st have got a wrench in that jump," confessed Kate, watching. "We
were riding pretty fast, weren't we?"

"For that kind of country, yes. I thought for a while," added her
companion, in a dry way, "you must be showing me how to ride. Then I
figured out you must be showing me how _you_ could ride."

Kate stared straight ahead: "How absurd!" she exclaimed with cold
contempt for his conclusions, yet feeble in her sarcasm against his
penetration.

"All I want to say is," he continued, remounting, "that I see you can
ride. You don't have to cover much country to prove that. You ride like
a Western girl--and talk like an Eastern girl. Which are you?"

She unfeelingly closed all inquiries: "Both," she answered indifferently.
"Let's head for the bottoms; about two miles from here there's a
spring--good water."

He looked skeptical: "If you can show me good water near here, I'll be
learning something. I didn't know there was a water hole within ten
miles--but I don't know this lower country as well as my own."

"What is your own?"

He pointed to the Northeast to where a range of snow-capped peaks rose
above from the desert: "Those are the Lodge Pole mountains. That's where
the Falling Wall river begins--where you see that snow. It circles clear
around the range, crosses the Reservation to the West and opens South
into a high basin--that's my country--the Falling Wall. Then the river
cuts out of there through the canyon we're talking about and gets away to
the West again." Coming a step nearer to her he pointed again: "Now look
close to the left of that strip of timber. You can just see a break
above it--that's the high point of the canyon. A long time ago there was
a mining camp in those mountains--Horsehead--they started to build a
railroad up there--did a lot of grading and put in the abutments for a
bridge across the canyon. Before they got the road built the camp played
out; they never finished it. All that country below there is the Falling
Wall."

"Are they all thieves and outlaws over there?"

He started a little in spite of himself and took his time to reply: "It
must have been a thief or an outlaw that put that idea in your head," he
observed finally.

"Oh, no, it was Tom Stone."

His expression changed into contempt: "I didn't need but one guess."

Kate asked him to explain, but he did not and she was not in a position
to object. She found the trail to the spring. Van Horn had taken her
t