sfield
and Fresno. It stormed by with a deafening clamour, and a swirl of
smoke, in a long succession of way-coaches, and chocolate coloured
Pullmans, grimy with the dust of the great deserts of the Southwest.
The quivering of the trestle's supports set a tremble in the ground
underfoot. The thunder of wheels drowned all sound of the flowing of the
creek, and also the noise of the buckskin mare's hoofs descending from
the trail upon the gravel about the creek, so that Hilma, turning about
after the passage of the train, saw Annixter close at hand, with the
abruptness of a vision.

He was looking at her, smiling as he rarely did, the firm line of his
out-thrust lower lip relaxed good-humouredly. He had taken off his
campaign hat to her, and though his stiff, yellow hair was twisted
into a bristling mop, the little persistent tuft on the crown, usually
defiantly erect as an Apache's scalp-lock, was nowhere in sight.

"Hello, it's you, is it, Miss Hilma?" he exclaimed, getting down from
the buckskin, and allowing her to drink.

Hilma nodded, scrambling to her feet, dusting her skirt with nervous
pats of both hands.

Annixter sat down on a great rock close by and, the loop of the bridle
over his arm, lit a cigar, and began to talk. He complained of the heat
of the day, the bad condition of the Lower Road, over which he had come
on his way from a committee meeting of the League at Los Muertos; of
the slowness of the work on the irrigating ditch, and, as a matter of
course, of the general hard times.

"Miss Hilma," he said abruptly, "never you marry a ranchman. He's never
out of trouble."

Hilma gasped, her eyes widening till the full round of the pupil was
disclosed. Instantly, a certain, inexplicable guiltiness overpowered her
with incredible confusion. Her hands trembled as she pressed the bundle
of cresses into a hard ball between her palms.

Annixter continued to talk. He was disturbed and excited himself at
this unexpected meeting. Never through all the past winter months of
strenuous activity, the fever of political campaigns, the harrowing
delays and ultimate defeat in one law court after another, had he
forgotten the look in Hilma's face as he stood with one arm around
her on the floor of his barn, in peril of his life from the buster's
revolver. That dumb confession of Hilma's wide-open eyes had been enough
for him. Yet, somehow, he never had had a chance to act upon it. During
the short period when he coul