howard hurried on. The lunch counter girl, following him with critical eyes, demanded for him or anyone else to hear:

'Who's your bean-pole friend, Kid?'

But the answer Howard did not hear. He swung out to the side to be free of the town and galloped on to Sanchia's tent, which he found readily. Sanchia herself was in front of it, just preparing to saddle her white mare.

'Hello, Al,' she greeted him carelessly, though her eyes narrowed at him speculatively.

'Where have the Longstreets gone?' he asked without preliminary.

'Back in the hills, Bear Valley way,' she replied, still scrutinizing him. She marked the look of relief in his eyes and laughed cynically and withal a trifle bitterly. 'On the Red Hill trail. Going to see them?'

'Yes.' He reined away, and then added stiffly, 'Thank you.'

'Wait a minute,' she called to him. 'I'm just going up there myself. You might saddle for me, and I'll ride with you.'

He paused and looked her sternly and steadily in the eyes. His voice was cold and his words were outspoken.

'I had rather ride alone, and you know it. Further, after the way you have tricked that man, I'd think you'd draw off and leave them alone. You can't do a thing like that twice.'

For an instant the look in her eyes was baffling. Then there shot through the inscrutability of it a sudden gleam of malice that was like a spurt of flame. It was the fire which before now Howard's attitude had kindled there.

'What you men see in that little fool, I don't know!' she cried hotly. 'What has she that I haven't? I could have made you the biggest man in the country; I would have given everything and held nothing back. I am even honest enough to say so, and I am not afraid to say so. And you are stupid like every other man. Oh, I am done with the crowd of you!' she broke out violently, half hysterically. 'Laugh at me, will you? Turn your back on me, will you?' She paused and panted out the words. 'Why, if you came crawling to me now I'd spit on you. And, so help me God, I'll ruin the last one of you and your precious flock of lambs before I have done with you. If Jim Courtot can't do the trick, I'll do for you first and Jim next.'

He wheeled his horse and left her, groping wonderingly for an explanation of her fury. He had not spoken with her above a score of times in his life. He had merely been decent to her when, in the beginning, it struck him that after all she was only a defenceless woman and that men were hard on her. That his former simple kindness would have awakened any serious affection had failed to suggest itself to him.

But swiftly he forgot Sanchia and her vindictiveness. She had mentioned Courtot; for a little as he rode into the hills he puzzled over Courtot's recurrent disappearances. He recalled how, always when he came to a place where he might expect to find the gambler, he had passed on. Here of late he was like some sinister will-o'-the-wisp. What was it that urged him? A lure that beckoned? A menace that drove? He thought of Kish Taka. There was a nemesis to dog any man. Jim Courtot had dwelt with the desert Indians; he had come to know in what savage manner they meted out their retributive justice. Was Kish Taka still unsleeping, patient, relentless on Courtot's trail? Kish Taka and his dog?

But his horse's hoofs were beating out a merry music on the winding trail that led toward the Red Hill country, and at the end of the trail was Helen. Helen had not gone East. The frown in his eyes gave place to his smile; the sunlight was again golden and glorious; the emptiness of the world was replaced by a large content.

'They just couldn't stand being so close to what they had lost,' he argued. 'It was a right move to come up here.'

He found the new camp without trouble. As he entered the lower end of the tiny valley he saw the canvas-walled cabin at the farther end, under the cliffs. He saw Helen herself. She was just stepping out through the door. He came racing on to her, waving his hat by way of greeting. He slipped down from the saddle, let his bundle fall and caught both of her hands in his.

After this long, unexplained absence Helen had meant to be very stiff when, on some fine day, Alan Howard remembered to come again. But now, under his ardent eyes, the colour ran up into her cheeks in rebellious defiance of her often strengthened determination and, though she wrenched herself free from him, something of the fire in his eyes was reflected in hers.

'Good afternoon, Mr. Cyclone,' she said quite as carelessly as his sudden appearance permitted her vaguely disturbed senses. 'What are you going to do? Run over me?'

He laughed joyously.

'I could eat you,' he told her enthusiastically. 'You look just that good to me. Lord, but I'm hungry for the sight of you!'

'That's nice of you to say so,' Helen answered. And now she was quite all that she had planned to be; as coolly indifferent as only a girl can be when something has begun to sing in her heart and she has made up her mind that no one must hear the singing. 'But I fail to see why this very excellent imitation of a man who hasn't seen his best friend for a couple of centuries.'

'It has been that long, every bit of it—longer.'

Helen's smile was that stock smile to be employed in answer to an inconsequential compliment paid by a chance acquaintance.

'Three or four days is hardly an eternity,' she retorted.

'Three or four days? Why, it's been over nine! Nearly ten.'

She appeared both amazed and incredulous. Then she waved the matter aside as of no moment.

'I was going out to the spring for a drink,' she said. 'Will you wait here? Father will be in soon.'

'I'll come along, if there's room for two.' He picked up his parcel, which Helen noted without seeming to note anything. 'Look here, Helen,' as she started on before him to the thicket of willows, 'aren't you the least little bit glad to see me?'

'Why, of course I am,' she assured him politely. 'And papa was wondering about you only this morning. Isn't it pretty here?'

He admitted without enthusiasm that it was. He had not seen anything but her. She had on a blue dress; she wore a wide hat; her eyes were nothing less than maddening. He recalled the prettiness of Barbee's new girl at the lunch counter; he remembered Sanchia's regular features; these two were simply not of the same order of beings as Helen. No woman was. He strode behind her as she flitted on up the trail and felt thrilling through him an odd commingling of reverence, of adoration, of infinite yearning.

She came to the spring and stopped, watching him eagerly though she pretended to be looking anywhere but at him. And for a moment Howard, marvelling at the spot, let his eyes wander from her. The spring had been cleaned out and rimmed with big flat rocks. About it, as though recently transplanted here, were red and blue flowers. Just at hand close to the clear pool was a delightful shade cast by a freshly constructed shelter. And the shelter itself made him open his eyes. Willow poles, with the leaves still green on them, had been set in the soft earth. Across them other poles had been placed cunningly woven in and out. Still other branches, criss-crossed above, and piled high with foliage, offered a thick mat of verdure to shield one from the hot rays of the sun. Within the elfin chamber was a rustic seat; everywhere, their roots enwrapped in wet earth, were flowers.

'It's wonderful!' he told her, and now his enthusiasm had been awakened. 'And, of course it's your own idea and your own work.'

'Oh my, no! It was John's idea and John made it!'

'John?'

'John Carr. He has been a perfect dear. Isn't he wonderful?'

Yes, Carr was wonderful. But already Howard's enthusiasm had fled.

'The leaves will wilt pretty soon,' he found fault in spite of himself. He was a little ashamed even while he was speaking. 'The flowers will die, and then——'

Helen was already seated within, smiling, looking placid and unconcerned.

'By then,' she announced lightly, 'I'll be gone; so it won't matter.'

'Gone?' he demanded sharply. 'Where?'

'East. Mr. Carr has gone on ahead. We are to meet him in New York.'

He sat down upon a rock just outside her door and made no attempt to hide what was in his heart. He had thought to have lost her when he came to the spot whence the cabin had vanished; he had found her here; he was going to lose her again. . . . Helen's heart quickened at his look, and she lowered her head, pretending to be occupied exclusively with a thistle that had caught on her skirt, afraid that he would know.

'Why are you going like this?' he asked suddenly.

She appeared to hesitate.

'I ought not to say anything against one of your friends,' she said with a great show of ingenuousness. 'But, Mrs. Murray——'

Explosively he cut her short. 'You know that she is not a friend of mine and that she has never been and never will be a friend of mine. Why do you say that?'

She shrugged her shoulders and went on smiling at him. That smile began to madden him; it appeared to speak of such an unruffled spirit when his own was in tumult.

'I beg your pardon, I'm sure. I was merely going to say that Mrs. Murray shows too great an interest in papa. Of course I understand her, and he doesn't. Dear old pops is a perfect child. She has tricked him once; she seems to think him worth watching; she is unbearable. So I am going to do the very natural thing and take him away from her. Back where he belongs by the way; where we both belong.'

'That is not true; you don't belong anywhere but here.' He began speaking slowly, very earnestly and with little show of emotion. But little by little his speech quickened, his voice was raised, his words became vehement. 'You belong here. There is no land in the world like this, just as there is no girl like you. Listen to me, Helen! For your sake, for my sake—yes, and for your father's sake—you must stay. You were speaking of him; let's think of him first. He is like a child in that he has kept a pure, simple heart. But he is not without his own sort of wisdom. He knows rocks and strata and geological formation; he found gold once, and that was not just accident. He lost, but he lost without a whimper. He is a good sport. He will find gold again because it is here and he knows how to find it and where to find it.'

He paused, and Helen, though with no great show of interest and no slightest indication of being impressed, waited for him to go on.

'The fault in what has occurred is less his than mine. Knowing the sort Sanchia Murray is, I should not have given her the opportunity that day of a long talk alone with him. But,' his meaning was plain as he caught and held her eye, 'I was in the mood to forget Sanchia Murray and Professor Longstreet and every one else but the girl I was with.'

Helen laughed lightly, again passing the remark by as a mere compliment of the negligible order.

'Don't do that, Helen,' he said gravely. She saw that a new sort of sternness had entered into his manner. 'I have been working, working hard not alone for myself but for you. Desert Valley has always been to me the one spot in the world; you saw it and loved it, and since then there is no money that would buy it from me. If it were really mine! And I have been working night and day to make it mine. So that some day——'

She was not ready for this, and, though her colour warmed, she interrupted swiftly:

'You speak as though there were danger of losing it.'

He explained, plunging into those matters which had absorbed his mind during so many hard hours, telling her how he had paid Carr twelve thousand and five hundred dollars when he had expected to pay only ten thousand, how he had been obliged to ride to San Juan for money, of his success with Engle, of his plans for sales, of cutting down his force of men; all that he had done and all that he hoped to do. She caught something of the spirit of the endeavour and leaned forward tense and listening.

'But surely Mr. Carr, being your best friend, would not have driven you like this?'

Howard did not answer directly. This hesitation, being unusual in him, caught Helen's attention.

'I imagine John needed the money,' he said quietly. 'I didn't say anything to him about being short of cash. By the way, while in San Juan I got this for you. I thought you'd like it.'

He unwrapped the bundle. In it were a beautiful Spanish bit, richly silvered and with headstall and reins of cunningly plaited rawhide, and a pair of dainty spurs which winked gaily in the sunshine. Helen's eyes sparkled as she put out her hand for them. Her rush of thanks he turned aside by saying hastily:

'I've got the little horse to go with them. I'd like mighty well to give him to you. I don't know whether you can accept yet, but I'm rounding up a lot of horses and when we get a rope on Danny I'm going to lend him to you. To keep indefinitely, as long as you'll have him.'

Long ago Helen's fancies had been ensnared by the big picturesque ranch; long ago her heart had gone out to a fine saddle horse. No longer did she seek to hold her interest in check; she asked him quick questions about everything that he had overlooked telling her and exclaimed with delighted anticipation when he suggested that she and her father ride down and watch at the round-up. He'd have Danny ready for her and would have ridden him enough to remind him that his long frisky vacation was at an end.

They were very close together and very happy just then, when a laughing voice broke in upon their dreamings.

'Isn't he the most adorable lover in the world? But look out for him, my dear child. He nearly broke my heart once. Hello, Al! Sorry I couldn't come up with you. But, you see, I followed as dose as I could!'

They had not heard Sanchia's horse, and Sanchia had drawn her own deduction from the fact. Helen stiffened perceptibly, drawing slowly back. Howard's face reddened to his anger.



Chapter XXII

The Professor Dictates

Sanchia was cool and bright and merry. She sat flicking at her gleaming boot with her whip, and laughing. Helen, who had stood very close to a great happiness, now shivered as though the day had turned cloudy and cold. But she was still Helen Longstreet, her pride an essential portion of the fibre of her being. Because she was hurt, because suddenly she hated Sanchia Murray with a hatred which seemed to sear her heart like a hot iron, she commanded her smile and hid all traces of agitation and spoke with serene indifference.

'Mr. Howard was telling me of the work on the ranch. Isn't it interesting?'

'So interesting,' laughed Sanchia, 'that no doubt the heartless vagabond forgot to mention that he had just left me and that I had sent word by him that I was coming?'

'I don't believe you did say anything about it, did you?' Helen's level regard was for Howard now; the red of anger still flared under his tan and looked as much like guilt as anything else. 'Although,' and again she glanced carelessly toward the trim form on the white mare's back, 'we were speaking of you only a moment ago.'

If Sanchia understood that nothing complimentary had been spoken of her she kept the knowledge her own.

'We just had a little visit together in the mining-camp,' she said, veiling the look she bestowed upon Howard so that one might make anything he pleased of it. 'Alan knows he'd better always run in and see me first when he's been away for ten days at a stretch; don't you, Boy?'

For Howard the moment was nothing less than a section of purgatory. He was no fine hand to deal with women; he stood utterly amazed at Sanchia's words and Sanchia's attitude. He had not learned the trick of saying to a woman, 'You lie.' He had a confused sort of impression that the two girls were merely and lightly teasing him. But having eyes that were keen and a brain which, though a plain-dealing man's, was quick, he understood that somehow there was a stern seriousness under all of this seeming banter. Single-purposed he turned to Helen; bluntly he intended to tell how he had seen Sanchia and how he had left her.

But Helen's quick perception grasped his purpose, and in an anger which included him as well as herself with Sanchia, she wanted no explanations. It was enough for her that he had seen Sanchia Murray first; that he had come direct from her. She left the new bridle and spurs lying on the ground, passed swiftly by him and as she walked on said carelessly:

'If you both will excuse me a moment I must run into the house. I have something to do before papa comes in.'

Sanchia's face glowed triumphantly, and her triumph was clearly one of sheer malevolence. Howard lifted his face to hers, letting her read his blazing wrath. She only shrugged her shoulders.

'I wish to God you were a man!' was all that he said.

'I don't,' she rejoined coolly. 'It's a whole lot more fun being a woman. Men are such fools.'

She saw a tremor shake him from head to foot. He came a quick step toward her, even laid a tense hand on her horse's mane as involuntarily his other hand was lifted; for the instant a wild fear thrilled through her. She thought that he was going to drag her from the saddle; she had driven him hard, perhaps too hard. But she saw beyond him Helen hurrying down the trail, she saw even that Helen was turning to glance back. Resourceful in a crisis had Sanchia Murray always been; resourceful now. She leaned forward, and, for Helen to see, patted the rigid hand on her horse's neck. She laughed again as she saw that Helen was almost running now; she could fancy that she had heard a gasp catch in the girl's throat.

'You'll keep your hands off my affairs, Mr. Alan Howard,' she said evenly. 'Or I'll spoil every dream of your life.'

He held back his answer, his throat working. He saw the forsaken spurs and bridle near the bower which John Carr had constructed; he saw the sunlight and shadow across the trail down which Helen had vanished. Then, his own spurs clanking to his long strides, he too went down the trail, his back and shoulders to Sanchia, stiff and belligerent.

Helen was in the cabin, the door closed. He called, and she did not answer. He could hear her within, rummaging about, evidently very busy with something or other; had it not been for the little snatch of song which came out to him he could have thought that she was in the grip of a frenzy no less than that riding him. He rapped on the door and called again.

'Is that you, papa?' Helen's song was suspended briefly.

'No,' answered Howard. 'Won't you let me have a word with you?'

'I'd love to,' she rejoined. 'But I'm terribly busy just now. I'll be out in a minute.' And again he heard her humming and stirring about.

He tried to open the door. It was locked. He turned away and sat down on the doorstep.

'I'll wait here,' he told her. 'I'll wait all day and all night if I have to.'

But there is nothing harder than an indefinite waiting. He saw that Sanchia still sat upon her white mare where he had left her, that her head was bent, and she seemed to be in a profound study. Now and then he heard Helen; she appeared to be re-arranging their scant furnishings. Ten minutes passed. He called softly:

'Aren't you coming out, Helen?'

'Presently.' By now Helen had commanded and subdued her agitation entirely to her own satisfaction. 'I know it seems rude, but I simply must get a few things done.'

'What sort of things? Can't I help you?'

'Help?' She laughed. 'Men are such funny animals when it is a matter of helping indoors.

Sanchia had just said men were such fools. Well, come right down to it, he was rather inclined to accept the statement as largely true. And women were so utterly beyond comprehension.

'Anyway, can't I just come in and watch you?'

He wondered why she should seem so highly amused.

'In this little house you always seem about seven feet tall,' she laughed at him. 'You'd be terribly in my way. And you haven't waited half a day yet, let alone all night.'

He saw that Sanchia had suddenly lifted her head and had jerked her horse about in the trail. But she was not riding this way. She had turned toward the cliffs and was waving her hand. Then he saw Longstreet, grotesque in the various bits of Western accoutrement which he had incorporated into his wardrobe, humorously militant as to swinging revolver, miner's pick in hand, high-booted and red-shirted.

'Your father is coming,' he offered. 'That Murray woman is going to meet him.'

Helen had paused in her activities. But he could not guess how her expression had changed. 'That Murray woman,' as he spoke the words, did sound convincing. Still she did not come out. She knew that it would be a full ten minutes before Longstreet would make his way down the steep slope and come to the cabin. She resumed her occupation and remembered to accompany it with her tantalizing bit of song. Howard began to hate that air whole-heartedly.

The longest day has its end, the longest ten minutes fall something short of an eternity. At length, walking side by side, leading the white mare and chatting gaily, Longstreet and Sanchia approached the house. Longstreet saw Howard and put out a friendly hand.

'Glad to see you, my boy,' he called warmly. 'Helen and I have talked of you every day; we've missed you like the very mischief. Where is Helen, by the way?'

'Inside,' Howard told him sombrely. 'Changing things around and making them all over.'

Helen opened the door. Howard wondered how she had found the time to lay aside her hat, give a new effect to her hair and pin on those field flowers. Her cheeks were only delicately flushed, her eyes were filled with dancing lights.

'Back again, pops?' She appeared to see only her father, though Howard still had a foot on the step and Sanchia was fluttering close at his elbow. 'And no new gold mine to-day!' It was quite as though a gold mine were virtually an everyday occurrence. She patted his dusty shoulder.

'No,' said Longstreet lightly. 'No new mine to-day, my dear. But I'm right; I'm getting all the signs I want and expected. To-morrow or maybe the next day, we'll have it. I know right where it is. Take the trail by——'

'Papa,' said Helen hastily and a trifle impatiently, 'can't you ever learn, even after you have been bitten? If you do stumble on anything, I should think you would remember and not talk about it.'

'But, my dear,' he expostulated, 'we are among friends.'

'Are we?' Helen demanded coolly. 'We were among the same friends before.'

Longstreet looked frankly displeased, vaguely distressed. Sanchia was listening eagerly, her eyes stony in their covetousness. Howard, staring only at Helen, had hardly heard.

'Well, well,' said Longstreet. 'I haven't found anything, so that's all there is to to-day's tale, anyway.' He got his first view of the cabin's interior. 'What in the world has happened in there?' he demanded, in amazement.

'Nothing,' answered Helen. 'I'm just packing; that's all.'

'Packing, my dear? Packing what? And, pray, with what intention?'

'Packing everything, of course. And with the intention of travelling.'

Longstreet looked perplexed. He turned to both Howard and Sanchia as though he suspected that they must share the secret.

'If you'll come in, pops,' Helen informed him, 'we'll arrange for everything. I wanted to get the worst of it done before you came, as you're so frightfully upsetting when there's anything like this to be done. Mr. Howard and Mrs. Murray,' she added, explaining sweetly, 'just ran in for a minute's call. They are both in a hurry, and we had better not detain them.'

Howard flushed. But his jaw muscles only bulged, and he did not withdraw his foot from the doorstep. Sanchia bestowed upon the girl a long searching look; it may have suggested itself to Sanchia's open mind at that instant that Helen was likely to prove a more troublesome factor than she had counted on.

'If you don't mind,' Howard said with slow stubbornness, 'I'd like just a few words with you and Miss Helen. Mrs. Murray came alone, and no doubt would prefer to return alone.'

Sanchia's eyes flashed and she bit her lip. Then, though her words came quickly, they were smooth and quiet and had a note of bantering laughter in them.

'Dear me, we must all be tired and hungry like a lot of children who have played too hard! We'll be quarrelling in another moment. But I am not going to be so sensitive as to feel hurt and run off and cry; we are too good friends for that, as you've just said, Mr. Longstreet. And I did so want to ask you some questions; I sent right away for the books you told me of, and I am simply mad over them. And I got one of yours, too; the one on south-western desert formations. It is the most splendid thing I ever read. But it is so erudite, so technical in places. I was going to ask if you would explain certain parts of it to me?'

'Delighted to,' ejaculated Longstreet. His old beaming cheeriness enwrapped him like a rosy mist. 'Come in, come in. And you, too, Alan.'

They entered, Sanchia with a sidelong look at Helen, Howard grave and stubborn. Everything was in a state of confusion which Sanchia was quick to mark, while Howard saw nothing of it. He saw only Helen looking a far-off princess, cold and unapproachable. And only a few minutes ago she had been just a winsome girl who leaned toward him, whom he dared to hope he could gather up into his arms.

Helen's expression was one of set determination. She breathed quickly and deeply. Her anger rose that her two guests had overridden her expressed wish. She watched her father hand Sanchia a chair. She saw them sit down together at the table, Longstreet beginning to talk largely upon his hobby, Sanchia encouraging him with her sympathetic smile and her pertinent questions. It appeared that Sanchia had really read and understood and was interested.

'Papa,' said Helen quietly, though her voice shook a little, 'I suppose that a time for very plain talking has come. We will never get anywhere without it. I have shown Mrs. Murray as plainly as I could that I don't trust her and further that I do not like her. She should not come into my house. You should not ask her, if she has not enough pride to refuse your invitation. Do you want me to go? Or will you ask her to go?'

Longstreet had not expected this, and for a moment was utterly at a loss. He looked at his daughter in bewilderment; he turned from her to Howard and finally to Sanchia herself as though for help. His face was puckered up; he looked ridiculously as though he were on the verge of tears. Sanchia had the effrontery to pat his arm and whisper:

'Dear friend, that you should be distressed because of me.'

But she did not offer to go. She sat still again and watched and waited.

'I have begun packing for both of us,' Helen went on. 'You should come back home. If you refuse to go I shall have to go alone.'

To her amazement her father appeared suddenly relieved. He had never been parted from her for forty-eight hours consecutively since she could remember; he had never seemed competent to get through the day without her countless ministrations; he had leaned on her more than she on him; and yet the stupefying certainty was that now his face cleared and he actually smiled as he accepted her threat as a sensible solution of the problem.

'No doubt you are right, my dear,' he nodded vigorously. 'This is a wild sort of country after all; it is hard for a girl, bred as you have been. Perhaps if you went East it would be better. I could stay here; I'd find my mine very soon; I'd take some one in with me in order to raise a large sum of money immediately. And then, when I had builded a fine home and had everything ready for you, you'd come back to me!' He was carried away with his dream. He rubbed his hands together, and had he been playing poker you would have known he held nothing less than a royal flush. 'You always rise superior to the situation, my dear; always.'

But Helen's face would have indicated that the situation had mastered her. Her own eyes filled with vexation; she dashed the tears aside and her anger rose. Of all men in the world her father, with his gentle innocence, could at times be the most maddening. And, withdrawn a little behind her father, she saw Sanchia laughing into her handkerchief.

On the instant Helen had the clear vision to know that in this skirmish she was defeated. She had thought her father would follow her; she knew that she would not go without him. At least not yet. In a moment her anger would get the best of her; she went quickly to the door and outside. Howard came quickly behind her.

'Helen,' he said harshly, 'you've got to listen to me.'

'Well?' She whirled and confronted him, her body drawn up rigidly. 'What have you to say?'

'You mustn't leave like this. You must stay.'

'I am not going to leave,' she retorted. 'I am going to stay!'

'But,' he began, at sea once more, 'I thought——'

'Think what you please, Mr. Howard,' she told him hotly. 'But here's one thing you don't have to speculate upon. I am not going to leave my father in the hands of that Murray woman to do as she pleases with. She can have whatever I don't want,' and he knew she meant Alan Howard, 'but I am not going to give her the satisfaction of having all of the mines and horses in the world named after her.'

The last came out despite her; she could have bitten her tongue to hold back the words which came rushing forth with such vehemence. She did not know what had put that thought into her mind at this crisis; perhaps it had always been there. But it was this which had chief significance for Howard.

'I have a horse named Sanchia,' he said. 'The one I rode the first day I saw you. You think that I named it after her?'

'What if you did?' she demanded. 'Do you suppose that I care?'

'That horse,' he went on steadily, 'I bought a long time ago from Yellow Barbee. It was before I had so much as heard of Sanchia Murray. He named the beast.'

Helen's old familiar sniff was his answer. The matter, he was to know, was of no moment to her. But she knew otherwise, and looked at him swiftly hoping he had something else to say.

'You've got to stay here,' he continued gravely. 'And we both know it. I believe in your father and in his ultimate success. We must watch over him, we must see that Mrs. Murray does not worm his secret out of him again and steal what he finds. And you've got to know that when a man loves a girl as I love you, he is not going to tolerate any further interference from a lying, deceitful jade like that woman in there.'

Helen laughed her disbelief.

'I rode first of all to the place where your cabin used to stand,' he went on, his big hat crumpled in his hands. 'You had left, and I was afraid you had gone East. I rode into the mining-camp to get word of you. I saw Barbee; he said that Sanchia Murray knew where you had moved. I asked her. When she said she was coming up this way, I did not wait for her. She appears to have it in for me; she hates you for standing between her and your father. She knows that I love you, and——'

Longstreet was calling from the door,

'Helen, I want you and Howard to come back. We must talk everything over. Mrs. Murray has much to explain; she hates Jim Courtot and his crowd, she is working against them instead of with them. Be fair, young people; remember these words,' he paused, lifted his hand oratorically and then made his statement with an unusually deep gravity,—'Every one, though appearing guilty, must be given an opportunity to prove himself innocent. That's it and that's fair: the opportunity to prove his innocence.' He emphasized the words in repeating them. 'That's all that I ask now. Please let's talk things over.'

Helen returned slowly to the cabin.

'I must go back,' she said to Howard. 'After all, I must keep my head and watch over papa every minute while she is with him.'

'May I come in, too?' he asked gently.

'Won't you believe me, Helen? And won't you let me help you?'

She hesitated. Then she turned her head so that he could see her eyes.

'I am apt to have my hands full,' she admitted. She even smiled a little. 'Maybe there will be work for both of us.'

But when he sought to come to her side, she ran on ahead of him. The face which she presented at the door for Sanchia's vision was radiant. Even Sanchia was at a loss for the amazing alteration. How these two could have come to an understanding in two minutes baffled her. But as Howard presented his own face at the door there was no misdoubting that he and Helen had travelled far along the road which she had thought to close to them.

'What in the world has happened?' Guarded as was the tongue of Sanchia Murray it was human after all.

Helen laughed merrily and gave her eyes for an instant to Howard's. Then, lightly, to Sanchia:

'We were just laughing over a story Alan was telling me. Yellow Barbee has a new girl.'

Sanchia understood, and her face went red. Howard merely knew that for the first time Helen had called him Alan. Of trifles is the world made.



Chapter XXIII

The Will-o'-the-Wisp

For the hour, if for no longer, the tables plainly were turned upon Sanchia. The high content which so abruptly had enveloped Helen and Howard was comparable to the old magic armour of the fairy tales which the fortunate prince found always at his time of need. Through it venomed glance and bitter tongue might not pass; as Sanchia's anger rose the two lovers looked into each other's eyes and laughed. Again Sanchia bit her lips and sat back.

'Dear old pops,' said Helen, going to her father's side and slipping both arms about his neck, ruffling his scant hair and otherwise making free with his passive person, thereby achieving the dual result of coming between him and Sanchia and giving a joyous outlet to a new emotion. 'I am not going to leave you, after all. And the West is the nicest country in the world, too. And Alan and I were wrong to run off and leave you as we did. We'll stay right with you now, and it will be so much jollier that way; won't it, Mrs. Murray?'

Longstreet patted her hand; Sanchia Murray measured her anew.

'And I too,' ran on Helen, 'must take more interest in your work, your books. Now that we live right on the spot where the things are, the strata and eroded canons and—and relics of monster upheavals and fossils of the Pliocene age and all that—it will be so much fun to study about them, all together. Alan thinks so, I'm sure. Don't you agree, Mrs. Murray?'

Helen's eyes were dancing, Longstreet imagined with newly inspired interest, Alan knew with the light of battle; Sanchia's eyes were angry. The girl had stated her plan of campaign as though in so many words. If time came when Longstreet had a second golden secret to tell, she meant to hear it and to have Alan hear it at least not an instant later than Mrs. Murray; thereafter, with odds two to one against the widow, they should see what they would see.

Sanchia did much thinking and little talking. She remained an hour. During the last half-hour she developed a slight but growingly insistent cough. Before she left she had drawn the desired query from Longstreet. Oh, hadn't he noticed before? It had been coming on her for a month. The doctors were alarmed for her—but she smiled bravely. They had even commanded that she move away from the dust and noise of a town; that she pitch a tent somewhere on the higher lands and live out-doors all of the time. Helen saw what was coming before the actual words were spoken. It was Longstreet who was finally led to extend the invitation! Why didn't she move into a tent near them? And with a look in which gratitude seemed blurred in a mist of tears, Sanchia accepted. She would move to-morrow and pitch her tent right up there near the spring.

'If you don't mind, Helen dear?' she said. 'Your little summer house by the spring may be sacred ground?'

Promptly Helen made her a present of it. All that she wanted were some things she had left there, a pair of spurs and a bridle; Sanchia was perfectly welcome to the rest.

They all went out together for Sanchia's horse. And Sanchia, accepting the altered battle-ground to which Helen's tactics had driven her, seeing that she was to have little opportunity of getting Longstreet off to herself, began a straight drive at her main objective. She laid an affectionate hand on his arm as though thrown upon that necessity by the irregularities of the trail in which she had stumbled, and turned the battery of her really very pretty eyes upon him. With her eyes she said, boldly yet timidly: 'You splendid man, you have touched my heart! You noble creature, you have made Sanchia Murray love you! Generous man, you have come to mean everything to a poor little woman who is lonely!'

It is much to be said in a glance, but Sanchia had never travelled so far on her chosen road of life if she had not learned, long ago, how to put into a look all that she did not feel. And she did not stop with the one look; again she appeared to stumble, again her eyelids fluttered upward, her glance melted into his; again she flashed sufficient message to redden Longstreet's cheeks and make his own eyes burn with embarrassment. And since it was obvious that henceforward the combat must be waged in the open, she did not await the unlikely opportunity of some distant tete-a-tete to emphasize her intention. Before she mounted she managed to allow the glowingly embarrassed man to hold her two hands; and she told him whisperingly:

'I would to God that you had come a few years earlier into the life of Sanchia Murray!' She sighed and squeezed his hands. Then she smiled a wan little smile. 'You have come to mean so much, oh, so much, in my poor little lonely existence.'

She mounted and rode away, waving her farewell, looking only at Longstreet. They all saw how, before she reached the bend in the trail, her handkerchief went to her eyes. Longstreet appeared genuinely worried.

'I am sorry for that little woman,' he said thoughtfully.

'She's making love at you, papa,' laughed Helen, as though the matter were of no moment but delightfully ridiculous. 'Fancy Sanchia Murray falling in love with dear old pops!'

He looked at her severely.

'You should not speak lightly of such matters, my dear,' he chided her. 'Mind you, I am not admitting that there is any ground for such a suspicion as you express.'

'But if there were ground for it?'

'Is there any reason why a pretty woman should not fall in love?' he asked her stiffly. 'Further, is your father such a man that no woman could care for him?' He stalked away.

Helen gasped after him and was speechless.

In due course of time Howard recalled that there was a man named Roberts, a teamster in Sanchia's Town; and that on the Desert Valley ranch there were mules which should be sold; and that, though there was a golden paradise here in Bear Valley, there remained a workaday world outside the charmed confines where time was of the essence. He made Helen understand that if he were to make good in his acquisition of the cattle range he must be down there among his men and his herds during every working hour of the day, but that the nights were his own. He was to come up every night that it was possible. She was to guard her father from Sanchia during the days; he was to seek to be on hand if ever the golden news broke again; they two were to check the adventuress' move. And Helen was to keep the spurs and bridle; she was to take Danny not as a loan but as a gift, of which only they were to know; she was to induce her father to ride down to the lower valley to watch the round-up. Then, lingeringly and with many a backward look, Alan Howard went on his way.

He found his man and, while Howard sat sideways in the saddle and Roberts whittled at a stick, they drove their bargain. The mules were sold for two thousand dollars, if they were as Roberts remembered them and as Howard represented them; Roberts would ride down the next day for them and would pay six hundred dollars as the first payment and thereafter not less than two hundred a month. Howard was satisfied. He would have a little more cash for running expenses or for the purchase of more stock if he could find another chance like that when he had bought the calves from Tony Vaca in French Valley.

The week rolled by, bursting with details requiring quick attention. Danny was found, roped, saddled and bridled. Longstreet rode him, delighting in the pony's high spirits, more delighted to see how he 'came around.' Gentled sufficiently and reminded that he was no longer a free agent to fling up his heels at the wind and race recklessly where he would, but that he was man's friend and servant, Danny was presented to Helen. He ate sugar that she gave him; he returned bit by bit the impulsive love which she granted him outright. In his new trappings, to which Howard had added a saddle from his own stables, Danny accepted his new honours like a thoroughbred.

Helen rode him the day she and her father came down from the hills for the round-up. Longstreet out-Romaned the Romans: his spurs were the biggest, his yell when he circled a herd was the most piercing, his borrowed chaps struck the eye from afar; his hat was a Stetson and amazingly tall. Now and then, when his horse swerved sharply to head off a racing steer, he came near falling. Once he did fall and rolled wildly through the dust of a corral; but he only continued his occupation with the more vim and was heard to shout over and over: 'It's the life, boys! It's the life!'

Helen, often riding at Howard's side, saw how the herds were brought down from the hills; how they were counted and graded; how the select were driven into the fattest pasture lands. She watched the branding of those few head that had escaped other round-ups. At first she cringed back as she saw the hot iron and the smoke rising from the hides and smelled the scorching hair and flesh. But she came to understand the necessity and further she saw that little pain was inflicted, that the victims though they struggled and bellowed were soon grazing quietly with their fellows. And at last the time had come when she had learned to ride. That was the supreme joy of the moment.

To Howard, no less, was it a joy. He watched her race, with whip whirling over her head, to cut off the lunging attempt at escape made over and over by the wilder cattle; he saw that with every hour her seat in the saddle became more secure; he read that she was not afraid. He looked forward to long rides, just the two of them, across the billowing sweep of Desert Valley, in the golden time when the title rested secure with them, in the time when at last all dreams came true.

Of any world outside their own happy valley they knew little. Sanchia had pitched her tent near the Longstreet camp, but these days she was left very much to herself. They did not pass through Sanchia's Town on their way back and forth and knew and cared nothing of its activities. The Longstreets, keenly interested in all that went forward on the ranch, were persuaded to accept Howard's hospitality for three days and nights. They rode early and late; there were the brief before-bedtime talks together; Helen saw the bluebird feather and laughed about it; she claimed it, but was in the end, after a deal of bantering argument, content to leave it where it was. She allowed Howard to talk what she branded as foolishness about certain alterations in the old house which he prophesied would be necessary before long; she grew into the custom of speaking of the room which she had occupied on her first visit to the ranch as 'my room.' She was very happy and forgot that her father was a troublesome childlike parent who fancied that he knew how to discover gold mines. What did mere gold amount to, anyway?

Then came the drive. The pick of the herd were to be moved slowly down to San Juan. Howard had communicated with his former buyers, and they were eager for more of his stock and at the former price. He wanted Helen and her father to come with them. But Longstreet shook his head smilingly.

'I'm two-thirds cowboy now,' he chuckled. 'A few more days of this and I'll be coming to you and asking for a job! It won't do, my boy. It won't do. Especially at a time like this. You make your drive and I'll make mine. And I'll bet you a new twenty-dollar hat that when you get back I'll have found gold again.'

So the Longstreets went back to Bear Valley and the drive began. Howard started his cattle moving at three o'clock the next morning. And almost from the beginning, although everything started auspiciously, he encountered hardship. At ten o'clock that morning he came upon a dead calf, its throat torn out as though by a ravening monster wolf; a section of the flesh seemed to have been removed by a sharp knife. That was nothing; to him it merely spelled Kish Taka, and Kish Taka was his friend and welcome. But as he rode on, reflecting, he read more in the omen. If Kish Taka were here, in the hills, then somewhere near by Jim Courtot had passed. Then shortly after noon he came upon what he knew must be the work of Jim Courtot. And he surmised with rising anger that recently Courtot had seen Sanchia and that again Courtot was Sanchia's right hand. Here was a little hollow; on two sides were steep banks. Along these banks lay four big steers, dead, a rifle bullet through each one. Already the buzzards were gathering.

Dave Terril came upon him and found him bending over one of the big stiffening bodies. Howard's face was white, the deadly hue of rage.

'Who done that for you, Al?' muttered Dave wonderingly.

'Jim Courtot!'

'Why don't you go get him, Al?'

'Why don't I?' said Howard dully.

Why did he not lay a fierce hand upon the wind that danced over the hills? It was no more elusive than Jim Courtot. Why did not Kish Taka, the eternally vigilant, come up with his prey? Nowhere in the world is there so baffling a quarry as a hunted man. Jim Courtot struck and vanished; he played the waiting game; he would give his right hand for Howard's death, his left hand for the Indian's. But in his heart, his visions his own, he was afraid.

Before they came to Sunderberg's Meadows, where it had been arranged that the herd was to pasture that night, they saw the wide-flung grey films of smoke. Accident or hatred had fired the dry grass; flames danced and sang their thin songs of burning destruction; the wide fields were already black. Howard had bought and paid for the pasture land; the loss was his, not Sunderberg's; Courtot, if Courtot it was, or perhaps Monte Devine or Ed True, had been before him. Sanchia's venom—for, be the hand of the agent whose it may, he recalled always the look in Sanchia's eyes and the threat from Sanchia's lips—seemed to travel with him and in front of him. His cattle browsed that night on a rocky, almost grassless ground, making the best of what poor shrub growths they could lay their dry tongues to. There was no water; the pools lay in the heart of a smouldering tract too hot to drive across.

When the cattle had rested, without waiting for full day Howard was forced to start them on and to make a wide swerve out of his intended direction to come soon to feed and water. Otherwise the drive would become a tremendous misfortune and loss. His cattle would lose weight rapidly under privation; they would when delivered in San Juan only vaguely resemble the choice herd he had promised; scrawny and jaded, under weight and wretched, their price would drop from the top to the bottom of the scale. He would make for the San Doran place; Doran, though no friend, would at least sell him hay; the figure would be high, since Doran, no man better, knew when the other man was down and in a ditch. But water and food must be had.

Howard, toward noon, rode ahead to Doran's house. Doran was out in front of his barn, breaking a team of colts, working one at the time with a steady old mare, and in a hot and unpleasant mood. He saw Howard and behind him the dust-clouds of an advancing herd.

'Got any hay?' demanded Howard.

'Two barns full,' said Doran.

'Sell me enough to take care of my cows? Sunderberg's pastures were burned out; I'm up against it for feed.'

'Can't,' said Doran. 'Guess I'm sold out already for all I can let go.'

Howard wondered who was buying up hay at this time and by the big barnful.

'A fellow came by here yesterday,' explained Doran, and took an option on my whole lot.' His shrewd eyes gleamed. 'And at my own figure, too! Which was four dollars the ton higher'n the market! That's going a few, ain't it?'

'Who was the man?' asked Howard.

'Fellow named Devine. Know him?'

Howard pondered swiftly. Then he demanded: 'Just an option? Mind saying how much cash you got, Doran?'

'Why, no. He said he was short of cash, but he slipped me twenty bucks to tie the option. I'm expecting him back to-morrow or next day to close the deal.'

Howard sought swiftly to explain what Devine's play was; it was his suspicion that the twenty dollars would be forfeited and that Doran's hay would remain in his barns a thousand years if he waited for Devine to come back for it. But Doran, though he seemed to reflect, was stubborn. He hadn't a bale to sell, and that was all there was of it. He even grinned behind Howard's departing back.

The drive continued. Slowly the panting brutes were urged on; at every water-hole and every trail-side pasture they were rested. In the afternoon Howard found a rancher who could spare half a dozen bales of hay; they were promptly purchased, opened and thrown to the herd; to disappear instantly. That night camp was made on the upper courses of the Morales Creek. It was less than satisfactory; it was better than nothing.

Thus the journey into San Juan required twice the time Howard had counted upon. And when at last he and his men urged his lagging cattle to the fringes of the village, he knew that the herd was in no condition for an immediate delivery. He rode ahead and saw Engle at the bank; from Engle he rented the best pasture to be had at hand and bought hay; then, impatient at the enforced delay, he pitched camp and strove in a week to bring back his stock to something of its former condition.

Alone, he rode that night into San Juan, his eyes showing the rage which day after day had grown in his heart. His revolver loose in its holster he visited first the Casa Blanca, Crook Galloway's old place of sinister reputation. Some day he must meet Jim Courtot; might not that time have arrived? God knew he had waited long enough. But Jim Courtot was not to be found here; nor anywhere in San Juan, though Howard sought him out everywhere. No, men told him; they had not laid eyes upon Courtot since Howard had last sought him here.

Finally the delivery was made at the local stock pens; the cattle crowded through the narrow defile, were counted and weighed and paid for. The purchasing agent looked at Howard curiously.

'You had higher grade stuff last time,' he said. 'This bunch isn't in the same class with the other shipment.'

'Don't I know it?' Howard flared out at him, grown irritable here of late.

He took his cheque, banked it and left town, advancing his men a little money and telling them to cut their holiday short. Then he saddled his best horse and headed back for Desert Valley the shortest way. His expenses had been far heavier than they should have been; his receipts lower. He knew that look he would see in Sanchia's eyes when again they met; he prayed that the time might come when he could come close enough to Jim Courtot to read and answer his look. He thought of Kish Taka, and for the first time with anger; Kish Taka should keep his hands off.



Chapter XXIV

The Shadow

There was something awaiting Alan Howard at his ranch house that for a little at least made him forget Sanchia and Courtot and hard climbs ahead in the road he must travel. Tired as he was and dispirited when he got home late that night he went to bed glowing with content. At dawn he was in the saddle. The Longstreets, early risers as they had grown to be, had only finished breakfast when he came racing into Bear Valley, waving his hat to them and calling cheerily. A first frown came when he saw that Sanchia Murray was breakfasting with them, but the frown did not linger.

'Good morning, everybody,' he greeted them. Helen, sitting in the sun on the doorstep, got to her feet; her father came smiling out to shake hands; even Sanchia, pushing her plate back, rose. She looked at him searchingly, appearing to note and wonder at his gay mood.

'No, I won't light down and have coffee with you,' he laughed at the invitation. 'And I won't stop to eat, having devoured a day's rations before I hit the saddle. No, there's nothing you can do for me, Mr. Longstreet; there's nothing in the world I want.' Helen had given him her hand; he held it a little before he would let it free and looked straight down into her eyes and kept on laughing gaily as he declared with certain unmistakable boldness: 'Right now I've got every blessed thing in the wide world I want.'

Sanchia said sharply: 'You must have been unusually successful in your latest deal?'

'It's the next deal I'm thinking of,' he told her lightly, letting her have the words to ponder on if she liked. But he had scant time for Sanchia and his eyes came back to Helen. 'I've got to ride into the new camp to see Roberts,' he told her. 'He's seen my mules and is buying. How would an early ride suit you? And I'll show you how easy it is to collect six hundred dollars before most folks have had breakfast!'

'My, what a lot of money,' laughed Helen. 'Of course I'll come. You know where I keep Danny. If you'll saddle for me I'll get ready and be out in two minutes.'

When they rode away down the trail together, Longstreet was smiling, and Sanchia frowning after them.

'She even eats with you?' queried Howard.

'I just thank Heaven she hasn't brought her bed in yet,' answered Helen. 'She is as transparent as a piece of glass, and yet dear old pops lets her pile the wool over his eyes as thick as she pleases. I'm just giving her plenty of rope,' she added philosophically. 'Do that, and people always get tangled up first and then hang themselves next, don't they?'

'Give me plenty of rope!' he said eagerly. 'I'll just tie myself up, hand and foot, and give you the end of the rope to hold.'

She laughed at him, touched Danny with her new spurs and shot ahead.

'You're nearly dying to tell me some good news,' she said when he had come up with her again. 'Aren't you?'

'I want to show you a letter I got when I came in last night. But I'd just as soon think of handing it over to a whirlwind as to you at the rate you are going.'

They drew their horses down to a walk. From his pocket Howard took an envelope; from the envelope brought forth a long blue slip of paper, torn in two, and with a few words penned across the fragments in a big running scrawl. He held the two pieces together for her to read; by now the horses had stopped and, being old friends, were rubbing noses. Helen read:

'Dear old Al: It took me a few days to see straight. Instead of blocking your game, let me help whenever I can. Don't need this now; won't have it. Take your time, Al. Good luck and so long.

JOHN.'

'Turn it over!' cried Howard.

Helen obeyed, only then fully understanding. It was a cheque for twelve thousand five hundred dollars, signed by Alan Howard and payable to the order of John Carr. Again she looked at the brief note; it was dated, and the date was eight days old. Her face flushed suddenly; the colour deepened.

'He wrote that the day after I sent my telegram to him!' she cried breathlessly.

'Telegram?'

'Yes.' She hesitated, then ran on swiftly: 'When Mr. Carr left I let him think that maybe father and I would follow soon. I don't know that I had been exactly what you men call square with Mr. Carr. I wanted to be square with everyone. So I sent him a telegram, saying that we appreciated his generosity but that we would stay here.'

Howard studied the date on the fluttering paper and his mind ran back.

'You sent that wire the day after I came back last time!'

'And if I did?' She met his look serenely.

'You did so because you cared——'

But Helen laughed at him, and again Danny, touched with a sudden spur, shot ahead down the trail.

They clattered like runaway children into the crooked rocky street of Sanchia's Town. Had their thoughts been less busied with themselves and with a hint of a rosy future and with the bigness of the thing which John Carr had done for them, they would have marked long ago that here something was amiss. But it was only when they were fairly in the heart of the settlement that they stopped abruptly to stare at each other. Now there was no misunderstanding what had happened! Sanchia's Town, that had been a busy, humming human hive no longer ago than yesterday was this morning still, deserted, empty and dead. Those who had rushed hitherward seeking gold were gone; be the explanation where it might, shacks stood with doors flung wide; tents had been torn down, outworn articles discarded, dumped helter-skelter into the road. The atmosphere was like that of a circus grounds when the circus was moving on, only a few things left for the last crew to come for.

'It feels like a graveyard,' whispered Helen. 'What has happened?'

'The old story, I suppose.' He turned sideways in the saddle, looking about him for a sign of remaining life. 'It grew in the night; somehow it has pinched out; the bottom has dropped out of it. Nate Kemble of Quigley bought up two or three claims; I've a notion the rest were worthless. Anyway, like many another of its kind, Sanchia's Town was born, has lived and died like old Solomon Gundy.'

Helen's face was that of one in deep study.

'Papa was saying only day before yesterday,' she said thoughtfully, 'that this was going to happen. He said that was why he hadn't taken the trouble to make a fight for his rights here. He said that Kemble had bought up all of the land that was worth anything; and that he, himself, had given Kemble the right tip. It begins to look as though papa knew, doesn't it?'

Howard nodded vigorously.

'He knows gold mines and he knows gold signs,' he said positively. 'I've felt that all along. But——'

'But,' she took the words out of his mouth, speaking hastily, 'he doesn't know the first thing about people; about a woman like Sanchia Murray. And now that he says he is going to locate his real mine and we are leaving him with her——'

'We mustn't be away too long,' he agreed.

'Look. There's some one down there at the lunch counter; at least there's a little smoke from the stovepipe. Shall we see who it is?'

It was love among the ruins. Or, in other words, Yellow Barbee leaning halfway across the lunch counter, toward the roguish-eyed, plump maid who leaned slowly toward him.

'Hello, Barbee,' called Alan. And when Barbee greeted him without enthusiasm, he asked: 'What's happened to the town?'

'Hit the slide,' said Barbee carelessly. 'Bottom fell through, I guess, and at the same time somebody started a scare about gold being found down toward Big Run. The fools,' he scoffed, 'piled out like crazy sheep. You can find the way they went by a trail of old tin cups and socks and such stuff dropped on the run.'

'Roberts, the teamster, has gone, I suppose?'

'He'll be back. Pet's old man is still packing his stuff and Roberts is going to haul it this afternoon. I'm sticking along, helping pack,' he grinned. Pet eyed him in high mock scorn.

'A lot of help you are,' she told him. Barbee laughed.

Howard and Helen were reining their horses about to leave when Barbee came out into the road and put a detaining hand upon Howard's horse's mane.

'Saw Jim Courtot last night, Al,' he said quietly.

'Here?' asked Howard quickly. So long had Courtot seemed the embodiment of all that was elusive that it came with something of a shock of surprise that any man had seen him.

'Yes,' Barbee nodded. 'He's trailing his luck with that Murray woman again. They're a bad outfit, Al; better keep your eye peeled.'

Howard did not smile at Barbee's reference to Sanchia. He hardly remarked it.

'Tell me about Courtot,' he commanded.

'Something's come over him,' said Barbee vaguely. 'He's different somehow, Al; and I can't just get him. If he ain't half crazy he ain't much more than half right. He's got a funny look in his eyes; he's as nervous as a cat; he jumps sideways if you move quick. Last night I thought he was going to break and run for cover at a little sound no man would pay any attention to,'

'What kind of a sound?'

'Just a fool dog barking! Well, so long, Al. I got to help Pet do her packing.' And winking his merry eye, Barbee turned back toward the lunch counter.

Howard and Helen rode again toward the hills. Across the girl's face a shadow had fallen. Howard wondered if it were there because the odd sadness of a forsaken town had tinged her spirit with its own weird melancholy; or if she had been disturbed by word of Jim Courtot. Barbee had spoken quietly, but Helen might have heard. They rode in silence until Sanchia's Town was lost behind a ridge. Then Helen asked steadily:

'Is there no way out for you and Jim Courtot but the way of violence?'

He sought to evade, saying lightly that it began to look as though he and Courtot could no more meet than could spring and autumn. But when she asked directly, 'What would happen if you did meet?' he answered bluntly. His mood was not quarrelsome this morning; he wanted no needless fight with any man. But if Jim Courtot stepped out into his trail and began shooting . . . Well, he left it to her, what would happen. Then he began to speak of Barbee and his new girl, of anything that offered itself to his mind as a lighter topic. But Helen was in no responsive mood. It seemed to her that a shadow had crept across the sky; that the warmth had gone out of the sunlight. A fear crept into her heart, and like many a baseless emotion grew into certainty, that if Alan Howard and Jim Courtot came face to face it would be Alan who fell. When she saw how straight and virile Howard sat in the saddle; when she marked how full of life and the sheer joy of life he was; when she read in his eyes something of his own dreams for the future; when then she saw the gun always bumping at his hips, she shivered as though cold. Her own senses grew sharpened; her fancies raced feverishly. From every boulder, from every bend in the trail, she feared to see the sinister face of Jim Courtot.



Chapter XXV

In the Open

There came that night a crisis. Half expected it had always been, and yet after the familiar fashion of supreme moments it burst upon them with the suddenness of an explosion. Howard and Helen were sitting silent upon the cabin doorstep, watching the first stars. In Sanchia's near-by tent a candle was burning; they could now and then see her shadow as she moved restlessly about. Longstreet had been out all day, prospecting.

The first intimation the two star-gazers had of any eventful happening was borne to them by Longstreet's voice, calling cheerily out of the darkness below the cliffs. His words were simply 'Hello, everybody!' but the whoop from afar was of a joy scarcely less than delirious. Sanchia ran out of her tent, toppling over her candle; both Helen and Howard sprang up.

'He has found it!' cried Helen. 'Look at that woman. She is like a spider.'

Longstreet came on down the trail jauntily. Sanchia, first to reach him, passed her arm through his and held resolutely to his side. As they came close and into the lamp-light from the cabin door their two faces hid nothing of their two emotions. Longstreet's was one of whole-hearted triumph; Sanchia's of shrewdness and determination.

'Now,' cried Longstreet ringingly, 'who says that I didn't know what I was talking about!' It was a challenge of the victor, not a mere question.

Before any other reply came Sanchia's answer.

'Dear friend,' she told him hurriedly, 'I always had faith in you. When others doubted, I was sure. And now I rejoice in your happiness as——'

'Papa!' warned Helen. She ran forward to him. 'Remember and be careful!'

Longstreet went into the cabin. The others followed him. Sanchia did not release his arm, though she saw and understood what lay in Helen's look and Howard's. The main issue had arrived and Sanchia meant to make the most of it.

Longstreet put down his short-handled pick. Howard noted the act and observed, though the impression at the time was relegated to the outer fringes of his concentrated thought, that the rough head of the instrument and even a portion of the handle looked rusty. Longstreet removed from his shoulders his canvas specimen-bag. Plainly, it was heavy; there were a number of samples in it, some as small as robins' eggs, one the size of a man's two fists. He was lifting the bag to dump its contents out upon the table when suddenly Howard pushed by Sanchia and snatched the thing from Longstreet's hands. Longstreet stared at him in astonishment; Sanchia caught at his coat.

'Just a minute,' said Howard hastily. Even Helen wondered as he turned and bolted out through the door and sped up the trail toward the spring. Longstreet looked from the departing figure to his daughter and then to Sanchia, frankly bewildered. Then all went to the door. In a moment, Howard returned, the bag hanging limp over his arm, his two hands filled with the fragments of rock which glistened in the lamp-light.

'I washed them off,' he said lightly. 'If there really is gold here we can see it better with all the loose dirt off, can't we?' He put them down on the table and stood back, watching Sanchia keenly.

The fine restraint which, in her many encounters with the unexpected, Sanchia had been trained so long and so well to maintain, was gone now in a flash. Her eyes shone; a rich colour flooded her face; she could not stop her involuntary action until she had literally thrown herself upon the bits of quartz, snatching them up. For they were streaked and seamed and pitted with gold, such ore as she had never seen. The avarice gleaming in her eyes for that one instant during which she was thrown off her guard was akin to a light of madness.

But she had herself in hand immediately; she was as one who had slipped slightly upon a polished floor but had caught herself gracefully from falling. She thrust the rock into Longstreet's hands; she smiled upon him; she made use of her old familiar gesture of laying her hand upon his arm, as she hardly more than whispered:

'Dear friend—and wonderful man—I am glad for your sake, so tremendously glad. For now you have vindicated yourself before the world. Now you have shown them all'—and in her flashing glance Sanchia managed to include both Alan and Helen sweepingly with an invisible horde whose bitter tongues had been as so many dogs yelping at the excellent Longstreet's heels—'now you have shown them all that you are the man I have always contended you were.' She crowded her smile fuller of what she sought to convey than even she had ever risked before as she murmured at the end, her tones dropping away like dying music: 'This is a happy hour in the life of Sanchia Murray!'

'There's truth there, if nowhere else,' cried Helen pointedly. 'Papa, if you have stumbled on a real gold mine at last, aren't you wise enough this time to keep still about it?'

'That word "stumbled," my dear,' Longstreet told her with great dignity, 'is extremely offensive to me at a moment like this. It is a word which you have employed in this same connexion before to-day, yet it is one to which I have always objected. In that sure progress which marks the path a scientific brain has followed, there are no chance steps. Surely my own daughter, after the evidence I have already given——'

'That isn't the point,' said Helen hurriedly. 'The only thing that counts now is that you mustn't go shouting of it from the housetops.'

'Am I shouting, my dear? Am I seeking the housetops?' His dignity swelled. Also, it was clearly read in his unusually mild eyes that Helen, in her excitement with her ill-chosen words, had hurt him. Sanchia Murray, for one, who was older and of wider worldly experience than Longstreet's other companions of the moment, and who surely knew as much of human nature, saw something else in his clouded look. It was an incipient but fast-growing stubbornness. Therefore Sanchia closed her lips and watched keenly for developments.

'There's a good old pops,' Helen cajoled. She slipped between him and Sanchia, sending Howard a meaning look. She made use of certain of the widow's own sort of weapon, putting her two round arms about her father's neck. Before he quite understood what was happening to him, she had managed to get him through the door which led to her room at the rear, and to close the door after them and set her back to it. Forthwith her cajolery was done with, and taking him by the two shoulders Helen looked severely into his wondering eyes.

She began speaking to him swiftly, but her voice lowered. She had marked how Sanchia had sought to follow, how Howard had put his hand on her arm and Sanchia had shown her teeth. The woman was in fighting mood, and Helen from the beginning was a little afraid of what she might succeed in doing.

'Papa,' she said, 'anyone can see what that woman is after. She robbed you once, and anyone can see that too. You are a dear old innocent thing and she is artful and deceitful. You are not safe for a minute in her hands; you must stay right in here until Mr. Howard and I can send her away.'

She felt Longstreet's body stiffen under her hands.

'If you mean, my dear, that your father is a mere child; that he cannot be trusted to know what is best; that you, a chit of a youngster, know more of human nature than does he, a man of years and experience; that——'

'Oh, dear!' cried Helen. 'You are wonderful, pops, in your way. You are the best papa in the world. But, after all, you are just a baby in the claws—or hands of a designing creature like that hideous Sanchia. And——'

'And, my dear,' maintained Longstreet belligerently, the stubbornness now rampant in his soul, 'you are mistaken, that is all. You and I disagree upon one point; you condemn Mrs. Murray outright, because of certain purely circumstantial evidence against her. That is the way of hot-headed youth. I, being mature, even-minded and clear-eyed, maintain that one accused must be given every opportunity to prove himself innocent. When you say that Mrs. Murray is untrustworthy——'

'I could pinch you!' cried Helen. 'If she robs you again I—I——' She could think of no threat of punishment sufficient unto the crime. Suddenly she pulled the door open. 'Come in here,' she called to Alan. And as he obeyed, leaving the baffled Sanchia without, Helen said swiftly: 'See if you can't talk reason into papa. I'll keep her out there.' And she in turn passed out, again closing the door.

'You little vixen!' Sanchia's cheeks were red with anger as, Helen's manoeuvre complete, the girl stood regarding her with defiant eyes. Sanchia's hands clenched and the resultant impression given forth by her whole demeanour was that upon occasion the little widow might be swept into such passionate rage that she was prone to resort to primal, physical violence. Helen, though her own cheeks burned, smiled loftily and made no answer.

From beyond the closed door came Alan's eager voice. Sanchia bent forward, straining her ears to hear; Helen, the light of battle flaring steadily higher in her eyes, began suddenly to sing, the same little broken snatches of song which not so long ago had irritated her impatient lover and which now confused the words spoken beyond the door and which made Sanchia furious.

'Stand aside,' commanded Sanchia. 'I am going in.'

Helen stood firm. Then she saw that Sanchia meant what she said. And, on the table near the discarded pick, she saw Longstreet's big revolver. She made a quick step forward, snatched it up in both hands and pointed it directly at Sanchia's heaving breast. Now the colour went out of Helen's face and it grew very white, while her eyes darkened.

'If you move a step toward that door,' she threatened, 'I am going to shoot!'

Sanchia sneered. Then she paused. And finally she laughed contemptuously.

'You little fool,' she whispered back, cautious that no syllable might enter the adjoining room. 'I don't need to go rushing in there, after all. And you know it. That stuff,' and she glanced briefly at the rock on the table, 'got into my blood for a second. I'll take my time now; and I'll get what I want.'

As they stood in silence, Helen making no answer, they heard what the men were saying.

'—just this if nothing more,' came the end of Howard's entreaty. 'Don't tell Sanchia.'

Promptly came the angry answer:

'Mind your own business, young man! And, until you are asked for advice, hold your tongue!' At the end of the command the door snapped open and Longstreet popped into the room.

Sanchia, her cool poise regained, made no step toward him but contented herself by a slow comprehensive and sympathetic smile. Howard came quickly to Helen, stooped to her and whispered:

'I can't do a thing with him. But come outside with me a second; I think I know what to do.'

She flung down the heavy gun and went with him. Ten paces from the cabin they stopped together.

'Did you glimpse the specimens before I ran out to the spring with them?' he asked sharply. She shook her head, her eyes round.

'Do you have any idea,' he hurried on, 'just where your father has been prospecting lately?'

'Yes, I went with him for a walk two or three times during the last week. He——'

But he interrupted.

'Has he shown any interest in a flat-topped hill about three miles back? Where there is a lot of red dirt? They call it Red Dirt Hill.'

'Yes!' Her tone quickened. 'That is why——'

They had no time for complete sentences.

'I saw the red dirt on his pick first; then on the rock. That is why I washed it off, hoping that she had not seen. It's more than a fair gamble, Helen, that your father's claim is on Red Hill.'

Her hand was on his arm now; she did not know, but through all other considerations to him this fact thrilled pleasurably. He put his own hand over hers.

'If Sanchia saw, too?'

'I don't think that she did. Nor am I half sure that it would mean anything to her. I know every foot of these hills; she doesn't. We'll go in now and see what we can do. If your father does give it away—well, then we'll play our hunch and try to beat her to it.'

But though they had been out so brief a time, already Sanchia met them at the door. Her eyes were on fire; her slight body seemed to dilate with a joy swelling in her heart; she looked the embodiment of all that was triumphant. Behind her, rubbing his two hands together, and looking like a wilful and victorious child, was Longstreet. Sanchia ran by them. In her hands, tight-clutched, was the finest specimen.

'You haven't told her, papa! Oh, you haven't told her!'

'And what if I have?' he snapped. 'Am I not a man grown that I am not to——'

Again no time for more than a broken sentence.

'Will you tell us?' demanded Howard.

'In due time,' came the cool rejoinder. 'When I am ready. I should have told you to-night, had you trusted to me. Now I shall not tell you a word about it until to-morrow.'

They knew that Sanchia was going for her horse. Here was no time for one to allow his way to be cluttered up with trifles. Howard turned and ran to his own horse. They lost sight of him in the dark; they heard pounding hoofs as he raced after Sanchia and by her; they heard her scream out angrily at him as she was the first to grasp his purpose. And presently at the cabin door was Howard again, calling to Helen. She ran out. He was mounted and led two horses, her own and Sanchia's white mare.

'Hurry!' he called. 'We'll play my hunch and beat her to it yet.'

Helen understood and scrambled wildly into her own saddle. She heard Sanchia calling; she could even hear the woman running back toward them. Then her horse jumped under her, she clutched at the horn of her saddle to save herself from falling, and she and Howard were racing up trail, Sanchia's mare led after them, Sanchia's voice screaming behind them.

They skirted the base of the cliffs for half a mile. Then Howard turned Sanchia's horse loose, driving the animal down into a dark ravine where there would be no finding it in the night-time.

'It's only a chance,' he said, 'but then that's better than just sitting and sucking our thumbs. We take the up-trail here.'

They came out upon the tablelands above Bear Valley. There was better light here; the trail was less narrow and steep; they could look down and see the light in the cabin.

Later they were to know just what had been Sanchia Murray's quick reply to their move. And then they were to know, too, where Jim Courtot's hang-out had been during these last weeks in which he had seemed to vanish. Sanchia, with a golden labour before her, had promptly turned to her 'right hand.' On foot, since there was no other way, and running until she was breathless and spent, she hurried across the narrow valley, climbed the low hills at its eastern edge, and plunged down into the ravine which was the head of Dry Gulch. Up the farther side she clambered, again running, panting and sobbing with the exertion she put upon herself, until she came to another broken cliff-ridge. There she had stood calling. And, from a hidden hole in the rocks, giving entrance to a cave, like a wolf from its lair, there had come at her calling Jim Courtot.



Chapter XXVI

When Day Dawned

Upon the flat top of Red Dirt Hill, Howard and Helen drove their stakes. Thereafter they made a little fire in the shelter of a tumble of boulders and camped throughout the night under the blazing desert stars. Were they right? Were they wrong? They did not know. In the darkness they could make out little of the face of the earth about them. Alan thought himself certain of one thing: that only near here could it be likely that Longstreet should have broken off fragments of stone with so plain a marking of red dirt on them. Helen merely knew that her father had more than once climbed up here, though she had laughed at him for seeking gold upon the exalted heights. To know anything beyond this meagre and unsatisfying data, they must await the dawn.