why queer throbs and sudden shyness swept her soft young
body. She liked Larrabie Keller--oh, so much!--but her untutored heart
could not quite tell her whether she loved him. His eyes drilled into
her electric pulsations whenever they met hers. The youth in him called
to the youth in her. She admired him. He stirred her imagination, and
yet--and yet----

They rode through a valley of gold and russet, all warm with yellow
sunlight. In front of them, the Spur projected from the hill ridge into
the mountain park.

"Then I think you're a cow-puncher looking for a job, but not very
anxious to find one," she was hazarding, answering a question.

"No. That leaves you one more guess."

"That forces me to believe that you are what you say you are," she
mocked; "just a plain, prosaic homesteader."

She had often considered in her mind what business might be his, that
could wait while he lingered week after week and rode trail with the
cowboys; but it had not been the part of hospitality to ask questions of
her friend. This might seem to imply a doubt, and of doubt she had none.
To-day, he himself had broached the subject. Having brought it up, he
now dropped it for the time.

He had shaded his eyes, and was gazing at something that held his
attention--a little curl of smoke, rising from the wash in front of
them.

"What is it?" she asked, impatient that his mind could so easily be
diverted from her.

"That is what I'm going to find out. Stay here!"

Rifle in hand, Keller slipped forward through the brush. His imperative
"Stay here!" annoyed her just a little. She uncased her rifle, dropped
from the saddle as he had done, and followed him through the cacti. Her
stealthy advance did not take her far before she came to the wash.

There Keller was standing, crouched like a panther ready for the
spring, quite motionless and silent--watching now the bushes that
fringed the edge of the wash, and now the smoke spiral rising faintly
from the embers of a fire.

Slowly the man's tenseness relaxed. Evidently he had made up his mind
that death did not lurk in the bushes, for he slid down into the wash
and stepped across to the fire. Phyllis started to follow him, but at
the first sound of slipping rubble her friend had her covered.

"I told you not to come," he reproached, lowering his rifle as soon as
he recognized her.

"But I wanted to come. What is it? Why are you so serious?"

His eyes were busy making an inventory of