it accident, maybe. He say it is nothing. Pete say it is
much. It is big debt. Some day Pete pay."

There was deep silence for a moment. The stream gurgled and splashed;
the breeze whispered through the cottonwoods; and over all, or under
all, was the vague, insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes
in the fulness of its power.

Marion hesitated, quivering with eagerness and uncertainty. She was
afraid to ask more, lest she should be shortly rebuffed, and lose her
opportunity. But Pete was looking at her steadily. She felt a flush
coming into her face again. Had he guessed--something--already in her
manner, in her impulsive questions? More likely it was the charm that,
for once unconsciously, she wielded--the elusive charm of woman that
makes men want to tell, without the asking.

"You like to hear?" Pete said; and her heart leaped.

"Oh, please!"

And she was keenly disappointed. She had expected something romantic,
something ennobling and fine. And it was only a barroom brawl, though
Philip was not in it until the end, to be sure! Five Mexican sheep
herders against the lone Indian. Guns and knives in the reeking border
saloon; and afterwards in the street; and the Indian almost done for,
bleeding from a dozen wounds; and then a voice ringing out above the
fracas: "No, I'm damned if you do! Five to one, and greasers at that!"
And Philip Haig had jumped from his horse, and plunged into the melee,
disdaining to draw his gun on greasers. Smash! Bang! went his fists,
front and right and left.

Pete had accounted for one Mexican, who would herd sheep no more on
the plains of Conejos. The others fled. Then Haig, despite the
knife-wound in his face, grabbed the Indian, and somehow lifted him up
behind him on his horse.

"Quick, Indian!" he cried. "This town's full of greasers. You've got
no chance here."

And then the long ride to Del Norte, with the Indian drooping on
Haig's back; and a doctor of Haig's acquaintance, who sheltered and
cured the silent savage. And Pete, convalescent, had come straight to
Haig's ranch, and remained there, despite Haig's protests that he did
not need another hand.

"Pete stay until big debt is paid," said the Indian solemnly. And
then, with a straight look into Marion's eyes, "You ought tell
Huntington he is damn fool."

Marion started. There it was again--the warning!

"But why?" she managed to ask.

"Haig is brave man. Brave man always good man. So--Huntington got no