enmore, the mining-camp owned by King, and
which lay in the heart of White Divide ten miles west of King's Highway.
That, I say, was the logical route--but I wasn't going to take it.
I wasn't a bit stuck on that huddle of corrals and sheds, with the trail
winding blindly between, and I wasn't in love with the girl or with old
King; but, all the same, I meant to go back the way I came, just for my
own private satisfaction.

While I was saddling Shylock, in the opal-tinted sunrise, Potter came down
and gave me the letter to the wagon-boss, an answer to the one I had
brought.

"Here's some chuck the cook put up for yuh," he remarked, handing me a
bundle tied up in a flour-sack. "You'll need it 'fore yuh get through to
camp; you'll likely be longer going than yuh was comin'."

"Think so?" I smiled knowingly to myself and left him staring
disapprovingly after me. I could easily give a straight guess at what he
was thinking.

I jogged along as leisurely as I could without fretting Shylock, and, once
clear of the home field, headed straight for King's Highway. It wasn't the
wisest course I could take, perhaps, but it was like to prove the most
exciting, and I never was remarkable for my wisdom. It seemed to me that
it was necessary to my self-respect to return the way I came--and I may as
well confess that I hoped Miss King was an early riser. As it was,
I killed what time I could, and so spent a couple of hours where one would
have sufficed.

Half a mile out from the mouth of the pass, I observed a human form
crowning the peak of a sharp-pointed little butte that rose up out of the
prairie; since the form seemed to be in skirts, I made for the spot.
Shylock puffed up the steep slope, and at last stopped still and looked
back at me in utter disgust; so I took the hint and got off, and led him
up the rest of the way.

"Good morning. We meet on neutral ground," I greeted when I was close
behind her. "I propose a truce."

She jumped a bit, and looked very much astonished to see me there so
close. If it had been some other girl--say Ethel Mapleton--I'd have
suspected the genuineness of that surprise; as it was, I could only think
she had been very much absorbed not to hear me scrambling up there.

"You're an early bird," she said dryly, "to be so far from home." She
glanced toward the pass, as though she would like to cut and run, but
hated to give me the satisfaction.

"Well," I told her with inane complacency, "you wi