, miss," said her preserver, respectfully.

She looked up at his dark, fierce face, and laughed saucily. "I'm awful
frightened," she said, naively; "whoever would have thought that Poncho
would have been so scared by a lot of cows?"

"Thank God you kept your seat," the other said earnestly. He was a tall,
savage-looking young fellow, mounted on a powerful roan horse, and
clad in the rough dress of a hunter, with a long rifle slung over his
shoulders. "I guess you are the daughter of John Ferrier," he remarked,
"I saw you ride down from his house. When you see him, ask him if he
remembers the Jefferson Hopes of St. Louis. If he's the same Ferrier, my
father and he were pretty thick."

"Hadn't you better come and ask yourself?" she asked, demurely.

The young fellow seemed pleased at the suggestion, and his dark eyes
sparkled with pleasure. "I'll do so," he said, "we've been in the
mountains for two months, and are not over and above in visiting
condition. He must take us as he finds us."

"He has a good deal to thank you for, and so have I," she answered,
"he's awful fond of me. If those cows had jumped on me he'd have never
got over it."

"Neither would I," said her companion.

"You! Well, I don't see that it would make much matter to you, anyhow.
You ain't even a friend of ours."

The young hunter's dark face grew so gloomy over this remark that Lucy
Ferrier laughed aloud.

"There, I didn't mean that," she said; "of course, you are a friend now.
You must come and see us. Now I must push along, or father won't trust
me with his business any more. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye," he answered, raising his broad sombrero, and bending over
her little hand. She wheeled her mustang round, gave it a cut with her
riding-whip, and darted away down the broad road in a rolling cloud of
dust.

Young Jefferson Hope rode on with his companions, gloomy and taciturn.
He and they had been among the Nevada Mountains prospecting for silver,
and were returning to Salt Lake City in the hope of raising capital
enough to work some lodes which they had discovered. He had been as keen
as any of them upon the business until this sudden incident had drawn
his thoughts into another channel. The sight of the fair young girl,
as frank and wholesome as the Sierra breezes, had stirred his volcanic,
untamed heart to its very depths. When she had vanished from his sight,
he realized that a crisis had come in his life, and that neither silver
specul