ook in her eyes, the set of the red lipped mouth. And he knew
downright fear when he saw it, though it be fear bravely masked.

"Let's eat," he answered, having many things in his mind, but no other
single thing to say to her just yet.

She flashed him a quick look and sat down. Thornton dragged back the
other chair, flung his hat to the bunk in the corner of the room, and
disposed his long legs uncomfortably under the small table. Inwardly he
was devoutly cursing Dave Wendell for allowing anybody at his place to
choose this particular time to get sick and the Hartes for going to the
assistance of a ten-mile distant neighbour.

He watched the girl's quick fingers busy with the blackened coffee pot,
realized at one and the same time that she had no ring upon a particular
finger and that it was idiotic for him to so much as look for it, never
allowed his glance to wander higher than her hands and attacked his
bread and butter as though its immediate consumption were the most
important thing in all the world. And she, when she felt that he was not
watching her, when his silence was almost a tangible thing, looked at
him with quick furtiveness. The something in her expression which had
spoken of terror began to give place to the look of amusement which
twitched at her lips and flickered up in the soft grey of her eyes. And
since still he gave no sign of breaking the silence which had fallen
over them, she said at last:

"Didn't you know all the time who I was?"

Then he looked up at her inquiringly. And when he saw that she was
smiling, a little of his sudden restraint fled from him and his eyes
smiled back gently a little and reassuringly into hers.

"All the time?" he asked. "Meaning when?"

"Back there. On the trail," she told him.

"Well," he admitted slowly, "I guess I was pretty sure. Of course I
couldn't be dead certain. It might have been anybody's tracks ... that
is," he corrected with a quick broadening of the smile, "anybody with a
foot the right size to fit into a boot like that."

"Like what?" she asked in turn.

"Like the one that made the tracks by the creek where you came into the
main trail, where you stopped to drink."

"You saw that?"

"If I hadn't seen it how was I to guess that it was you ahead of me?" he
demanded. And when she frowned a little and did not answer for a moment
he gave his attention to the black coffee which she had poured for him.
"You sure know how to make coffee _right_,"