"He wants to make good, we'll say," went on Barkley. "He wants to go
back East with a little roll. Now, we give him a chance to make good.
We give him more money than he ever saw before in his life, and set him
up as leading citizen, all that sort of thing. For the sake of going
back and making a front before that girl, he'll be willing to do a heap
of things for us. You've seen it a thousand times yourself. A woman
can do more than cash, in a real hard bit of work. Now, Ellsworth, you
furnish the girl, and leave the rest to me. I'll deliver Heart's
Desire in a hand-bag to you, if the man's half as able as you seem to
think he is."

Porter Barkley never quite understood why Mr. Ellsworth arose suddenly
and walked to the far end of the gallery, leaving him alone, crumbling
his bits of bark in the sunshine.

CHAPTER XIII

BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE

_This Describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way
with a Maid_

Dan Anderson sat for a long time on his blanket roll, looking at the
dribbling smoke from the ends of the charred pinon sticks. So deep was
his preoccupation that he did not at first hear the shuffle of feet
approaching over the carpet of pine needles; and when the sound came to
his consciousness, he wondered merely how Tom Osby had gotten around the
camp and come in on that side of the mountain. Then he looked up. It
was to see the face that had dwelt in his dreams by night, his reveries
by day, the face that he had seen but now--the "face that was the
fairest"! He sat stupid, staring, conscious that Fate had chided him
once more for his unreadiness. Then he sprang up and stared the
harder--stared at Constance Ellsworth coming down the slope between her
father and a well-groomed stranger.

The girl looked up, their eyes met; and in that moment Porter Barkley
discovered that Constance Ellsworth could gaze with brightening eye and
heightened color upon another man.

When Ellsworth and Barkley had started from the hotel in search of the
engineer's camp, Constance had joined them ostensibly for the sake of a
walk in the morning's sun. If it had been in her mind to discover the
mystery of this man from Heart's Desire, she had kept it to herself. But
now as they approached the dying fire, she gained the secret of this
stranger who had travelled a week by wagon to listen to a bedizened diva
of the stage! The consciousness flashed upon her sharply. Despite her
traitoro