e Helen May had stood and looked upon
Vic and the goats and the country she abhorred. Starr saw her tracks
there in a sheltered place beside a rock and knew that she had been up
there, though in that dry soil he could not, of course, tell when. When
that baked soil takes an imprint, it is apt to hold it for a long while
unless rain or a real sand-storm blots it out.

He hid there for a few minutes, craning as much as he dared to see if
there were any sign of the man he wanted. In a little he left that spot
and crept, foot by foot, over to the cairn, the "sheepherder's monument,"
behind which the fellow had stood. There again he found the prints of
Helen May's small, mountain boots, prints which he had come to know very
well. And close to them, looking as though the two had stood together,
were the larger, deeper tracks of a man.

Starr dared not rise and stand upright. He must keep always under cover
from any chance spying from below. He could not, therefore, trace the
footprints down the peak. But he got some idea of the man's direction
when he left, and he knew, of course, where to find Helen May. He did not
connect the two in his mind, beyond registering clearly in his memory the
two sets of tracks.

He crept closer to the Basin side of the peak and looked down, following
an impulse he did not try to analyze. Certainly he did not expect to see
any one, unless it were Vic, so he had a little shock of surprise when he
saw Helen May riding the pinto up past the spring, with a man walking
beside her and glancing up frequently into her face. Starr was human; I
have reminded you several times how perfectly human he was. He
immediately disliked that man. When he heard faintly the tones of Helen
May's laugh, he disliked the man more.

He got down, with his head and his arms--the left one was lame in
the biceps--above a rock. He made sure that the sun had swung around
so it would not shine on the lenses and betray him by any
heliographic reflection, and focussed his glasses upon the two. He
saw as well as heard Helen May laugh, and he scowled over it. But
mostly he studied the man.

"All right for you, old boy," he muttered. "I don't know who the devil
you are, but I don't like your looks." Which shows how human jealousy
will prejudice a man.

He saw Vic throwing rocks at something which he judged was a snake, and
he saw Helen May rein the pinto awkwardly around, "square herself for
action," as Starr would have styled