he complimented her with a
vast show of sincerity. "This is the best I ever tasted."

"I'm glad you like it," she retorted as the frown fled before a hint of
laughter. "I found it already made in the pot and just warmed it over!"

"Oh," said Thornton. And then with much gravity of tone but with
twinkling eyes, "Come to think of it it isn't the _taste_ of it that a
man notices; it's the being just hot enough. I never had any coffee
better warmed-up than this."

"Thank you." She stirred the sugar in her own cup of muddy looking
beverage and without glancing up at him this time, went on, "You mean
that you didn't know who I was when you saw me?"

"At the bank in Dry Town?"

"Of course not. Back there on the trail."

"I didn't see you," he told her.

Now she flashed another quick upward glance at him as though seeking for
a reason lying back of his words.

"I saw you" she said steadily. "Twice. First from the top of a hill
half a dozen miles back when you got down to look at your horse's foot.
Did he pick up a stone?"

His eyes opened in surprise.

"I didn't get off to look at my horse's foot. And he didn't pick up
anything."

"The second time," she continued, "was just when you had come to the
last stream. I thought that you were going to turn off into the canon. I
saw that your horse was limping."

He shook his head. She must have seen that other fellow whose tracks
Thornton had for so long seen following the tracks of her pony.

"What made you think you recognized me?" he asked.

"I didn't think. I knew."

"Then ... how did you know?"

The surprise showing in her frankly lifted brows was very plain now.

"You were hardly five hundred yards away," she retorted. "And," with a
quick, sweeping survey of him, "you are not a man to be readily mistaken
even at that distance, you know."

"Meaning the inches of me? The up-and-down six feet four of me?" He
shook his head. "I'm the only man in this neck of the woods built on the
bean pole style."

"Meaning," she returned steadily, "your size and form; meaning the
unusually wide hat you wear; meaning your blue shirt and grey
neck-handkerchief ... grey handkerchiefs aren't so common, are they?...
meaning your tall sorrel horse that limped, and your bridle with the red
tassel swinging from the headstall! Now," a little sharply, a little
anxiously, he thought, "you are not going to tell me that I was
mistaken, are you?"

She saw that his surprise, growing in