old Panama like a crown prince,
and smiles at me and talks about all the different periods of the human
race, and gems and tribal laws and all that highbrow dope, I just sit and
drink it in and wish he'd keep on for hours! Can you beat that? And if by
any chance a common, ordinary specimen of desert man should ride by, I
might be desperate enough--"

Her gaze, wandering always out over the tremendous sweep of plateau which
from that point looked illimitable as the ocean, settled upon a whirlwind
that displayed method and a slow sedateness not at all in keeping with
the erratic gyrations of those gone before. Watching it wistfully with a
half-formed hope that it might not be just a dry-weather whirlwind, her
droning voice trailed off into silence. A faint beating in her throat
betrayed what it was she half hoped. She was so desperately lonesome!

Pat tilted his head and looked up at her and licked her hand until she
drew it away impatiently.

"Good gracious, Pat! Do you want to plaster me with germs?" she reproved.
And Pat dropped his head down upon his paws and eyed her furtively from
under his brown lids, waiting for her to repent her harshness and smooth
his head caressingly, as was her wont.

But Helen May was watching that slow-moving column of dust, just as
she had watched the cloud which had heralded the coming into her life
of Holman Sommers. It might be--but it couldn't, for this was away
off the road. No one would be cutting straight across that hummocky
flat, unless--

From the desert I come to thee,
On my Arab shod with fire--

"Oh, I'm getting absolutely mushy!" she muttered angrily. "If I've
reached the point where I can't see a spot of dust without getting
heart-failure over it, why it's time I was shut up somewhere. What are
you lolling around me for, Pat? Go on and tend to your goats, why don't
you? And do get off my skirt!"

Pat sprang up as though she had struck him; gave her an injured glance
that was perfectly maddening to Helen May, whose conscience was
sufficient punishment, and went slinking off down the slope. Half-way to
the band he stopped and sat down on his haunches in the hot sun, as
dejected a dog as ever was made to suffer because his mistress was
displeased with herself.

Helen May sat there scowling out across the wide spaces, while romance
and adventure, and something more, rode steadily nearer, heralded by the
small gray cloud. When she was sure that a horseman was coming, s