e brown plain of the wheat land, stretching
away from him in apparent barrenness on either hand.

It was late in the day, already his shadow was long upon the padded dust
of the road in front of him. On ahead, a long ways off, and a little to
the north, the venerable campanile of the Mission San Juan was glinting
radiant in the last rays of the sun, while behind him, towards the
north and west, the gilded dome of the courthouse at Bonneville stood
silhouetted in purplish black against the flaming west. Annixter spurred
the buck-skin forward. He feared he might be late to his supper. He
wondered if it would be brought to him by Hilma.

Hilma! The name struck across in his brain with a pleasant, glowing
tremour. All through that day of activity, of strenuous business, the
minute and cautious planning of the final campaign in the great war of
the League and the Trust, the idea of her and the recollection of her
had been the undercurrent of his thoughts. At last he was alone. He
could put all other things behind him and occupy himself solely with
her.

In that glory of the day's end, in that chaos of sunshine, he saw her
again. Unimaginative, crude, direct, his fancy, nevertheless, placed
her before him, steeped in sunshine, saturated with glorious light,
brilliant, radiant, alluring. He saw the sweet simplicity of her
carriage, the statuesque evenness of the contours of her figure, the
single, deep swell of her bosom, the solid masses of her hair. He
remembered the small contradictory suggestions of feminine daintiness he
had so often remarked about her, her slim, narrow feet, the little steel
buckles of her low shoes, the knot of black ribbon she had begun to wear
of late on the back of her head, and he heard her voice, low-pitched,
velvety, a sweet, murmuring huskiness that seemed to come more from her
chest than from her throat.

The buckskin's hoofs clattered upon the gravelly flats of Broderson's
Creek underneath the Long Trestle. Annixter's mind went back to the
scene of the previous evening, when he had come upon her at this place.
He set his teeth with anger and disappointment. Why had she not been
able to understand? What was the matter with these women, always set
upon this marrying notion? Was it not enough that he wanted her more
than any other girl he knew and that she wanted him? She had said as
much. Did she think she was going to be mistress of Quien Sabe? Ah, that
was it. She was after his property, wa