ne like her. That she was a proud, sulky
creature he could easily guess from her quickness at taking offense.
She resented even the appearance of being ridiculous. Her acceptance
of his favors carried always the implication that she hated him for
offering them. It was a safe guess that back of those flashing eyes
were a passionate temper and an imperious will.

It was evident that she knew the country as a teacher knows the primer
through which she leads her children. In daylight or in darkness, with
or without a trail, she could have followed almost an air-line to the
ranch. The paths she took wound in and out through unsuspected gorges
and over divides that only goats or cow-ponies could have safely
scrambled up and down. Hidden pockets had been cached here so
profusely by nature that the country was a maze. A man might have
found safety from pursuit in one of these for a lifetime if he had been
provisioned.

"Where were you going when you found me?" the young woman asked.

"Up to the mountain ranches of Big Creek. I was lost, so we ought to
put it that you found me," Beaudry answered with the flash of a
pleasant smile.

"What are you going to do up there?" Her keen suspicious eyes watched
him warily.

"Sell windmills if I can. I've got the best proposition on the market."

"Why do you come away up here? Don't you know that the Big Creek
headwaters are off the map?"

"That's it exactly," he replied. "I expect no agents get up here.
It's too hard to get in. I ought to be able to sell a whole lot easier
than if I took the valleys." He laughed a little, by way of taking her
into his confidence. "I'll tell the ranchers that if they buy my
windmills it will put Big Creek on the map."

"They won't buy them," she added with a sudden flare of temper. "This
country up here is fifty years behind the times. It doesn't want to be
modern."

Over a boulder bed, by rock fissures, they came at last to a sword gash
in the top of the world. It cleft a passage through the range to
another gorge, at the foot of which lay a mountain park dotted with
ranch buildings. On every side the valley was hemmed in by giant peaks.

"Huerfano Park?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You live here?"

"Yes." She pointed to a group of buildings to the left. "That is my
father's place. They call it the 'Horse Ranch.'"

He turned startled eyes upon her. "Then you are--?"

"Beulah Rutherford, the daughter of Hal Rutherford."